"This is the 'fair maiden clad in mourning weed,' who, it may be remembered, was met, as related at the beginning of the preceding canto, by Timias and Serena. There, however, she was represented as attended only by a fool. What makes this episode especially interesting is the conjecture that has been thrown out, and which seems intrinsically probable, that the 'lady' is Spenser's own Rosalinde, by whom he had been, jilted, or at least rejected, more than a quarter of a century before. His unforgetting resentment is supposed to have taken this revenge."
So far with Mr. Upton and Mr. Craik we heartily concur as to the identity of Rosalinde and Mirabella; and feel confident that a perusal and comparison of the episode of Mirabella with the whole story of Rosalinde will leave every candid and intelligent reader no choice but to come to the same conclusion: We shall now collate the attributes assigned in common to those two impersonations in their maiden state, and note the correspondence.
Both are of humble birth,—Rosalinde being described in the "Shepherd's Calendar" as "the widow's daughter of the glen"; her low origin and present exalted position are frequently alluded to,—her beauty, her haughtiness, and love of liberty. Mirabella is thus described in Book VI. "Faëry Queen," Canto vii:—
"She was a lady of great dignity,
And lifted up to honorable place;
Famous through all the land of Faërie:
Though of mean parentage and kindred base,
Yet decked with wondrous gifts of Nature's grace."
"But she thereof grew proud and insolent,
And scorned them all that lore unto her meant."
"She was born free, not bound to any wight."
Of Rosalinde we hear in "Colin Clout" that her ambition is
"So high in thought as she herself in place."
And that she
"Loatheth each lowly thing with lofty eye."