447 



exactness, with the allegorical descriptions, with which the un- 

 generous author of the Faerie Queen loves to persecute her 

 and her husband, and prosecute his own unmanly revenge. 

 The principal of those invidious attacks on her will be found 

 in the episode of Mirabella, with whom Rosalinde is identified 

 in the Faerie Queen, book vi. c. 6, st. 16, 17 ; and book vii. 

 c. 6, St. 27, &c., down to stanza the thirty-first of the eighth 

 canto; and again, with especial reference to her husband, in the 

 Faerie Queen, book i. c. 7, throughout which the character of 

 Orgoglio (" sib," or relative to the Carl Disdain of the seventh 

 canto of the sixth book), is given with much, though deserved, 

 acrimony. 



The person to whom Rose Daniel, or Rosalinde, was ac- 

 tually married, was the celebrated John Florio, the author of 

 several works of considerable merit, such as the New (or 

 Queen Anne's) World of Words, an Anglo- Italian Dictionary; 

 his First and Second Fruits, a translation into English of 

 Montaigne's Essays, &c., &c. He was, in the reign of Queen 

 Elizabeth, highly respected by the nobility, as a teacher of 

 languages ; and in the subsequent reign of James I. he was 

 appointed one of the tutors of Prince Henry, and Gentleman 

 of the Privy Chamber, reader of Italian, &c., to Anne of 

 Denmark, the royal consort. But he was a man of the 

 most capricious and irritable temper, ever at war with his 

 literary contemporaries, and the perpetual butt of their raillery 

 and ridicule, — particularly of the dramatic poets, to whom he 

 appears to have given the first offence, and by whom he was 

 mercilessly " staged" for his pedantry, affectation, and ug- 

 liness. 



It would be impossible here to state at length the several 

 proofs and details of those curious circumstances which Mr. 

 Halpin has brought forward from the remains of the contem- 

 porary literature and the discoveries of modern critics ; suflBce 

 it to say, that John Florio, the " Resolute" (the constant 

 prefix to his name, as subscribed by himself to all his prefaces, 



