"Some people will say [...] that they cannot understand [the Faery Queen] on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them: they look at it as a child looks at a painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pikestaff."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (1818), p. 74
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Faerie_Queene
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The Faerie Queene
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