The prolific hint of “E.K.” set the commentators at work,—­but hitherto without success.  The author of the life prefixed to Church’s edition conjectures Rose Linde,—­forsooth, because it appears from Fuller’s “Worthies,” that in the reign of Henry the Sixth—­only eight reigns too early for the birth of our rural beauty—­there was one John Linde, a resident in the County of Kent!  Not satisfied with this conjecture, Malone suggests that she may have been an Eliza Horden—­the z changed, according to Camden’s rules, into s, and the aspirate sunk.  Malone’s foundation for this theory is, that one Thomas Horden was a contemporary of John Linde, aforesaid, and resided in the same county!  Both these conjectures are absurd and unsupported by any collateral evidence.  To have given them the remotest air of probability, the critics should have proved some acquaintance or connection between the parties respectively, —­some courtship, or contiguity of residence, which might have brought the young people within the ordinary sphere of attraction.  Wrong as they were in their conclusions, the search of these commentators was in the right direction.  The anagram, “well-ordered,” will undoubtedly bewray the secret.  Let us try if we may not follow it with better success.

Rosalinde reads, anagrammatically, into Rose Daniel; for, according to Camden, “a letter may be doubled, or rejected, or contrariwise, if the sense fall aptly”; we thus get rid of the redundant e, and have a perfect anagram.  Now Spenser had an intimate and beloved friend and brother-poet, named Samuel Daniel, author of many tragedies and comedies, an eight-canto poem called “The Civil Wars of England,” “A Vision of Twelve Goddesses,” a prose history of England, and “Musa,” a defence of rhyme.  Spenser alludes to his poetic genius with high praise in his “Colin Clout.”  This Daniel had a sister named Rose, who was married in due time to a friend of her brother’s,—­not, indeed, to Spenser, but to a scholar, whose eccentricities have left such durable tracks behind them, that we can trace his mark through many passages of Spenser’s love complaints, otherwise unintelligible.  The supposition that Rose Daniel was Rosalinde satisfies every requisite, and presents a solution of the mystery; the anagram is perfect; the poet’s acquaintance with the brother naturally threw him into contact with the sister; while the circumstance of her marriage with another justifies the complaint of infidelity, and accounts for the “insurmountable barrier,” that is, a living husband.  Daniel was the early protege of the Pembroke family, as was Spenser of the house of Leicester.  The youthful poets must often have met in the company of their mutual friend, Sir Philip Sidney,—­for the Countess of Pembroke was the “Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother,” celebrated by Ben Jonson, and consequently niece, as Sir Philip was nephew, of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.  Rose and Edmund were thus thrown together under circumstances every way favorable to the development of love in a breast so susceptible as that of the “passionate shepherd.”