of
Edmund Spenser, the friend of Sidney and his relatives. He was also
on the most friendly terms with Gabriel Harvey, and a warm admirer
(as his works attest) of the genius of Daniel. We have thus gathered
our _dramatis personae_, the parties most essentially interested in
Spenser's unlucky passion, into one familiar group.

Of Rose Daniel's marriage with the "Resolute John Florio" there is
no manner of question. It is recorded by Anthony a Wood in his
"Athenae Oxonienses," acknowledged by Samuel Daniel in the
commendatory verses prefixed to Florio's "World of Words," and she is
affectionately remembered in Florio's will as his "beloved wife, Rose."
[5] Thus, if not Spenser's Rosalinde, she was undoubtedly a
Rosalinde to John Florio.

We shall now proceed to gather some further particles of evidence,
to add their cumulative weight to the mass of slender probabilities
with which we are endeavoring to sustain our conjectures.

Spenser's Rosalinde had at least a smattering of the Italian. Samuel
Daniel 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 "Faery Queen" from that poem, and--without any public
acknowledgment that we can find trace of--appropriated them to
himself.[6] 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 "Faery 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 "Faery Queen," was led to
observe the striking coincidence, the absolute similarity of
character, between Spenser's Rosalinde and his Mirabella. "If the
'Faery Queen,'" quoth he, "is a moral allego