Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/608

594 but of an impossible style of existence. It is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth as "The Most High, Migthtie, and Magnificent Empresse," and in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh he explains its plan. Following the example of Ariosto in his "Orlando," he endeavours to exalt worthy knighthood, by portraying Prince Arthur before he was king, under the "image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath devised, in "which is the purpose of these first twelve books." From the arguments of "Despair" to "The Red-Crosse Knight," we may take our specimen of the "Faerie Queen."