not for a letter which Spenser wrote to Raleigh and printed in
the beginning of his book. In it he tells us not only who these
two are, but also his whole great design. He writes this letter,
he says, "knowing how doubtfully all allegories may be
construed," and this book of his "being a continued allegory, or
dark conceit," he thought it good to explain. Having told how he
means to write of twenty-four knights who shall represent twenty-
four virtues, he goes on to tell us that the Faery Queen kept her
yearly feast twelve days, upon which twelve days the occasions of
the first twelve adventures happened, which, being undertaken by
twelve knights, are told of in these twelve books.

The first was this. At the beginning of the feast a tall,
clownish young man knelt before the Queen of the Fairies asking
as a boon that to him might be given the first adventure that
might befall. "That being granted he rested him on the floor,
unfit through his rusticity for a better place.

"Soon after entered a fair Lady in mourning weeds, riding on a
white ass with a Dwarf behind her leading a warlike steed, that
bore the arms of a knight, and his spear in the Dwarf's hand.

"She, falling before the Queen of Fairies, complained that her
Father and Mother, an ancient King and Queen had been by a huge
Dragon many years shut up in a brasen Castle, who thence suffered
them not to issue." And therefore she prayed the Fairy Queen to
give her a knight who would slay the Dragon.

Then the "clownish person" started up and demanded the adventure.
The Queen was astonished, the maid unwilling, yet he begged so