of the
plan becomes still more evident in the second instalment of the work.
Even the special note of each particular virtue becomes more faint and
indistinct. The one law to which the poet feels bound is to have twelve
cantos in each book; and to do this he is sometimes driven to what in
later times has been called padding. One of the cantos of the third book
is a genealogy of British kings from Geoffrey of Monmouth; one of the
cantos of the _Legend of Friendship_ is made up of an episode,
describing the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, with an elaborate
catalogue of the English and Irish rivers, and the names of the
sea-nymphs. In truth, he had exhausted his proper allegory, or he got
tired of it. His poem became an elastic framework, into which he could
fit whatever interested him and tempted him to composition. The gravity
of the first books disappears. He passes into satire and caricature. We
meet with Braggadochio and Trompart, with the discomfiture of Malecasta,
with the conjugal troubles of Malbecco and Helenore, with the imitation
from Ariosto of the Squire of Dames. He puts into verse a poetical
physiology of the human body; he translates Lucretius, and speculates on
the origin of human souls; he speculates, too, on social justice, and
composes an argumentative refutation of the Anabaptist theories of right
and equality among men. As the poem proceeds, he seems to feel himself
more free to introduce what he pleases. Allusions to real men and events
are sometimes clear, at other times evident, though they have now ceased
to be intelligible to us. His disgust and resentment breaks out at the
ways of the Court in sarcastic moralizing, or in pictures of dark and
repulsive imagery. The characters and pictures of his friends furnish
material for his poem; he does not mind touching on the misadventures of
Ralegh, and even of Lord Grey, with sly humour or a word of candid
advice. He becomes bolder in the distinct introduction of contemporary
history. The defeat of Duessa was only figuratively shown in the first
portion; in the second the subject is resumed. As Elizabeth is the "one
form of many names," Gloriana, Belphoebe, Britomart, Mercilla, so
"under feigned colours shading a true case" he deals with her rival.
Mary seems at one time the false Florimel, the creature of enchantment,
stirring up strife, and fought for by the foolish knights whom she
deceives, Blandamour and Paridell, the counterparts of Norfolk