t; and of the lady whom he
made so famous, that her name became a consecrated word in the poetry of
the time, of Rosalind, the "Widow's Daughter of the Glen," whose refusal
of his suit, and preference for another, he lamented so bitterly, yet
would allow no one else to blame, we know absolutely nothing. She would
not be his wife; but apparently, he never ceased to love her through all
the chances and temptations, and possibly errors of his life, even
apparently in the midst of his passionate admiration of the lady whom,
long afterwards, he did marry. To her kindred and condition, various
clues have been suggested, only to provoke and disappoint us. Whatever
her condition, she was able to measure Spenser's powers: Gabriel Harvey
has preserved one of her compliments--"Gentle Mistress Rosalind once
reported him to have all the intelligences at commandment; and at
another, christened him her _Signior Pegaso_." But the unknown Rosalind
had given an impulse to the young poet's powers, and a colour to his
thoughts, and had enrolled Spenser in that band and order of
poets,--with one exception, not the greatest order,--to whom the
wonderful passion of love, in its heights and its depths, is the element
on which their imagination works, and out of which it moulds its most
beautiful and characteristic creations.

But in October, 1579, he emerges from obscurity. If we may trust the
correspondence between Gabriel Harvey and Spenser, which was published
at the time, Spenser was then in London.[22:1] It was the time of the
crisis of the Alencon courtship, while the Queen was playing fast and
loose with her Valois lover, whom she playfully called her frog; when
all about her, Burghley, Leicester, Sidney, and Walsingham, were
dismayed, both at the plan itself, and at her vacillations; and just
when the Puritan pamphleteer, who had given expression to the popular
disgust at a French marriage, especially at a connexion with the family
which had on its hands the blood of St. Bartholomew, was sentenced to
lose his right hand as a seditious libeller. Spenser had become
acquainted with Philip Sidney, and Sidney's literary and courtly
friends. He had been received into the household of Sidney's uncle, Lord
Leicester, and dates one of his letters from Leicester House. Among his
employments he had written, "_Stemmata Dudleiana_." He is doubting
whether or not to publish, "to utter," some of his poetical
compositions: he is doubting, and asks Har