But by occasion hereof, many other adventures are intermedled, but rather as accidents then intendments:  as the love of Britomart, the overthrow of Marinell, the misery of Florimell, the vertuousnes of Belphoebe, the lasciviousnes of Hellenora, and many the like.

Thus much, Sir, I have briefly overronne, to direct your understanding to the wel-head of the history, that from thence gathering the whole intention of the conceit, ye may, as in a handfull, gripe al the discourse, which otherwise may happily seeme tedious and confused.  So humbly craving the continuance of your honourable favour towards me, and th’ eternall establishment of your happines, I humbly take leave.

23.  January, 1589.  Yours most humbly affectionate, Ed. Spenser.

[Footnote A:  Edmund Spenser was born in London about 1552, and died there in 1599.  He was the greatest of the non-dramatic poets of the age of Elizabeth; and the “Faerie Queene” is the longest and most famous of his works.  The first three books were published in 1590, the second three in 1596; of the remaining six which he had planned some fragments were issued after his death.  The poem is a combination of allegory and romance; and in this prefatory letter to Raleigh the poet himself explains the plan of the work and its main allegorical signification.]

PREFACE TO THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

BY SIR WALTER RALEIGH (1614)[A]

How unfit and how unworthy a choice I have made of myself, to undertake a work of this mixture, mine own reason, though exceeding weak, hath sufficiently resolved me.  For had it been begotten then with my first dawn of day, when the light of common knowledge began to open itself to my younger years, and before any wound received either from Fortune or Time, I might yet well have doubted that the darkness of Age and Death would have covered over both It and Me, long before the performance.  For, beginning with the Creation, I have proceeded with the History of the World; and lastly purposed (some few sallies excepted) to confine my discourse with this our renowned Island of Great Britain.  I confess that it had better sorted with my disability, the better part of whose times are run out in other travails, to have set together (as I could) the unjointed and scattered frame of our English affairs, than of the universal in whom, had there been no other defect (who am all defect) than the time of the day, it were enough, the day of a tempestuous life, drawn on to the very evening ere I began.  But those inmost and soul-piercing wounds, which are ever aching while uncured; with the desire to satisfy those few friends, which I have tried by the fire of adversity, the former enforcing, the latter persuading; have caused me to make my thoughts legible, and myself the subject of every opinion, wise or weak.