. It was the
blossom of a richly composite culture. Its immediate models were
Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_, the first forty cantos of which were
published in 1515, and Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata_, printed in 1581.
Both of these were, in subject, romances of chivalry, the first based
upon the old Charlemagne epos--Orlando being identical with the hero of
the French _Chanson de Roland_: the second upon the history of the first
crusade, and the recovery of the Holy City from the Saracen. But in both
of them there was a splendor of diction and a wealth of coloring quite
unknown to the rude mediaeval romances. Ariosto and Tasso wrote with the
great epics of Homer and Vergil constantly in mind, and all about them
was the brilliant light of Italian art, in its early freshness and
power. The _Faerie Queene_, too, was a tale of knight-errantry. Its hero
was King Arthur, and its pages swarm with the familiar adventures and
figures of Gothic romance: distressed ladies and their champions,
combats with dragons and giants, enchanted castles, magic rings, charmed
wells, forest hermitages, etc. But side by side with these appear the
fictions of Greek mythology and the personified abstractions of
fashionable allegory. Knights, squires, wizards, hamadryads, satyrs, and
river gods, Idleness, Gluttony, and Superstition jostle each other in
Spenser's fairy land. Descents to the infernal shades, in the manner of
Homer and Vergil, alternate with descriptions of the Palace of Pride in
the manner of the _Romaunt of the Rose_. But Spenser's imagination was a
powerful spirit, and held all these diverse elements in solution. He
removed them to an ideal sphere "apart from place, withholding time,"
where they seem all alike equally real, the dateless conceptions of the
poet's dream.

The poem was to have been "a continued allegory or dark conceit," in
twelve books, the hero of each book representing one of the twelve moral
virtues. Only six books and the fragment of a seventh were written. By
way of complimenting his patrons and securing contemporary interest,
Spenser undertook to make his allegory a double one, personal and
historical, as well as moral or abstract. Thus Gloriana, the Queen of
Faery, stands not only for Glory but for Elizabeth, to whom the poem was
dedicated. Prince Arthur is Leicester, as well as Magnificence. Duessa
is Falsehood, but also Mary Queen of Scots. Grantorto is Philip II. of
Spain. Sir Artegal is Justice, but likewis