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 "Faëry 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 circumstances correspond with those ascribed to the lady by her worshipper, may we not most reasonably conclude that we have at length discovered the long-lost secret?
To begin with the beginning,—the "Amoretti." Here she is an Angel, in all moods and tenses, the "leaves," "lines," and "rhymes" are taught, that, "when they behold that Angel's blessed look," they shall "seek her to please alone." [15] In a subsequent sonnet, she is an:
"Angel come to lead frail minds to rest In chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound." [16]
Again, the poet denies that
"The glorious portrait of that Angel's face"
can be expressed by any art, by pen or pencil. [17]
Again, she is