[Sidenote: THE FIRST BOOK]

Other books of _The Faery Queen_ are so similar in character to the
one just described that a canto from any one of them may be placed without
change in any other. In the first book, for example, the Redcross Knight
(Holiness) fares forth accompanied by the Lady Una (Religion). Straightway
they meet the enchanter Archimago, who separates them by fraud and magic.
The Redcross Knight, led to believe that his Una is false, comes, after
many adventures, to Queen Lucifera in the House of Pride; meanwhile Una
wanders alone amidst perils, and by her beauty subdues the lion and the
satyrs of the wood. The rest of the book recounts their adventures with
paynims, giants and monsters, with Error, Avarice, Falsehood and other
allegorical figures.

It is impossible to outline such a poem, for the simple reason that it has
no outlines. It is a phantasmagoria of beautiful and grotesque shapes, of
romance, morality and magic. Reading it is like watching cloud masses,
aloft and remote, in which the imagination pictures men, monsters,
landscapes, which change as we view them without cause or consequence.
Though _The Faery Queen_ is overfilled with adventure, it has no
action, as we ordinarily understand the term. Its continual motion is
without force or direction, like the vague motions of a dream.

[Sidenote: PLAN OF THE FAERY QUEEN]

What, then, was Spenser's object in writing _The Faery Queen_? His
professed object was to use poetry in the service of morality by portraying
the political and religious affairs of England as emblematic of a worldwide
conflict between good and evil. According to his philosophy (which, he
tells us, he borrowed from Aristotle) there were twelve chief virtues, and