of "Angel" so sedulously applied by the poet to his beloved.
The Nagle family, according to heraldry, were divided into three
branches, distinguished by peculiarities of surname. The Southern
branch signed themselves "Nagle,"--the Meath or Midland branch,
"Nangle,"--while the Connaught or Western shoot rejoiced in the more
euphonious cognomen of _Costello_! Let the heralds account for these
variations; we take them as we find them. The letter N, as we are
informed, according to the genius of the Irish tongue, is nothing
more than a prefix, set, _euphoniae gratia_, before the radical name
itself, when commencing with a vowel. Thus, the N'Angles of Ireland
were the Angles whose heroic deeds are duly recorded in the lists of
the battle of Hastings. They went over to Ireland with Strongbow;
one branch assumed (can the heralds tell us why?) the name of
Costello;--another became N'Angles, and the Southern shoot dwarfed
down their heavenly origin into prosaic Nagle. The well-known
punning exclamation of Pope Gregory, on observing the fairness and
beauty of some English children,--"Non Angli, sed Angeli forent, si
essent Christiani,"--may have set the fervid brain of Spenser on fire,
and suggested the divine origin of her he loved. Between Elizabeth
de Angelis--the pun of Gregory--and Elizabeth de Angulo--the latter
being the derivation of heralds and lawyers--what poet could
hesitate a moment?

Our task is done. We think we have established our case. By anagram,
Elizabeth Nagle makes a perfect _Angel_; by heraldry and a
pontifical pun, the N'Angles of the County of Meath are _Angels_ in
indefeasible succession; Elizabeth belonged to the Red branch of her
family, and therefore must have resembled the royal Elizabeth; she
was brought up among the "crew of Saints" in the St. Leger family;
and, finally, her place of residence corresponds with that depicted
by the "passionate shepherd" as the home of his second mistress. We
think we have satisfied all the requirements of reasonable conviction,
and confidently await the verdict of that select few who may feel
interest in this purely literary investigation.

Guided by the rules of anagram here laid down and illustrated, some
future commentator, more deeply versed in the history and scandal of
the Elizabethan era, may be able to identify real personages with
all the fantastic characters introduced in the "Faery Queen."

[Footnote 1: See _Colin Clout's come home again_.]
[Footnote