The allegory was treated with respect for two centuries ; Milton thought "our sage and serious poet" a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas ; modern criticism has too often followed Hazlitt in commending the poem to readers with the assurance that the alle gory won't bite them. But to ignore the allegory is to ignore the informing purpose of the whole, without which the story would be a mere series of ill-joined episodes, and much of the imagery meaningless, some of it grotesque or even repulsive. The ethical, as distinct from the structural, value of the allegory must depend on the worth of the ideas it embodies, as its poetical value de pends on the imaginative force of their embodiment. Spenser was not an original nor a systematic thinker. His philosophy is a blend of Platonism refracted through Ficino, Aristotelianism of the scholastic tradition, and Christianity with a Calvinistic bias. And the elements do not perfectly combine. Thus the doctrine of love and beauty, by which Ficino thought to reconcile the love of woman with the love of God, this doctrine, brilliantly expounded in the first two Hymns, is fundamentally irreconcilable with the scheme of salvation through the atoning sacrifice of Christ which is expounded in the third Hymn. The poet was a sincere and militant Christian, but also a man sensitive to the allurements of the world and the flesh; he knew self-distrust, and weariness, and regret for evanescent youth, and is never so moving as when he writes out of such experiences or turns from this unstable life in longing for the eternal rest.
Of the romance itself, with its wealth of imagery and melody, there has never been but one opinion. Like all Spenser's work, it is highly imitative. He rifled romantic literature for incidents and situations. The descriptions in which he excels constantly recall works of art—picture, tapestry, pageant or masque. But he owed much also to real life ; he was recommended for his sheriffdom as "not unskilful or without experience in the wars"; and his journeys through the wild woods of Munster and his intercourse with soldiers like Grey and Norreys yielded many a hint for the background and characters of the F.Q. Its diction, archaic but not rustic, and rich in strange coinages and terms of chivalry, is in keeping with its remote and old-world air. Not less appropriate is the stanza which he invented, not by "ex tending" the ottava rima or the rhyme royal, but by adding to the linked quatrains which he had used in the S.C. an Alexandrine such as Ferrars had employed to tip his sestets. The elements
are not new ; the miracle lies in their combination. It is not a perfect stanza for narrative, nor indeed is Spenser a perfect story teller; but its amplitude fits the slow tempo of his thought, as he unrolls his leisurely pageants or ponders on time and change. Its power must not be judged by single stanzas, but by the cumu lative effect as stanza after stanza rolls in, each ninth wave break ing higher than the rest.
Spenser has not Chaucer's genial breadth, nor Milton's art, nor Wordsworth's vision; but in the purely poetic gifts he is inferior to Shakespeare alone. The "school of Spenser" was small and short-lived, quite eclipsed in the next generation by Jonson and Donne ; but in a wider sense all later English poets have been his scholars.
Beeston described Spenser to Aubrey as a little man, with short hair, little band and little cuffs—a description that fits the Pembroke College portrait better than the beruffled exquisite of the Dupplin portrait. These two portraits, whether genuine or not, do aptly illustrate the two sides of Spenser, scholar and Puritan on the one hand, courtier and man of affairs on the other; fundamentally a poet, sensitive and fastidious, yet responsive to the claim of affection or of honour. "Entire affection hateth nicer hands"; "No service loathesome to a gentle kind"; "The noblest mind the best contentment has"—in such lines we hear his authentic voice.