of knightly sweetness and courtesy. There were those,
too, who failed in the hour of trial; who were the victims of temptation
or of the victorious strength of evil. Besides the open or concealed
traitors, the Desmonds, and Kildares, and O'Neales, there were the men
who were entrapped and overcome, and the men who disappointed hopes, and
became recreants to their faith and loyalty; like Sir William Stanley,
who, after a brilliant career in Ireland, turned traitor and apostate,
and gave up Deventer and his Irish bands to the King of Spain.

The realities of the Irish wars and of Irish social and political life
gave a real subject, gave body and form to the allegory. There in actual
flesh and blood were enemies to be fought with by the good and true.
There in visible fact were the vices and falsehoods, which Arthur and
his companions were to quell and punish. There in living truth were
_Sansfoy_, and _Sansloy_, and _Sansjoy_; there were _Orgoglio_ and
_Grantorto_, the witcheries of _Acrasia_ and _Phaedria_, the insolence of
_Briana_ and _Crudor_. And there, too, were real Knights of goodness and
the Gospel--Grey, and Ormond, and Ralegh, the Norreyses, St. Leger, and
Maltby--on a real mission from Gloriana's noble realm to destroy the
enemies of truth and virtue.

The allegory bodies forth the trials which beset the life of man in all
conditions and at all times. But Spenser could never have seen in
England such a strong and perfect image of the allegory itself--with the
wild wanderings of its personages, its daily chances of battle and
danger, its hairbreadth escapes, its strange encounters, its prevailing
anarchy and violence, its normal absence of order and law--as he had
continually and customarily before him in Ireland. "The curse of God was
so great," writes John Hooker, a contemporary, "and the land so barren
both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from one end to the
other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Smerwick, about six score
miles, he should not meet man, woman, or child, saving in cities or
towns, nor yet see any beast, save foxes, wolves or other ravening
beasts." It is the desolation through which Spenser's knights pursue
their solitary way, or join company as they can. Indeed to read the same
writer's account, for instance, of Ralegh's adventures with the Irish
chieftains, his challenges and single combats, his escapes at fords and
woods, is like reading bits of the _Faery Queen_ in prose.