occasion of these three knights severall adventures. For the Methode of a
Poet historicall is not such as of an Historiographer. For an
Historiographer discourseth of affaires orderly as they were done,
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
things forepast, and divining of things to come, maketh a pleasing analysis
of all. The beginning therefore of my historie, 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 feast twelve daies; uppon
which twelve severall dayes, the occasions of the twelve severall
adventures hapned, which being undertaken by XII severall knights, are in
these twelve books severally handled and discoursed.

The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented him
selfe a tall clownish younge man, who falling before the Queene of Faeries
desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might
not refuse: which was that hee might have the atchievement of any
adventure, which during that feast should happen; that being granted, he
rested him selfe on the fioore, unfit through his rusticitie for a better
place. Soone after entred a faire Ladie in mourning weedes, riding on a
white Asse, with a dwarfe behind her leading a warlike steed, that bore the
Armes of a knight, and his speare in the dwarfes hand. She falling before
the Queene of Faeries, complayned that her father and mother, an ancient
King and Queene, had bene by an huge dragon many yeers shut up in a brazen
Castle, who thence suffered them not to issew: and therefore besought the
Faery Queene to assigne her some one of her knights to take on him that
exployt. Presently that clownish person upstarting, desired that adventure;
whereat the Queene much wondering, and the Lady much gaine-saying, yet he
earnestly importuned his desire. In the end the Lady told him, that unlesse
that armour which she brought would serve him (that is, the armour of a