PLATONISM IN ENGLISH POETRY OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
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PREFACE
This essay was presented as a dissertation for the doctorate in Columbia University. It attempts to explain the nature of the influence of Platonism upon English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, exclusive of the drama. Its method is purely critical. It has not attempted to treat the subject from the standpoint of the individual poet, but has tried to interpret the whole body of English poetry of the period under survey as an integral output of the spiritual thought and life of the time.
In its interpretation of this body of poetry the essay has aimed to see Platonism in its true historical perspective, as it must have been understood by the poets, either as a system of philosophic thought held consciously in the mind, or as a more intimate possession of the spirit in its outlook upon life. The idea of Platonism which these poets had was that which Ficino had made known to Italy of the viiififteenth century, and from Italy to the rest of Europe. Ficino saw Plato through two more or less refracting media. To him Plato was the “divine Plato,” the importance of whose work lay in its subtle affinity for the forms of Christian thought. He thus Christianized Plato’s philosophy. But this body of thought was that peculiar product resulting from the study of Plato’s “Dialogues” in the light of what latter-day criticism has named Neo-platonism, or that new form of Platonic philosophy which is expounded in the “Enneads” of Plotinus. But more than this. Ficino endeavored to reform the practice of love by the application of the Platonic doctrine of love and beauty to the lover’s passion. From his “Commentarium in Convivium,” which he translated into Italian, originate the various discussions of love and beauty from the Platonic standpoint which were carried on in dialogues and manuals of court etiquette throughout the sixteenth century. In this essay, consequently, reference has been made to Ficino’s “Commentarium” on the points involved in the theory of love and beauty. The translations have been made directly from the Latin version of the commentary. On the more metaphysical side of Platonism the “Enneads” of Plotinus have ixbeen accepted as representative. The translation on page 77 is taken from Mr. Bigg’s “Neo-Platonism,” and those on pages 153, 154, 155 are from Thomas Taylor’s translation noted in the bibliography. In interpreting the “Enneads” I have accepted the explanation of his system by Mr. Whittaker in “The Neo-Platonists.” All the quotations from Plato’s “Dialogues” are from Jowett’s translation. In quoting from the poets the texts of the editions noted in the bibliography have been followed in details of spelling, punctuation, and the like.
In the preparation of the work hardly anything of a critical nature was found serviceable. In the notes to the works of the individual poets several detached references are to be gratefully mentioned, but no general appreciation of the part Platonism played in the work of the English poets was at hand. Mr. Fletcher’s article on the “Précieuses at the Court of Charles I,” in the second number of the “Journal of Comparative Literature,” appeared after this essay had gone to the printer.
I should like to acknowledge my thanks to Mr. W. H. Heck for his service of transcription in the British Museum Library and to Miss M. P. Conant for a similar kindness in research work in the Harvard College Library. xTo Professor George Edward Woodberry I am most deeply grateful for innumerable suggestions and invaluable advice. The work was undertaken at his suggestion, and throughout the past two years has progressed under his kindly criticism. But the help and inspiration which I have received from him antedate the inception of the essay, extending back to the earlier days of undergraduate life. The work is thus inseparably connected with the training in the study of literature which he has given, and his help in its completion is only an episode in a long series of kindnesses which he has been ever willing to show.
CONTENTS — CHAPTER I Ideals of Christian Virtues — I. HOLINESS — II. TEMPERANCE — III. CHASTITY
| CHAPTER I | |
| PAGE | |
| Ideals of Christian Virtues | 1 |
| I. Holiness | 1 |
| II. Temperance | 12 |
| III. Chastity | 30 |
| CHAPTER II | |
| Theory of Love | 67 |
| I. Heavenly Love | 67 |
| II. Earthly Love | 104 |
| CHAPTER III | |
| God and the Soul | 167 |
| I. Nature of God | 167 |
| II. Nature of the Soul | 186 |
| III. Eternity of the Soul and of Matter | 202 |
| Bibliography | 223 |
| Index | 229 |
The fundamental doctrine of Platonism as it was understood throughout the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the reality of a heavenly beauty known in and by the soul, as contrasted with an earthly beauty known only to the sense. In this the Christian philosophic mind found the basis for its conception of holiness. Christian discipline and Platonic idealism blended in the “Faerie Queene” in the legend of the Red Cross Knight.
The underlying idea taught by Spenser in the first book is that holiness is a state of the soul in which wisdom or truth can be seen and loved in and for its beauty. In the allegorical scheme of his work Una stands for the Platonic 2wisdom, σοφία, or ἀρετή, and a sight of her in her native beauty constitutes the happy ending of the many struggles and perplexities that the Red Cross Knight experiences in his pursuit of holiness. The identification of Una with the Platonic idea of truth or wisdom is not merely a matter of inference left for the reader to draw; for Spenser himself is careful to inform us of the true nature of the part she plays in his allegory. Una is presented as teaching the satyrs truth and “trew sacred lore.” (I. vi. 19; I. vi. 30.) When the lion, amazed at her sight, forgets his fierceness, Spenser comments:
When Una summons Arthur to the rescue of the Red Cross Knight from the Giant and the Dragon, Spenser opens his canto with a reflection on the guiding power of grace and truth amid the many perils of human life:
Here Arthur is meant by grace and Una by truth. In accordance with the same conception of Una’s nature Satyrane is made to wonder
Furthermore, she is represented as guiding the Red Cross Knight to Fidelia’s school, where he is to taste her “heavenly learning,” to hear the wisdom of her divine words, and to learn “celestiall discipline.” (I. x. 18.) In making these comments and in thus directing the course of the action of his poem Spenser presents in Una the personification of truth or wisdom.
But he does more than this; he presents her not only as wisdom, but as true beauty. Spenser is so thoroughly convinced of the truth of that fundamental idea of Platonic ethics, that truth and beauty are identical, that he shows their union in the character of Una, 4in whom, as her name signifies, they are one. Plato had taught that the highest beauty which the soul can know is wisdom, which, though invisible to sight, would inflame the hearts of men in an unwonted degree could there be a visible image of her. In his “Phædrus” he had stated that “sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her.” (250.) Convinced, as Spenser was, of the spiritual nature of the beauty of wisdom, he carefully avoids dwelling upon any detail of Una’s physical beauty. The poetic form of allegory, through which his ideas were to be conveyed, required the personification of truth, and the romantic character of chivalry demanded that his Knight should have a lady to protect. The progress of the action of the poem, moreover, made necessary some reference to the details of Una’s form and feature. (Cf. I. iii. 4–6; vi. 9.) But in no instance where the physical form of Una is brought to notice is there any trace of the poet’s desire to concentrate attention upon her physical charms. In this respect Una 5stands distinctly apart from all his other heroines, and especially Belphœbe. And yet Spenser has taken the greatest care to show that the source of Una’s influence over those that come into her presence lies in the power exerted by her beauty; but this is the beauty of her whole nature, a penetrating radiance of light revealing the soul that is truly wise. Indeed, when Spenser has the best of opportunities to describe Una, after she has laid aside the black stole that hides her features, he contents himself with a few lines, testifying only to their radiant brilliancy:
In other instances he directs our attention to the power which the mere sight of her has upon the beholder. Her beauty can tame the raging lion and turn a ravenous beast into a strong body-guard who finds his duty in the light of her fair eyes:
The wild-wood gods stand astonished at her beauty, and in their wonder pity her desolate condition. (I. vi. 9–12.) Old Sylvanus is smitten by a sight of her. In her presence he doubts the purity of his own Dryope’s fairness; sometimes he thinks her Venus, but then on further reflection he recalls that Venus never had so sober mood; her image calls to mind—
To behold her lovely face the wood nymphs flock about and when they have seen it, they flee away in envious fear, lest the contrast of 7its beauty may disgrace their own. (I. vi. 18.)
By these dramatic touches Spenser very skilfully suggests to his reader the high nature of Una’s beauty. It has a power to win its way upon the brute creation, and it has a severity and radiance that set it off from the beauty of physical form possessed by the wood nymphs and even by the great goddess of love, Venus.
The most important consideration that bears upon the question of Una’s beauty is found in the method which Spenser has used to indicate how the Red Cross Knight attains to a knowledge of it. One reason why the people of the wood, the nymphs, the fauns, and the satyrs, were permitted to see the celestial beauty of Una unveiled lay in the fact that through their experiences a means was provided by the poet to quicken the imagination into a sense of its pure nature. But the Knight, though he had journeyed with her throughout a great portion of her “wearie journey,” had never been able to see her face in its native splendor, hidden, as it had always been, from his sight by the black veil which Una wore. The deep conceit which Spenser here uses points in the direction of Platonism; for there it 8was taught that wisdom could be seen only by the soul. This is a fundamental truth, present everywhere in Plato, in the vision of beauty that rises before the mind at the end of the dialectic of the “Symposium,” in the species of divine fury that accompanies the recollection of the ideal world in the presence of a beautiful object, as analyzed in the “Phædrus,” and in the “Hymn of the Dialectic” in the “Republic” by which the soul rises to a sight of the good. (VII. 532.) In the “Phædo” the function of philosophy is explained to lie in the exercise by the soul of this power of spiritual contemplation of true existence. (82, 83.) In Spenser this conception is further illustrated by the part which the schooling, received by the Red Cross Knight on the Mount of Contemplation, played in the perfection of his mental vision. Up to the time when the Knight comes to the Mount he is, as the aged sire says, a “man of earth,” and his spirit needs to be purified of all the grossness of sense. (I. x. 52.) When this has been accomplished, the Knight is prepared to
9While on this Mount he is initiated into a knowledge of the glories of the Heavenly Jerusalem, and through this experience he is made aware of the relative insignificance of that beauty which he had thought the greatest to be known on earth. He thus says to the aged man, Heavenly Contemplation, who has revealed this vision to him:
With his soul filled with the radiance of this vision of beauty, his eyes dazed—
the Red Cross Knight descends from the Mount; and when after the completion of his labors he sees Una on the day of her betrothal, he wonders 10at a beauty in her which he has never before seen. Una has now laid aside her black veil, and shines upon him in the native undimmed splendor of truth.
The contribution of Platonism to the formation of the ideal of holiness can now be easily recognized. The discipline of the Red Cross Knight in the House of Holiness is twofold. In the practice of the Christian graces—faith, hope, and charity—the Knight is perfected in the way of the righteous life. He is a penitent seeking to cleanse his soul of the infection of sin. On the Mount of Heavenly Contemplation he exercises his soul in the contemplative vision of the eternal world. But the emphasis laid by Platonism upon the loveliness of that wisdom which is the object of contemplation results in quickening the imagination 11and in stirring the soul to realize the principle in love. This is the exact nature of the experience of the Red Cross Knight at the end of his journey. On the Mount of Heavenly Contemplation he has a desire to remain in the peaceful contemplation of heaven:
But the aged sire, Heavenly Contemplation, reminds him of his duty to free Una’s parents from the dragon. (I. x. 63.) Obedient but still purposing to return to the contemplative life (I. x. 64.), the Knight descends; and in the performance of his duty he gains the reward that the contemplative life brings. “But he,” says Plato, “whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or any bodily form which is the expression of divine beauty.” (“Phædrus,” 251.) Thus it is that the Red Cross Knight
12With that sight comes the one joy of his life after the many struggles experienced in the perfection of his soul in holiness.
The spiritual welfare of the soul was the prime object of importance to the Christian. Through the power of its doctrine of heavenly beauty Platonism had entered into the conception of this life considered in its heavenward aspect. It remained to show how it could explain the right manner of conduct for the soul in the presence of those strong passions which were felt as the disturbing elements of its inner welfare. In the Platonic system of morality there was a conception of temperance, σωφροσύνη, based upon an analysis of the soul sufficiently comprehensive to cover the entire scope of its activities; in fact, temperance was there conceived as the necessary condition for the presence of any virtue in the soul. The vitality of this teaching in English poetry is found in the second book of Spenser’s 13“Faerie Queene,” celebrating the exploits of the knight Guyon,
The adventures of Guyon, through the discipline of which he perfects himself in temperance, fall into two distinct groups. Up to the sixth book the conflicts in which he is concerned are those calculated to try his mastery of the angry impulses of his nature. After the sixth book his struggles record his proficiency in governing the sensual desires of appetite. This division is made in accordance with the analysis of the soul on which Plato bases his doctrine of temperance. Within the soul are three distinct principles,—one rational and two irrational. The irrational principles are, first, the irascible impulse of spirit (θυμός) with which a man is angry and, second, the appetitive instinct the workings of which are manifested in all the sensual gratifications of the body, and in the love of wealth. The rational principle is that of reason by which a man learns truth. (“Republic,” IX. 580, 581.) Against this one rational principle the two irrational impulses are constantly insurgent, and temperance is that harmony 14or order resulting in the soul when the rational principle rules and the two irrational principles are obedient to its sovereignty. “And would you not say,” asks Socrates, “that he is temperate who has these same elements in friendly harmony, in whom the one ruling principle of reason, and the two subject ones of spirit and desire are equally agreed that reason ought to rule, and do not rebel?” (“Republic,” IV. 442.)
The rule of right reason in Guyon over his angry impulses is recorded in three instances; in each case the anger is aroused under varying conditions. The opening episode of the book presents Guyon checking the impetuous fury of his wrath when he learns that it has been aroused by a false presentation of the facts. Archimago, the deceitful enemy of truth, related to Guyon how the Red Cross Knight had violated the purity of a maiden; and the pretended maiden herself became a party to the lie. (II. i. 10, 11, 17.) When Guyon heard of this outrage he hastened to avenge the wrong.
15And yet he wondered how the Red Cross Knight could have done such a deed. He knew that he was a knight of honor and had won glory in his defence of Una. (II. i. 19.) He was quick, then, to restrain himself when about to charge upon the accused Knight, for on his shield he recognized the cross of his Lord. When he was on the point of clashing with his enemy, he
After an apology and an exchange of knightly courtesies with the Red Cross Knight he was able to
The second encounter of Guyon with the forces of wrath is the struggle with Furor and his mother Occasion. (II. iv. 3–36.) He has now to try his strength in conquering wrath when it has an occasion to be aroused. The power with which he strives is described as a fury of great might, but so ill-governed by 16reason that in its blind passion its force is spent to no purpose.
Guyon struggles with this madman and finally, after he has quieted the reviling tongue of Occasion, who urges her son, Furor, on to the conflict, he binds him with iron chains.
The third trial of Guyon’s reason is by a species of wrath so wilfully furious that it 17runs to seek an occasion for a quarrel, and finds no rest until it has succeeded. This type of irascible impulse is portrayed in Pyrochles. He delights in deeds of daring might, and in blood and spoil. (II. iv. 42.) His squire, Atin by name, acts as his forerunner to seek an occasion for his lord’s furious delight. (II. iv. 43.) But Guyon masters himself both in his refusal to fight for no good reason, and in his behavior when forced against his wishes to a conflict with Pyrochles. Guyon bids Atin tell his master that he, Guyon, has bound Occasion, and the Palmer, who is the rational element of Guyon personified, lectures the squire on the folly of wilful anger.
Even when Guyon is compelled by Pyrochles to the fight, the Knight does not give way to unrestrained wrath, but ever tempers his passion 18with reason. In the conflict Pyrochles thundered blows:
When at last Guyon has his foe at his feet, he spares his life, so firmly he holds his passion in check.
Thus far Guyon’s life has exemplified the rule of reason over the irrational element of wrath; the remaining episodes of his life centre about the struggle of the irrational element of appetite. In this his soul is tried in three various forms of sensual desire. In Phædria the first form is typified. She represents the light gaieties of frivolous mirth and wantonness which the courteous nature of Guyon may suffer to play until they pass the bounds of modesty. (II. vi. 21.) When, however, she tried to win his heart from warlike enterprise into dissolute delights of sense, Guyon
The second trial of Guyon’s temperance comes in the House of Mammon, where he triumphs over sensual desire in the form of covetousness. Mammon offers him mountains of gold, if he will but serve him (II. vii. 9.); he tries to induce him to accept by saying that money is the one necessity to supply all the wants of man. (II. vii. 11.) But Guyon answers:
When Mammon urges him to seat himself on the silver stool in the Garden of Proserpina, to rest awhile and eat of the golden fruit of the trees,—
Guyon
The culminating trial of the Knight’s temperance is made in Acrasia’s Bower of Bliss. Acrasia typifies that form of beauty that allures the senses with pleasure, but ruins the soul with its poisonous delight. (II. i. 52, 53.) The only fear that she and the inmates of her bower have is
During the passage to this place of delight, and while he was within its precincts, Guyon was able to withstand every assault of sensual desire upon his soul. When the Palmer, speaking as reason dictated, told him that the piteous cry of a woman in distress was only a deceitful ruse to win him to harm—
Again, when Guyon’s senses are “softly tickled” by the rare melody of the mermaids, as it mingled 21with the strange harmony of the rolling sea, he bids the boatman row easily.
Even when Guyon began to lessen his pace at the sight of the fair maidens sporting in the lake, which kindled signs of lust in his countenance, his reason was able to resist.
He has now become so strong that he can perform the great object of his adventures, the destruction of the Bower of Bliss and the capture of the enchantress, Acrasia. (II. xii. 83, 84.)
So powerful is the hold on Spenser’s mind of this Platonic conception of the nature of the struggle in the soul striving to be temperate that it colors even the Aristotelean doctrine of the mean which is worked out in the episode of Medina’s castle. (II. ii. 13 et seq.) According to Aristotle temperance is a mean between 22the excess and defect of pleasure. (“Nich. Ethics,” III, 10.) In Spenser, Medina is the mean; her two sisters, Elissa and Perissa, are the defect and excess respectively. (II. ii. 35, 36.) Yet Spenser has colored the character of each in accordance with the Platonic division of the soul. The three sisters are daughters of one sire by three different mothers; that is, they are the three principles of the soul (the sire); namely, right reason (Medina), wrath or spirit (Elissa), and sensual desire (Perissa). Thus Spenser describes Elissa:
and Perissa
So, too, in the description of the lovers of each, the presence of the two irrational principles is felt. In Hudibras, the devoted Knight of Elissa—
the angry impulse of the soul is reflected; while in Sans Loy, the lover of Perissa, who had attempted to violate the purity of Una,—
it is apparent that the appetitive element of the soul is figured. Temperance, then, according to Spenser, is not the golden mean between the excess and defect of pleasure, but between two disturbing passions.
This struggle between the rational principle and the irrational elements in the soul does not, however, constitute temperance. That virtue, or rather that condition of all virtue, is the harmony and order resulting in the soul after reason has quieted the disturbing passions, and is conceived by Plato as its very health or 24beauty. “‘Healthy,’ as I conceive,” says Socrates, “is the name which is given to the regular order of the body, whence comes health and every other bodily excellence.... And ‘lawful’ and ‘law’ are the names which are given to the regular order and action of the soul, and these make men lawful and orderly:—and so we have temperance and justice.” (“Gorgias,” 504.) The fruition of this idea in Spenser’s mind is noticeable in his manner of speaking about temperance throughout his poem. Amavia had been able to win her husband back to the ways of purity through wise handling and “faire governaunce.” (II. i. 54.) The Red Cross Knight mentions the “goodly governaunce” of Guyon’s life. (II. i. 29.) Spenser comments in an introductory stanza on the Knight’s demeanor in pleasures and pains:
The Knight and the Palmer move on in their path of progress “in this faire wize,” that is, in the ways of temperance. (II. i. 34.) When Archimago meets Guyon, he meets
The feeling of order is conveyed through the movements of Guyon’s charger. The Palmer
Medina, when she welcomes Guyon to her castle, meets him
The clearest explanation, however, of Spenser’s conception of temperance as the condition of the soul’s excellence in the body is given in his reflection at the opening of the eleventh book of the second canto, which records the repulse of the bodily senses from the dwelling-place of Alma, or the soul. No war is so fierce as that of the passions with the soul.
After this examination of Spenser’s ideals of holiness and temperance, it is clear why Platonism as a system of ethics is absent in the remaining books of the “Faerie Queene.” Spenser’s avowed aim in his poem was “to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.” Since he conceives of life as a constant warfare with inward and outward foes, his method of presenting his thought is to send each virtue on a journey during which it is to perfect itself by overcoming the vices to whose assaults it is especially liable. This plan is carefully followed in the first two books. The allegorical scheme is unbroken; the personages encountered by the Knights are objectified states of their own spiritual consciousness. In the remaining books, however, the allegorical scheme has well-nigh broken down; and the poetic method is that of the romantic epic of adventure in the manner of Ariosto. This change was due very largely to the fact that after Spenser had completed his first two books he had exhausted the ethical teachings of 27Plato; and when he went on to his remaining books, he passed out of the sphere of virtue as taught by Plato into an essentially different realm of thought in which the graces of courtly accomplishment were dignified as virtues. He tried to treat these later virtues of chastity, friendship, justice, courtesy, and constancy as if they were coördinate with the virtues of holiness and temperance. But they fall into a distinct class by themselves. They are the ideals of conduct to be followed when man is acting in his purely social capacity as a member of society. They may be dignified as virtues, but can never be coördinate with the Platonic conception of virtue, which conceives of it not as an outward act, but as the very health of the soul when realizing, unhampered by any disturbing influences, its native impulses toward the good.
The difference between these two conceptions is strikingly illustrated by a comparison of Spenser’s idea of justice with the Platonic notion. According to the English poet, justice is purely retributive, a dispensing of reward and punishment. The education of the Knight of Justice, Arthegal, by Astræa, is thus described:
In Plato, on the other hand, justice is the same thing as temperance, an inward state of the soul and the condition of any virtue. “But,” says Socrates, “in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others,—he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles within him ... and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act ... always thinking and calling that which preserves and cöoperates with this harmonious condition, just and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any 29time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance.” (“Republic,” IV. 443.) Spenser did not attempt to incorporate this idea into his notion of justice; he had already exhausted it in his second book, in his explanation of temperance. Nothing was left for him to do but to shift his mind from a conception of virtue as one, to an inferior notion of virtue as a manifold of personal graces. But in thus changing his idea, he destroyed the unity of his work. In his first two books he had explained how the soul could perfect itself in the full scope of its powers; and in doing this he had taught the Platonic doctrines of a heavenly beauty and of temperance as the condition of virtue in the soul. Here lay the basic idea of his conception of a gentleman.
This idea, however, is not felt as the informing spirit of his books on courtesy and on friendship, but appears only in scattered reflections. In the later books the inferior conception of 30virtue is the controlling idea, and Spenser has failed to harmonize it with his earlier and finer one.
Although Platonism as a system of ethical philosophy determined the structural unity of the first two books of the “Faerie Queene” and as a system ceases to be felt in the construction of the later books, the purity of its ethical teaching is present throughout the entire work. The truths of Platonism were a strong influence in moulding an ideal of noble love. The cardinal doctrine of this ethical philosophy was that true beauty is to be found by the soul only in moral ideas. This conviction, which was so powerful in ennobling the Christian conception of holiness, was carried over into the realm of man’s social relations, and through the genius of Spenser made to dignify the conception of human love, and to inform with a profound spiritual truth the idea of chastity in its broadest signification as the purity of the soul.
The influence of the ethical conception of beauty upon the subject of romantic love is 31found in the work of Spenser. Although Spenser’s mind had a strong bent toward philosophy, so that it could interpret the very spirit of Plato’s conception of wisdom and temperance, it was still a mind in which the genius of the poet was always uppermost. It thus resulted that in him the teaching of the beauty of moral ideas came to fruition in ennobling the conception of human life by an appreciation of the true beauty of woman’s inner nature, her womanhood, and by a conception of love that placed its source in the reverent adoration of this spiritual beauty.
The exposition of the true inward beauty of woman is found in the “Epithalamion” and in a minor episode of the “Faerie Queene.” In the account of the dialectic, by which the lover gains a sight of absolute beauty, Plato has stated that at one stage the lover will see that beauty of mind surpasses beauty of outward form. Plato says, “In the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of outward form.” (“Symposium,” 210.) This idea lies at the basis of Spenser’s praise of beauty in the “Epithalamion.” In his marriage hymn he 32dwells in exuberant Renaissance fashion upon the physical perfections of the bride, each detail an object of delight to the senses. The sight of such beauty amazes the beholders. But after this is done, Spenser draws attention to the truth that, although these perfections that are visible to the eye may daze the mind, there is a higher beauty of soul which no eye can see. His admiration for the bride’s beauty is then caught up into a more lofty pitch and blended with his love of her moral qualities.
In the “Faerie Queene” there is a less elaborate example of this same appreciation of the inward, unseen beauty of the soul. The contrast is set up between the lively portrait of the Faerie Queene on Guyon’s shield and the actual beauty of her person, and then extended to a comparison of this with the beauty of her mind. Arthur has asked Guyon who is the original of the portrait he bears on his shield and has chanced to notice its great liveliness. Guyon 34does not answer directly, but breaks out into praise of the Queen’s beauty. If a mere likeness appeals so strongly to Arthur, what must he think when he beholds the glorious original; and though this is fair, the beauty of her mind, if he but knew it, would arouse great wonder and pour infinite desire into his soul.
In the vision of this inward world of beauty in woman’s mind, so Spenser teaches, begins the passion of love. In the “Phædrus” Plato has analyzed it as a divine fury, and in his account he emphasizes the feeling of reverence with which the lover gazes upon the beauty of the beloved, seeing in it the idea of pure beauty which his soul has beheld in its prenatal existence. “But he,” says Plato, “whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator 35of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or any bodily form which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god.” (“Phædrus,” 251.) The habit of contemplating the beauty of the beloved in reverent fear is characteristic of the love which Arthegal feels for Britomart. So intimately acquainted was Spenser with Plato that he caught the spirit of his worship of beauty. Disguised as Britomart, the virgin Knight of Chastity, was, in her panoply of armor, her beauty was not the object of constant sight. On three different occasions, however, when by the removal of some portion of it her features shine forth, the impression made by her beauty is that of reverent adoration. When Arthegal chances thus to behold her, the sight is so awful that he hesitates to press his suit for her love, and only after some time does he venture to win her affections.
36One occasion on which the spectators catch a glimpse of Britomart’s beauty occurs when she unlaces her helmet. The sight of her golden locks strikes all with amazement; and though there is a mingled feeling of surprise and curiosity, due to the preconceived notion of her sex, the feeling of amazement and adoration of her beauty is expressly stated as consequent upon this revelation.
37A second time when her beauty is revealed in greater fulness, the feeling of terror and amazement inspired is especially emphasized. The spectators are described as standing in mute astonishment, in worship of her divine beauty.
In the fight between Britomart and Arthegal the sword of the latter cuts away a part of her ventayle, discovering to his view her beautiful face. As he is about to raise his arm for a second blow, he is benumbed with fear, and, falling on his knee, he gazes upon her beauty with a true religious feeling of wonder.
With this vision of the resplendent beauty of chastity begins Arthegal’s love for Britomart. It has been pointed out by critics that the love episode between Britomart and Arthegal was a suggestion—so far as plot goes—which Spenser found in Ariosto’s account of the love of Ruggiero and Bradamante in the “Orlando Furioso.”[1] But the great difference in the 39poets appears in the contrast of the passionate love of beauty revealed in Spenser’s poem with the superficial delights of love as explained in Ariosto. As has already been seen, Platonism as a system of ethics disappears from the “Faerie Queene” after the second book; but so deeply had Spenser been impressed with the worship of beauty characteristic of Plato’s manner, that when he came to recount the history of the passion of love, in his Knight of Justice, for his heroine, Chastity, he centred attention upon the feeling of awe and reverence inspired by the beauty of chastity, and intimated the sobering effect of this vision upon the behavior of the lover. He found nothing like this in the “Orlando Furioso.” The love episode in Ariosto is thus briefly described:
Here is only the note of delight. In Spenser, however, the dread awe aroused by Britomart’s beauty restrains the passionate utterance of the lover, and only after some time has elapsed, during which the two have rested from the fatigues of their combat, does Arthegal dare to make suit to Britomart’s affections,—
The training afforded by the philosophy of Plato in the realization of the true moral value of beauty has a somewhat different result in the work of Milton. Owing to his preconceived notion of the moral inferiority of woman, Milton does not permit his mind to dwell upon the vision of beauty to be seen in her, as Spenser’s chivalric impulses have led him to do; but in Milton the flowering of Platonic thought is found in a certain conception of chastity, which teaches that love begins and ends only in the soul. And yet the deep sense of beauty which 41he has, asserts itself at times even in spite of his prejudices; consequently in his work there is a wavering of mind between the conviction that woman’s beauty cannot be the expression of the beauty of a moral order, since she is the moral inferior of man, and the more chivalric notion that in her beauty lies the inspiration of the soul to know goodness.
In Milton the love of beauty is the conscious activity of a contemplative mind rather than the pouring out of the soul’s passion in reverent adoration. About Spenser beauty lies as a golden splendour streaming from the hidden world of the moral nature; whenever it shines upon the lover’s sight, it at once moves him to silent adoration. In Milton, on the other hand, beauty is an idea to be known in the soul by him who seeks for it among the beautiful objects of the world of sense; its pursuit is an intellectual quest of a philosophic mind. Writing to his friend, Charles Diodati, he says: “What besides God has resolved concerning me I know not, but this at least: He has instilled into me, at all events, a vehement love of the beautiful. Not with so much labour as the fables have it, is Ceres said to have sought her 42daughter Proserpine, as I am wont day and night to seek for this idea of the beautiful (hanc τοῦ καλοῦ ἰδέaν) through all the forms and faces of things (for many are the shapes of things divine), and to follow it leading me on as with certain assured traces.”[2]
The expression of this love of beauty is found in Milton’s Satan. Abiding beneath the wreck of his moral character, in spite of the perversion of a malicious will, there remain in Satan a deep sense of beauty and a contemplative love of it for its moral quality. In a speech addressed to Christ in “Paradise Regained” Satan himself confesses this one conviction of his soul. The contemplative love of the beauty of goodness and virtue is the very condition of his soul’s existence. Thus he says:
The honesty of this confession is not impugned by Christ, although he exposes the hollow insincerity 43of the rest of Satan’s speech in which these lines occur.
And Satan lives up to his confession. The power of moral goodness to hold his mind’s thought by its beauty is seen in his behavior in the Garden of Eden. He had reached this place in pursuit of his revenge to ruin the happy pair. As he gazes upon the beauties of the garden,
he at last catches sight of Adam and Eve, in whom
On these he stands gazing until evening, and at last breaks out into an expression of the love which this vision of their beauty has aroused in him:
At another time Satan is occupied in contemplating beauty, but it is the beauty he sees in Eve alone. Milton’s treatment of the episode is characteristic of that wavering of his mind between the two impulses—one to worship beauty, and the other to teach that woman is the inferior of man. The later conviction is expressed in Adam’s words to Raphael:
Thus Eve confesses that in Adam’s beauty, and not in the image of her own soft feminine grace, does she
45Yet in the presence of Eve’s beauty Satan stands lost in contemplation, made for one moment good.
Even here the idea of the inferiority of Eve’s beauty enters into the description; but a few lines below it makes itself even more strongly felt. Because her beauty is without its power to inspire awe and terror, Satan reasons that she is the proper one to tempt.
In this contemplative love of beauty there is present as a noticeable element the consciousness in the poet’s mind of the moral significance of beauty. In Spenser’s description of the first meeting of Calidore with Pastorella, however, the contemplative love of beauty so absorbs the power of the soul that the lover and the poet are oblivious to every other thought and silently gaze upon the beauty of form present to their eyes. Calidore sees Pastorella on a little hillock surrounded by maidens, she lovelier than all.
So Satan stands before the happy pair in Paradise. His will toward them is far otherwise than Calidore’s toward Pastorella; but his contemplative love of their beauty is one in spirit with the youthful lover’s.
47The most characteristic side of Milton’s idealism, however, is revealed in his teaching of the doctrine of chastity as the purity of the soul. In the defence of his own life which he made in “An Apology for Smectymnuus,” he acknowledges an important debt in his education to the teaching of Platonic philosophy. “Thus, from the laureat fraternity of poets,” he says, “riper years and the ceaseless round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy; but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato, and his equal Xenophon: where, if I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and love, I mean that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy ... and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue: with such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth your listening, readers, as I may one day hope to have ye in a still time, when there shall be no chiding.”[3] Milton was the only poet of his time who was able to conceive of chastity as an “abstracted sublimity,” 48known in and by the soul. In his treatment of this theme, there are two phases: one in which the enthusiasm of Milton asserts itself in a positive way, and the other a conviction of maturer experience, in which sin is explained negatively in its relation to the soul’s purity.
The fundamental idea of Plato on which Milton built his doctrine of chastity is the one taught in the “Phædo,” that every experience of the soul gained through the medium of the senses tends to degrade the soul’s pure essence into the grosser, corporeal form of the body. “And were we not saying long ago,” says Socrates, “that the soul, when using the body as an instrument of perception, that is to say, when using the sense of sight or hearing or some other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving through the senses)—were we not saying that the soul too is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard, when she touches change?” (“Phædo,” 79.) This appears in the “Comus” in a modified form, 49and constitutes the basis for Milton’s conception of sin in “Paradise Lost.” In the masque the idea is plainly stated by the Elder Brother in his explanation of the doctrine of chastity; and its workings are seen in the effect of the magic potion of Comus upon all who drink it.
This idea, thus stated, is represented symbolically in the disfigurement which the magic 50liquor of Comus works in the divine character of the soul visible in the countenance.
The opposition indicated in the Platonic doctrine between the senses and the soul is carried over by Milton in his description of the trial undergone by the spirit of him who strives to be chaste. In Plato the fundamental idea is somewhat different from Milton’s; for Plato is concerned with the problem of the attainment by the soul of pure knowledge, and he means by sense knowledge not sensuality in the restricted moral signification of that word, but in the broader signification of all experience gained through all the senses. Milton, however, places a narrow interpretation upon the doctrine of Plato. This is evident in his description of 51the attempt made by Comus to allure The Lady to sensual indulgence.
Comus endeavors twice to overpower The Lady. He tries to tempt her to impurity of conduct, and also seeks to blind her judgment through the power of sense illusion. In this second trial there may be seen the influence of the Platonic notion of sense knowledge destroying the soul’s purity; the first trial contains the more narrow application of the idea of unchastity. Milton himself calls attention to the greater similarity of Comus to his mother, Circe, the enchantress of men’s minds, than to Bacchus, the god of wine. He is
In keeping with his character he tries to entice The Lady to drink his magic potion. He reminds her that about him are all the pleasures that fancy can beget; he praises the marvellous efficacy of his elixir in stirring joy within; and pleads with her not to be cruel to the dainty limbs that were given for gentle usage.
To this argument The Lady replies simply that no real pleasure can result from mere physical gratification, but only from the enjoyment of the moral quality of goodness. Thus she says to Comus:
53But when Comus reveals the more subtle trait of his nature, the response which The Lady makes rises to the height of the threatening danger. The Circean strain in his character is his power of deceiving the soul through sense illusion, and his insidious desire to win his way into the hearts of men by courteous words and gay rhetoric. Thus, when he first is conscious of the approach of The Lady, he says:
The effect of this sense witchery is seen in the forebodings of The Lady’s fancy and in the hallucinations that haunt her mind as she comes within the range of its spells. She says:
When Comus, then, begins to practise the more dangerous art of this witchery, acting in accordance with his confession of his manner,—
she responds to the attack with an account of the great power of chastity. Only because she sees that he is trying to deceive her judgment does she deign to answer him.
She then intimates the power which the doctrine of chastity has to overcome Comus, and states that, should she attempt to unfold it, the enthusiasm of her soul would be such as to overwhelm him and his magic structures.
55This vehemence of moral enthusiasm in Milton is due to the conception of chastity as an “abstracted sublimity.” He learned it, he says, in his study of Platonic philosophy; but the teaching of it as a positive doctrine applied to human conduct is his own contribution, and strikes the characteristic note of his idealism. In Plato he found only the suggestion of this teaching. It lay in that idea of the “Phædo,” already explained, of the destruction of the soul’s purity through sense knowledge. Milton’s imagination, working upon this idea, transformed it in a way peculiar to himself alone. The pure soul, according to his belief, has power in itself to change the body to its own pure essence. The conversion of body to soul, however, is not a tenet of Platonic philosophy in any phase. It was the working in Milton of that tendency, visible throughout the poetry of the seventeenth century, to assert the primacy of the soul in life—an attempt which was made by the metaphysical poets especially in their treatment of love.
The statement of this theory of chastity is explained in “Comus,” and its quickening influence is felt in the very manner in which Milton 56refers to it. Before the Elder Brother recounts the effect of lust upon the soul he explains the hidden power of chastity.
This is the “abstracted sublimity” which The Lady refers to when she addresses Comus. It is a notion, a mystery, which he, standing for the purely sensual instincts of man, cannot apprehend. She tells him:
So powerfully, indeed, has the vision of beauty described in the “Phædrus” and the “Symposium” 57affected Milton’s own imagination that he visualizes chastity much as Plato does an idea; it is an idea not only known to the mind, but thrilling the imagination with its beauty. When The Lady is at first conscious of the power of Comus’s magic to disturb her mind with foreboding fancies, she invokes faith, hope, and chastity. The first two are seen as personages, but chastity only as a pure, unblemished form.
The directness of this vision is like that of the soul in the “Phædrus” when it sees the flashing beauty of the beloved, “which,” says Plato, “when the charioteer [the soul] sees, his memory is carried to the true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image placed upon a holy pedestal.” (“Phædrus,” 254.)
It is in the vision of this holy beauty as a lost possession of the soul that the deadly pang of sin lies. In Milton’s later work there is no reference to the power of the chaste soul to 58change the body to its own pure essence; but his mind still holds to the power of sin to dim the soul’s lustre. This is strikingly exemplified in the character of Satan’s reflection on his faded glory. The one keen regret that he feels, in spite of his indomitable will, is occasioned by the thought that by reason of sinning his form has lost the beauty of its original goodness. Throughout “Paradise Lost” there is repeated emphasis upon the faded lustre of Satan’s form. The very first words that fall from Satan’s lips, in his speech to Beelzebub, as the two lay rolling in the fiery gulf, draw our attention to the great change in their outward forms.
And then, as Satan proceeds, his mind is directed to his own departed glory.
In his address to the Sun Satan expresses his hatred of that bright light because it brings to remembrance the more glorious state from which he fell.
When the moral significance of this change in his form flashes through his mind, Satan then suffers the deepest regret that could come to him. The episode in which he learns the true effect of his sin is his encounter with the angels, Ithuriel and Zephon. These two have found him “squat like a toad” at the ear of Eve, trying to work upon her mind while she sleeps. At the touch of Ithuriel’s spear Satan springs up in his real form. Ithuriel then asks which of the rebel angels he may be. The lofty pride of Satan is touched to the quick.
Zephon, however, points out that Satan should not think that he may still be known, as he was in heaven, by the brightness of his form; for his glory departed when he rebelled, and now resembles his sin and place of doom.
At this thought Satan stands abashed. Lover of the beautiful as he is, he now experiences the pang of its loss in his own life.
61In Milton, then, whether his mind dwells on chastity or on the consciousness of sin’s effect on the soul, it is to the vision of a world of moral beauty that at last it mounts.
The relation of these ideals of holiness, temperance, and chastity to the Christian doctrine of grace, which finds a place in the works of these English poets, can now be clearly seen. The ideals of conduct are essentially moral ideals, and in the attainment of them the soul lives its fullest life. “The being who possesses good always, everywhere, and in all things,” says Socrates in the “Philebus” (60), “has the most perfect sufficiency.” According to Plato the soul may realize perfect sufficiency of itself, it is self-sufficient; but Christian theology taught the necessity of a heavenly grace for man to work out his own salvation. The two ideals are thus distinct; and though the English poets incorporate both in their work, the line of cleavage is distinctly visible, and the doctrine of grace plays no more than a formal part in their exposition of the soul’s growth. In the “Faerie Queene” and in “Comus” Platonic idealism triumphs over Christian theology.
In Spenser the adventures of Arthur, in 62whom heavenly grace is commonly recognized, have no moral significance in the progress of the Knight aided by him toward the realization of virtue. Arthur frees the Red Cross Knight from Orgoglio and Duessa, but the Red Cross Knight is, morally speaking, the same man after he is freed as before; the adventure of Arthur answers to no change significant in the moral order of his life as this is revealed in holiness. The realization of holiness as an intimate experience of the soul is achieved only after the Knight’s training on the Mount of Heavenly Contemplation, which follows all his preceding discipline in the Christian graces; for this has left him a “man of earth.” In the legend of temperance the efficacy of grace is no more vital, and what is more, it is an intrusion upon the moral order; it makes the soul untrue to itself and all that we know of her. The logic of Guyon’s inner life did not require that Arthur should come to his rescue after he had shown his ability to remain temperate under strong emotion and in the presence of wantonness and covetousness. His swoon at the end of the seventh canto has no more meaning than mere bodily fatigue after toil; morally, Guyon should 63have been only the stronger for his past victories over his passions. Arthur’s entrance at the eighth canto, consequently, is not required: Spenser is only paralleling in his second book Arthur’s advent in the eighth canto of his first.
Similarly in “Comus.” When the younger brother inquires what that power which The Lady possesses to keep herself unspotted in the presence of lust may be, if it is not the strength of heaven, his elder companion replies:
So The Lady herself witnesses, when in the great crisis of her life she appeals to faith, hope, and chastity; if need were, she is confident that heaven would send an angel to her defence.
64And the Guardian Spirit, in whose parting words is found the moral of the poem, explains the same idea of the self-sufficiency of the virtuous soul.
The theological doctrine of grace, although maintained as a part of an intellectual scheme of thought, did not enter into the inward life of Spenser’s and Milton’s work. So sensitive were they to the power of beauty that nothing could come between it and the soul. To Milton beauty wore an invincible grace, before which all must give way. Satan recognized this when he was confronted by the angel, Zephon.
Nothing was more natural, then, than that such a mind feeding upon Plato’s thought and learning its great lesson of wisdom, that it alone 65is truly fair, should conceive virtue panoplied in all the might of beauty. He thus could teach in his “Comus” “the sun-clad power of chastity”:
In Spenser beauty is not thus militant. When the Red Cross Knight, eager to enter the Cave of Error (I. i. 12), says to Una, confident in his power,
Una cautions him to stay his step while there yet is time. (I. i. 13.) But it is just as true in Spenser as in Milton, that beauty is an unerring guide in life. Spenser responded to it because he felt most deeply the power of the soul’s affinity for it. Throughout his work the influence of beauty upon man is constantly present. Even though at times he seems to be drawn to it by the subtlety of its appeal to the 66sense alone, he makes it very evident that true beauty can be found in the soul only in its habits of virtuous life. Thus the witch Duessa, when stripped of her alluring beauty, is revolting in her hideousness (I. ii. 40; II. i. 22), and Acrasia’s beauty only poisons the souls of her lovers. (II. i. 54.) Beauty that is nothing but a mere witchery of the sense disappears into thin air when confronted by virtue in her beauty. This is the lesson taught in the vanishing of the false Florimell when the true is placed beside her. (V. iii. 25.) The power of this affinity of the soul for beauty, mysterious as it is real, which Spenser’s work reveals, is conveyed in a question from Sidney’s “Arcadia,” where the spirit of the “Phædrus” is all present. “Did ever mans eye looke thorough love upon the majesty of vertue, shining through beauty, but that he became (as it well became him) a captive?”[5]