as most fitte for the excellency of his person, being made
famous by many mens former workes, and also furthest from the
daunger of envy, and suspition of present time. In which I
have followed all the antique Poets historicall; first Homere,
who in the Persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a
good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his Ilias, the
other in his Odysseis: then Virgil, whose like intention was
to doe in the person of Aeneas: after him Ariosto comprised
them both in his Orlando: and lately Tasso dissevered them
againe, and formed both parts in two persons, namely that part
which they in Philosophy call Ethice, or vertues of a private
man, coloured in his Rinaldo; the other named Politice in his
Godfredo. By ensample of which excellente Poets, I labour to
pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a
brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues,
as Aristotle hath devised; the which is the purpose of these
first twelve bookes: which if I finde to be well accepted, I
may be perhaps encoraged to frame the other part of polliticke
vertues in his person, after that hee came to be king.

Then, after explaining that he meant the _Faery Queen_ "for glory in
general intention, but in particular" for Elizabeth, and his Faery Land
for her kingdom, he proceeds to explain, what the first three books
hardly explain, what the Faery Queen had to do with the structure of the
poem.

But, because the beginning of the whole worke seemeth abrupte,
and as depending upon other antecedents, it needs that ye know
the occasion of these three knights seuerall adventures. For
the Methode of a Poet historical is not such, as of an
Historiographer. For an Historiographer discourseth of
affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the
times as the actions; but a Poet thrusteth into the middest,
even where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the
thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh a
pleasing Analysis of all.

The beginning therefore of my history, if it were to be told
by an Historiographer should be the twelfth booke, which is
the last; where I devise that the Faery Queene kept her
Annuall feaste xii. dayes; uppon which xii. severall dayes,
the occasions of the xii. severall adv