adventures
of Mirabella and Rosalinde to the sister of Samuel Daniel, the wife
of John Florio, we have given no unfaithful account of the first
fickle mistress of Edmund Spenser?--We shall next ascertain the
name and history of his wife from the internal evidence left behind
him in his works.

PART II.--SPENSER'S WIFE.

The second passion of our poet, having had birth

"In savage soyle, far from Parnasso Mount,"

is more barren of literary gossip and adventure, and may, therefore,
we trust, be compressed into narrow limits.

The chief evidence on which we shall have to rely in this case must
be of a similar nature with the former;--not that we shall have to
interpret allegories, but the true reading of an anagram; for we may
set out on our pursuit, assured, that, according to the poetical
alchemy of his age, Spenser did not fail to screen his second
_innamorata_ under the same "quintessential cloud of wit" as his
first; and that we shall find in his homage some _sobriquet_,
"the right ordering of which" (as in the former case) "will bewray
the verie name of his love and mistresse."

On this point, however, his biographies and biographers have
hitherto preserved absolute silence. They tell us he was married,
and had several children by his wife; but, of the name, the rank, or
the country of the lady they confess their ignorance. Todd informs us,
that he "married a person of very inferior rank to himself,"--
"a country lass";--and he quotes the "Faery Queen" to prove his
assertion:--

"For, certes, she was but a country lass."

It is true, those words occur in the passage cited by the
commentator from the "Faery Queen"; most probably they refer to the
person in dispute. But she was no more "a country lass," in the
ordinary acceptation of the phrase, than was Spenser himself (Clerk
of the Council of Munster) "a shepherd's boy." Had Mr. Todd
consulted that portion of our poet's works especially devoted to
record this passion, its progress and issue, he would have found she
was a "lady," whose rank was rather "disparaged" than otherwise by
"sorting" with Edmund Spenser, albeit his blood was noble:--

"To all those happy blessings which you have
With plenteous hand by Heaven upon you thrown,
This one disparagement they to you gave,
That you your love lent to so mean a one."
_Amoretti_. Sonnet lxvi.

Spenser devoted two entire poems expressly to this passion,-