avoyding of gealous opinions and misconstructions, as also for your
better light in reading thereof, (being so by you commanded,) to
discover unto you the general 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, being coloured with an
historicall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read,
rather for variety of matter then for profile of the ensample, I chose
the historye of King Arthure, 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 Æneas; 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. To some, I know, this methode will
seeme displeasaunt, which had rather have good discipline delivered
plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, then