Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/687

1858.] was an Italian scholar; for his whole system of versification is founded on that model. Spenser, too, was well acquainted with the language; for, long before any English version of Tasso's "Gerusalemme" had appeared, he had translated many passages which occur in the "Faëry Queen" from that poem, and—without any public acknowledgment that we can find trace of—appropriated them to himself. What more natural than that Rose should have shared her brother's pleasant study, and, in company with him and Spenser, accepted the tuition of John Florio?

The identity of Florio's wife and Rosalinde may be fairly inferred from some circumstances consequent upon the lady's marriage, and otherwise connected with her fortunes, which appear to be shadowed forth with great acrimony in the "Faëry Queen," where the Rosalinde of the "Shepherd's Calendar" appears before us again under the assumed name of Mirabella. Lest the ascription of these circumstances to particular parties may be imputed to prejudice or prepossession for a favorite theory, we shall state them on the authority of commentators and biographers who never even dreamed of the view of the case we are now endeavoring to establish.

The learned Upton, in his preface to the "Faëry Queen," was led to observe the striking coincidence, the absolute similarity of character, between Spenser's Rosalinde and his Mirabella. "If the 'Faëry Queen,'" quoth he, "is a moral allegory with historical allusions to our poet's times, one might be apt to think, that, in a poem written on so extensive a plan, the cruel Rosalinde would be in some way or other typically introduced; and methinks I see her plainly characterized in Mirabella. Perhaps, too, her expressions were the same that are given to Mirabella,—'the free lady,' 'she was born free, etc.

"We are now come," says Mr. G.L. Craik, by far the most acute and sagacious of all the commentators on Spenser, "to a very remarkable passage. Having thus disposed of Turpin, the poet suddenly addresses his readers, saying,—

"This is the 'fair maiden clad in mourning weed,' who, it may be remembered, was met, as related at the beginning of the preceding canto, by Timias and Serena. There, however, she was represented as attended only by a fool. What makes this episode especially interesting is the conjecture that has been thrown out, and which seems intrinsically probable, that the 'lady' is Spenser's own Rosalinde, by whom he had been, jilted, or at least rejected, more than a quarter of a century before. His unforgetting resentment is supposed to have taken this revenge."

So far with Mr. Upton and Mr. Craik we heartily concur as to the identity of Rosalinde and Mirabella; and feel confident that a perusal and comparison of the episode of Mirabella with the whole story of Rosalinde will leave every candid and intelligent reader no choice but to come to the same conclusion: We shall now collate the attributes assigned in common to those two impersonations in their maiden state, and note the correspondence.

Both are of humble birth,—Rosalinde being described in the "Shepherd's Calendar" as "the widow's daughter of the glen"; her low origin and present exalted position are frequently alluded to,—her beauty, her haughtiness, and love of liberty. Mirabella is thus described in Book VI. "Faëry Queen," Canto vii:—