orie, or darke conceit, I have thought good, as well for avoyding of
jealous opinions and misconstructions, as also for your better light in
reading thereof, (being so, by you commanded) to discover unto you the
generall intention and meaning, which in the whole course thereof I have
fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes, or by-accidents
therein occasioned. The generall end therefore of all the booke, is to
fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.
Which for that I conceived shoulde be most plausible and pleasing, beeing
coloured with an historicall fiction, the which the most part of men
delight to read, rather for varietie of matter than for profit of the
ensample: I chose the historie of king Arthure, as most fit for the
excellencie of his person, beeing made famous by many mens former workes,
and also furthest from the danger of envie, and suspicion of present time.
In which I have followed all the antique poets historicall: first Homer,
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 excellent Poets, I laboure 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: which if I find to be
well accepted, I may be perhaps encoraged to frame the other part of
pollitike vertues in his person, after he came to bee king.

To some I know this Methode will seem displeasant, which had rather have
good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large,
as they use, then thus clowdily enwrapped in Allegoricall devises. But
such, mee seeme, should be satisfied with the use of these dayes, seeing
all things accounted by their showes, and nothing esteemed of, that is not
delightfull and pleasing to common sense. For this cause is Xenophon
preferred before Plato, for that the one, in the exquisite depth of his
judgement, formed a Commune-wealth, such as it should be; but the other, in
the perso