The best example of this view of rhetoric is furnished by Stephen Hawes in his delectable educational allegory of the seven liberal arts which he calls The Pastime of Pleasure (1506).

Allegory in Mediaeval England III.

Popular error respecting the Indian character and historyRemarkable superstitionTheodoricA missionary choosing a wild flowerPiety and moneyA fiscal collapse in MichiganMission of Grand TraverseSimplicity of the school-girl's hopesSingular theory of the Indians respecting story-tellingOldest allegory on recordPolitical aspectsSeneca treatyMineralogyFarming and mission station on Lake Michigan.

Nowhere does Ascham advance the claims of allegory as cloaking moral truth under the guise of fiction.

"I knew his reason for employing Jerrold, because he made up a sort of allegory about a moth loving a star and trying to fly up to heaven and be near her, or something like that.

The Displacement of Allegory by Example Index of Names Part One The General Theory of Rhetoric and of Poetry Chapter I Introductory

The antient story of Prometheus, who concealed in his bosom the fire he had stolen, and afterwards had a vulture perpetually gnawing his liver, affords so apt an allegory for the effects of drinking spirituous liquors, that one should be induced to think the art of distillation, as well as some other chemical processes (such as calcining gold), had been known in times of great antiquity, and lost again.

It was plain that Samson's bull-strength was no allegory to them.

The poem is an allegory with the avowed moral purpose of fashioning "a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline."

But even here such personified abstractions as Langland's Fair-speech and Work-when-time-is, remind us less of the Fraunchise, Bel-amour, and Fals-semblaunt of the French courtly allegories than of Bunyan's Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and even of such Puritan names as Praise-God Barebones, and Zeal-of-the-land Busy.

All the fine thoughts and reflections, and all the abundance of poetical passages, scattered like jewels through the thick mist of the whole work, cannot compensate for its total want of interest; and we doubt whether many readers have ever worked their way through its innumerable obscure sayings and mystical allegories without feeling something of the truth of Voltaire's remark: "Tout genre est permis hors le genre ennuyeux.

Persons who had gone through the preliminary ceremonies of initiation were permitted at length to hear, though under strict obligation of secrecy, this ancient religion and cosmogonic doctrine, revealing the destination of man and the certainty of posthumous rewards and punishments, all disengaged from the corruptions of poets, as well as from the symbols and allegories under which they still remained buried in the eyes of the vulgar.

" "No, I do not know it, but I perceive that you are talking an allegory at me.

Swift is said to have exclaimed in his old age when he re-read The Tale of a Tub, and certainly the book is a marvel of constructive skill, all the more striking because it makes allegory out of history and consequently is denied that freedom of narrative so brilliantly employed in the Travels.