-to wit,
the "Amoretti," describing its vicissitudes, and the "Epithalamion,
or Marriage Song," in which he celebrates its consummation. There
are many allusions to it also in the "Faery Queen" and "Colin
Clout's come home again"; and from these sources we propose to
supply the name, the lineage, and residence of the happy fair.

She was, undoubtedly, a person of rank and blood, residing in the
poet's vicinage, and is so described in many of the Sonnets. She is
constantly addressed as "a lady," enjoying the respect and the
elegancies, if not the luxuries, of her condition,--well-educated,
accomplished in the arts of design and embroidery,--at whose
father's house the poet was no infrequent visitor. Her residence, or
that of her family, could not have been far from Kilcolman Castle;
and was seated, most probably, on the banks of the Mulla, (Spenser's
favorite stream,) a tributary of the Blackwater, which empties into
the sea at Youghal. For she is seen for the first time in the "Faery
Queen" as the love of Colin Clout, (Spenser,) dancing among the Nymphs
and Graces,--herself a fourth Grace,--on a mountain-top, the description
of which exactly corresponds with all his other descriptions of his
beloved Mole,--a mountain which nearly overhangs his castle; [12] and,
undoubtedly, the bridesmaids and companions who attended her at the
hymeneal altar were the "Nymphs of Mulla," and,

"of the rivers, of the forest green,
And of the sea that neighbours to her near,"--

a localization which would fix her family mansion somewhere between
Kilcolman Castle and the prosperous seaport town of Youghal,--but
somewhat nearer to the former. This limits our inquiries within the
narrow range of the lands bordering the Mulla waters.

But our poet, we believe, did not stop with these ambiguous
indications of her birthplace and family; he had promised her to
immortalize the triumph of his passion, and to leave to all
posterity a monument of the "rare wonderment" of the lady's beauty.
[13] He had gone farther; and, in three several sonnets,[14] vowed
to eternize her name--"your glorious name in golden monument"--after
his own fashion, and to the best of his abilities. We have no right,
then, to doubt that he fulfilled his promise; and if we can fix upon
any distinctive appellation or epithet addressed to her, common to
the several poems which professedly reveal his passion, and solvable
into the name of a person whose residence and