It is designed to enumerate and illustrate the moral virtues which should characterize a noble or gentle person--to present "the image of a brave knight perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised." It appears that the author designed twelve books, but he did not accomplish his purpose.

The poem, which he left unfinished, contains but six books or legends, each of which relates the adventures of a knight who is the patron and representative of a special virtue.
_Book_ I.gives the adventures of St.George, the Red-Cross Knight, by whom is intended the virtue of Holiness.
_Book_ II., those of Sir Guyon, or Temperance.
_Book_ III., Britomartis, a lady-knight, or Chastity.
_Book_ IV., Cambel and Triamond, or Friendship.
_Book_ V., Sir Artegal, or Justice.
_Book_ VI., Sir Calydore, or Courtesy.
The perfect hero of the entire poem is King Arthur, chosen "as most fitte, for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many men's former workes, and also furthest from the daunger of envy and suspition of present time." It was manifestly thus, too, that the poet solved a difficult and delicate problem: he pleased the queen by adopting this mythic hero, for who else was worthy of her august hand?
And in the person of the faerie queene herself Spenser informs us: "I mean _glory_ in my general intention, but in my particular, I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our sovereign, the _Queene_." Did we depend upon the poem for an explanation of Spenser's design, we should be left in the dark, for he intended to leave the origin and connection of the adventures for the twelfth book, which was never written; but he has given us his plan in the same preliminary letter to Raleigh.
THE PLAN PROPOSED.--"The beginning of my history," he says, "should be in the twelfth booke, which is the last; where I devise that the Faerie Queene kept her Annual Feaste XII days; uppon which XII severall days the occasions of the XII severall adventures hapned, which being undertaken by XII severall knights, are in these XII books handled and discoursed." First, a tall, clownish youth falls before the queen and desires a boon, which she might not refuse, viz.

the achievement of any adventure which might present itself.

Then appears a fair lady, habited in mourning, and riding on an ass, while behind her comes a dwarf, leading a caparisoned war-horse, upon which was the complete armor of a knight.

The lady falls before the queen and complains that her father and mother, an ancient king and queen, had, for many years, been shut up by a dragon in a brazen castle, and begs that one of the knights may be allowed to deliver them.
The young clown entreats that he may take this adventure, and notwithstanding the wonder and misgiving of all, the armor is found to fit him well, and when he had put it on, "he seemed the goodliest man in all the company, and was well liked by the lady, and eftsoones taking on him knighthood, and mounting on that strounge courser, he went forth with her on that adventure; where beginneth the First Booke." In a similar manner, other petitions are urged, and other adventures undertaken.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE HISTORY .-- The history in this poem lies directly upon the surface.