s designed to enumerate and
illustrate the moral virtues which should characterize a noble or gentle
person--to present "the image of a brave knight perfected in the twelve
private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised." It appears that the
author designed twelve books, but he did not accomplish his purpose. The
poem, which he left unfinished, contains but six books or legends, each of
which relates the adventures of a knight who is the patron and
representative of a special virtue.

_Book_ I. gives the adventures of St. George, the Red-Cross Knight, by
whom is intended the virtue of Holiness.

_Book_ II., those of Sir Guyon, or Temperance.

_Book_ III., Britomartis, a lady-knight, or Chastity.

_Book_ IV., Cambel and Triamond, or Friendship.

_Book_ V., Sir Artegal, or Justice.

_Book_ VI., Sir Calydore, or Courtesy.

The perfect hero of the entire poem is King Arthur, chosen "as most fitte,
for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many men's former
workes, and also furthest from the daunger of envy and suspition of
present time."

It was manifestly thus, too, that the poet solved a difficult and delicate
problem: he pleased the queen by adopting this mythic hero, for who else
was worthy of her august hand?

And in the person of the faerie queene herself Spenser informs us: "I mean
_glory_ in my general intention, but in my particular, I conceive the most
excellent and glorious person of our sovereign, the _Queene_."

Did we depend upon the poem for an explanation of Spenser's design, we
should be left in the dark, for he intended to leave the origin and
connection of the adventures for the twelfth book, which was never
written; but he has given us his plan in the same preliminary letter to
Raleigh.

THE PLAN PROPOSED.--"The beginning of my history," he says, "should be in
the twelfth booke, which is the last; where I devise that the Faerie
Queene kept her Annual Feaste XII days; uppon which XII severall days the
occasions of the XII severall adventures hapned, which being undertaken by
XII severall knights, are in these XII books handled and discoursed."

First, a tall, clownish youth falls before the queen and desires a boon,
which she might not refuse, viz. the achievement of any adventure which
might present itself. Then appears a fair lady, habited in mourning, and
riding on an ass, while behind her comes a dwarf, leading a caparisoned
war-horse, upon which wa