=Columbia University=
_STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE_
PLATONISM IN ENGLISH POETRY
OF THE SIXTEENTH AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
[Illustration: [Logo]]
PLATONISM IN ENGLISH POETRY
OF THE SIXTEENTH AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
BY
JOHN SMITH HARRISON
[Illustration: [Logo]]
=New York=
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, AGENTS
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
1903
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up, electrotyped, and published September, 1903.
=Norwood Press=
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U. S. A.
TO
=My Father and My Mother=
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 fifteenth 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 been 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.
To 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.
ORANGE, N.J.,
June 1, 1903.
CONTENTS
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
PLATONISM IN ENGLISH POETRY
CHAPTER I
IDEALS OF CHRISTIAN VIRTUES
I. HOLINESS
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 wisdom, 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:
“O how can beautie maister the most strong,
And simple truth subdue avenging wrong?”
(I. iii. 6.)
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:
“Ay me, how many perils doe enfold
The righteous man, to make him daily fall?
Were not, that heavenly grace doth him uphold,
And stedfast truth acquite him out of all.
Her love is firme, her care continuall,
So oft as he through his owne foolish pride,
Or weaknesse is to sinfull bands made thrall.”
(I. viii. 1.)
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
“at her wisedome heavenly rare,
Whose like in womens wit he never knew;
· · · · ·
Thenceforth he kept her goodly company,
And learnd her discipline of faith and veritie.”
(I. vi. 31.)
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, in 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 stands 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:
“Her angels face
As the great eye of heaven shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shadie place.”
(I. iii. 4.)
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:
“It fortuned out of the thickest wood
A ramping Lyon rushed suddainly,
Hunting full greedie after salvage blood;
Soone as the toy all virgin he did spy,
With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
To have attonce devour’d her tender corse:
But to the pray when as he drew more ny,
His bloudie rage asswaged with remorse,
And with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.”
(I. iii. 5.)
“The Lyon would not leave her desolate,
· · · · ·
From her faire eyes he tooke commaundement,
And ever by her lookes conceived her intent.”
(I. iii. 9.)
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—
“His ancient love, and dearest _Cyparisse_,
· · · · ·
How fair he was, and yet not faire to this.”
(I. vi. 17.)
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 its 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 was 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
“see the way,
That never yet was seene of Faeries sonne.”
(I. x. 52.)
While 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:
“Till now, said then the knight, I weened well,
That great _Cleopolis_, where I have beene,
In which that fairest _Faerie Queene_ doth dwell,
The fairest Citie was, that might be seene;
And that bright towre all built of christall cleene,
_Panthea_, seemd the brightest thing, that was:
But now by proofe all otherwise I weene;
For this great Citie that does far surpas,
And this bright Angels towre quite dims that towre of glas.”
(I. x. 58.)
With his soul filled with the radiance of this vision of beauty, his
eyes dazed—
“Through passing brightnesse, which did quite confound
His feeble sence, and too exceeding shyne.
So darke are earthly things compard to things divine—”
(I. x. 67.)
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 at 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 blazing brightnesse of her beauties beame,
And glorious light of her sunshyny face
To tell, were as to strive against the streame.
My ragged rimes are all too rude and bace,
Her heavenly lineaments for to enchace.
Ne wonder; for her owne deare loved knight,
All were she dayly with himselfe in place,
Did wonder much at her celestiall sight:
Oft had he seene her faire, but never so faire dight.”
(I. xii. 23.)
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 and 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:
“O let me not (quoth he) then turne againe
Backe to the world, whose joyes so fruitlesse are;
But let me here for aye in peace remaine,
Or streight way on that last long voyage fare,
That nothing may my present hope empare.”
(I. x. 63.)
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
“Did wonder much at her celestiall sight.”
(I. xii. 23.)
With that sight comes the one joy of his life after the many struggles
experienced in the perfection of his soul in holiness.
“And ever, when his eye did her behold,
His heart did seeme to melt in pleasures manifold.”
(I. xii. 40.)
II. TEMPERANCE
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 “Faerie Queene,” celebrating the
exploits of the knight Guyon,
“In whom great rule of Temp’raunce goodly doth appeare.”
(Introd., stz. 5.)
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 or 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.
“He staid not lenger talke, but with fierce ire
And zealous hast away is quickly gone
To seeke that knight.”
(II. i. 13.)
And 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
“gan abace
His threatned speare, as if some new mishap
Had him betidde, or hidden daunger did entrap.”
(II. i. 26.)
After an apology and an exchange of knightly courtesies with the Red
Cross Knight he was able to
“turne his earnest unto game,
Through goodly handing and wise temperance.”
(II. i. 31.)
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 reason that in its blind passion its force is
spent to no purpose.
“And sure he was a man of mickle might,
Had he had gouvernance, it well to guide:
But when the franticke fit inflamd his spright,
His force was vaine, and strooke more often wide,
Then at the aymed marke which he had eide:
And oft himselfe he chaunst to hurt unwares,
Whilst reason blent through passion, nought descride,
But as a blindfold Bull at randon fares,
And where he hits, nought knowes, and whom he hurts nought cares.”
(II. iv. 7.)
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.
“In his strong armes he stiffely him embraste,
Who him gainstriving, nought at all prevaild:
For all his power was utterly defaste,
And furious fits at earst quite weren quaild:
Oft he re’nforst, and oft his forces fayld,
Yet yield he would not, nor his rancour slacke.
Then him to ground he cast, and rudely hayld,
And both his hands fast bound behind his backe,
And both his feet in fetters to an yron racke.”
(II. iv. 14.)
The third trial of Guyon’s reason is by a species of wrath so wilfully
furious that it runs 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.
“Madman (said then the Palmer) that does seeke
_Occasion_ to wrath, and cause of strife;
She comes unsought, and shonned followes eke.
Happy, who can abstaine, when Rancour rife
Kindles Revenge, and threats his rusty knife;
Woe never wants, where every cause is caught,
And rash _Occasion_ makes unquiet life.”
(II. iv. 44.)
Even when Guyon is compelled by Pyrochles to the fight, the Knight does
not give way to unrestrained wrath, but ever tempers his passion with
reason. In the conflict Pyrochles thundered blows:
“But _Guyon_, in the heat of all his strife,
Was warie wise, and closely did awayt
Avauntage, whilest his foe did rage most rife.”
(II. v. 9.)
When at last Guyon has his foe at his feet, he spares his life, so
firmly he holds his passion in check.
“Eftsoones his cruell hand Sir _Guyon_ stayd,
Tempring the passion with advisement slow,
And maistring might on enimy dismayd.”
(II. v. 13.)
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
“was wise, and warie of her will,
And ever held his hand upon his hart:
Yet would not seeme so rude, and thewed ill,
As to despise so courteous seeming part,
That gentle Ladie did to him impart,
But fairely tempring fond desire subdewd,
And ever her desired to depart.”
(II. vi. 26.)
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:
“Indeede (quoth he) through fowle intemperaunce,
Frayle men are oft captiv’d to covetise.”
(II. vii. 15.)
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,—
“All which he did, to doe him deadly fall
In frayle intemperance through sinful bayt;”
Guyon
“was warie wise in all his way,
And well perceived his deceiptfull sleight,
Ne suffred lust his safetie to betray;
So goodly did beguile the Guyler of the pray.”
(II. vii. 64.)
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
“wisedomes powre, and temperaunces might,
By which the mightiest things efforced bin.”
(II. xii. 43.)
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—
“The knight was ruled, and the Boatman strayt
Held on his course with stayed stedfastnesse.”
(II. xii. 28, 29.)
Again, when Guyon’s senses are “softly tickled” by the rare melody of
the mermaids, as it mingled with the strange harmony of the rolling sea,
he bids the boatman row easily.
“But him the Palmer from that vanity,
With temperate advice discounselled,
That they it past.”
(II. xii. 34.)
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.
“On which when gazing him the Palmer saw,
He much rebukt those wandring eyes of his,
And counseld well, him forward thence did draw.”
(II. xii. 69.)
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 the 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:
“with bent lowring browes, as she would threat,
She scould, and frownd with froward countenaunce;”
(II. ii. 35.)
and Perissa
“Full of disport, still laughing, loosely light,
And quite contrary to her sisters kind;
No measure in her mood, no rule of right,
But poured out in pleasure and delight.”
(II. ii. 36.)
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—
“not so good of deedes, as great of name,
Which he by many rash adventures wan,
· · · · ·
More huge in strength, then wise in workes he was,
And reason with foole-hardize over ran,”—
(II. ii. 17.)
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,—
“The most unruly, and the boldest boy,
That ever warlike weapons menaged,
And to all lawlesse lust encouraged,”—
(II. ii. 18.)
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.
“But temperance (said he) with golden squire
Betwixt them both can measure out a meane,
Neither to melt in pleasures whot desire,
Nor fry in hartlesse griefe and dolefull teene.”
(II. i. 57.)
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 beauty. “‘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:
“And _Guyon_ in them all shewes goodly maisteries.”
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
“Faire marching underneath a shady hill,
A goodly knight,”
· · · · ·
“His carriage was full comely and upright,
His countenaunce demure and temperate.”
(II. i. 5, 6.)
The feeling of order is conveyed through the movements of Guyon’s
charger. The Palmer
“ever with slow pace the knight did lead,
Who taught his trampling steed with equall steps to tread.”
(II. i. 7.)
Medina, when she welcomes Guyon to her castle, meets him
“Faire marching forth in honorable wize.”
(II. ii. 14.)
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.
“But in a body, which doth freely yeeld
His partes to reasons rule obedient,
And letteth her that ought the scepter weeld,
All happy peace and goodly government
Is setled there in sure establishment;
There _Alma_ like a virgin Queene most bright,
Doth florish in all beautie excellent:
And to her guestes doth bounteous banket dight,
Attempred goodly well for health and for delight.
(II. xi. 2.)
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 Plato; 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:
“There she him taught to weigh both right and wrong
In equall ballance with due recompence,
And equitie to measure out along,
According to the line of conscience,
When so it needs with rigour to dispence.”
(V. i. 7.)
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 time 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.
“But vertue’s seat is deepe within the mynd,
And not in outward shows, but inward thoughts defynd.”
(VI., Introd., stz. 5.)
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 virtue is the controlling
idea, and Spenser has failed to harmonize it with his earlier and finer
one.
III. CHASTITY
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 found 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 dwells 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.
“Tell me ye merchants daughters did ye see
So fayre a creature in your towne before,
So sweet, so lovely, and so mild as she,
Adornd with beautyes grace and vertues store,
Her goodly eyes lyke Saphyres shining bright,
Her forehead yvory white,
Her cheekes lyke apples which the sun hath rudded,
Her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte,
Her brest lyke to a bowle of creame uncrudded,
Her paps lyke lyllies budded,
Her snowie necke lyke to a marble towre,
And all her body like a pallace fayre,
Ascending uppe with many a stately stayre,
To honors seat and chastities sweet bowre.
Why stand ye still ye virgins in amaze,
Upon her so to gaze,
Whiles ye forget your former lay to sing,
To which the woods did answer and your eccho ring?”
“But if ye saw that which no eyes can see,
The inward beauty of her lively spright,
Garnisht with heavenly guifts of high degree,
Much more then would ye wonder at that sight,
And stand astonisht lyke to those which red
Medusaes mazefull hed.
There dwels sweet love and constant chastity,
Unspotted fayth and comely womanhood,
Regard of honour and mild modesty,
There vertue raynes as Queene in royal throne,
And giveth lawes alone.
The which the base affections doe obay,
And yeeld theyr services unto her will,
Ne thought of things uncomely ever may
Thereto approch to tempt her mind to ill.
Had ye once seene these her celestial threasures,
And unrevealed pleasures,
Then would ye wonder and her prayses sing,
That al the woods should answer and your echo ring.”
(ll. 167–203.)
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 does 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.
“Faire Sir (said he) if in that picture dead
Such life ye read, and vertue in vaine shew,
What mote ye weene, if the trew lively-head
Of that most glorious visage ye did view?
But if the beautie of her mind ye knew,
That is her bountie, and imperiall powre,
Thousand times fairer then her mortall hew,
O how great wonder would your thoughts devoure,
And infinite desire into your spirite poure!”
(II. ix. 3.)
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 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; 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.
One 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.
“With that, her glistring helmet she unlaced;
Which doft, her golden lockes, that were up bound
Still in a knot, unto her heeles downe traced,
And like a silken veile in compasse round
About her backe and all her bodie wound;
Like as the shining skie in summers night,
What time the dayes with scorching heat abound,
Is creasted all with lines of firie light,
That it prodigious seemes in common peoples sight.
“Such when those Knights and Ladies all about
Beheld her, all were with amazement smit,
And every one gan grow in secret dout
Of this and that, according to each wit:
· · · · ·
“But that young Knight [Scudamour], which through her gentle deed
Was to that goodly fellowship restor’d,
Ten thousand thankes did yeeld her for her meed,
And doubly overcommen, her ador’d.”
(IV. i. 13, 14, 15.)
A 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.
“Which whenas they beheld, they smitten were
With great amazement of so wondrous sight,
And each on other, and they all on her
Stood gazing, as if suddein great affright
Had them surprised. At last avizing right,
Her goodly personage and glorious hew,
Which they so much mistooke, they tooke delight
In their first errour, and yet still anew
With wonder of her beauty fed their hungry vew.
“Yet note their hungry vew be satisfide,
But seeing still the more desir’d to see,
And ever firmely fixed did abide
In contemplation of divinitie.”
(III. ix. 23, 24.)
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.
“And as his hand he up againe did reare,
Thinking to worke on her his utmost wracke,
His powrelesse arme benumbd with secret feare
From his revengefull purpose shronke abacke,
And cruell sword out of his fingers slacke
Fell downe to ground, as if the steele had sence,
And felt some ruth, or sence his hand did lacke,
Or both of them did thinke, obedience
To doe to so divine a beauties excellence.
“And he himselfe long gazing thereupon
At last fell humbly downe upon his knee,
And of his wonder made religion,
Weening some heavenly goddesse he did see,
Or else unweeting, what it else might bee;
And pardon her besought his errour frayle,
That had done outrage in so high degree;
Whilest trembling horrour did his sense assayle,
And made ech member quake, and manly hart to quayle.”
(IV. vi. 21, 22.)
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 poets 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:
“Rogero looks on Bradamant, and she
Looks on Rogero in profound surprise
That for so many days that witchery
Had so obscured her altered mind and eyes.
Rejoiced, Rogero clasps his lady free,
Crimsoning with deeper than the rose’s dyes,
And his fair love’s first blossoms, while he clips
The gentle damsel, gathers from her lips.
“A thousand times they their embrace renew,
And closely each is by the other prest;
While so delightful are these lovers two,
Their joys are ill contained within their breast.”
(xxii. 32, 33.)
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,—
“Yet durst he not make love so suddenly,
Ne thinke th’ affection of her hart to draw
From one to other so quite contrary.”
(IV. vi. 33.)
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 he 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 daughter
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:
“Though I have lost,
Much lustre of my native brightness, lost
To be beloved of God, I have not lost
To love, at least contemplate and admire,
What I see excellent in good, or fair,
Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense.”
(I. 377–382.)
The honesty of this confession is not impugned by Christ, although he
exposes the hollow insincerity of 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,
“where the Fiend
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind
Of living creatures, new to sight and strange,”—
(IV. 285–287.)
he at last catches sight of Adam and Eve, in whom
“The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure.”
(IV. 292–293.)
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:
“the sun,
Declined, was hasting now with prone career
To the Ocean Isles, and in the ascending scale
Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose:
When Satan, still in gaze, as first he stood,
Scarce thus at length failed speech recovered sad:—
‘O Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold?
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould—Earth-born perhaps,
Not spirits, yet to Heavenly Spirits bright
Little inferior—whom my thoughts pursue
With wonder, and could love; so lively shines
In them divine resemblance, and such grace
The hand that formed them on their shape hath poured.’”
(IV. 352–365.)
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:
“For well I understand in the prime end
Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind
And inward faculties, which most excel;
In outward also her resembling less
His image who made both, and less expressing
The character of that dominion given
O’er other creatures.”
(VIII. 540–546.)
Thus Eve confesses that in Adam’s beauty, and not in the image of her
own soft feminine grace, does she
“see
How beauty is excelled by manly grace
And wisdom, which alone is truly fair.”
(IV. 489–491.)
Yet in the presence of Eve’s beauty Satan stands lost in contemplation,
made for one moment good.
“Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold
This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone. Her heavenly form
Angelic, but more soft and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture or least action, overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought.
That space the Evil One abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.”
(IX. 455–466.)
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.
“Then let me not let pass
Occasion which now smiles. Behold alone
The Woman, opportune to all attempts—
Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh,
Whose higher intellectual more I shun.
· · · · ·
She fair, divinely fair, fit love for Gods,
Not terrible, though terror be in love
And beauty, not approached by stronger hate,
Hate stronger under show of love well feigned.”
(IX. 479–492.)
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 stood he still long gazing thereupon,
Ne any will had thence to move away,
Although his quest were farre afore him gon;
But after he had fed, yet did he stay,
And sate there still, untill the flying day
Was farre forth spent.”
(VI. ix. 12.)
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.
The 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,” known 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, and 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.
“But, when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel-vaults, and sepulchres,
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loath to leave the body that it loved;
And linked itself by carnal sensualty
To a degenerate and degraded state.”[4]
(ll. 463–475.)
This idea, thus stated, is represented symbolically in the disfigurement
which the magic liquor of Comus works in the divine character of the
soul visible in the countenance.
“Soon as the potion works, their human count’nance,
The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,
Or ounce or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
All other parts remaining as they were.
And they, so perfect is their misery,
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,
But boast themselves more comely than before,
And all their friends and native home forget,
To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.”
(ll. 68–77.)
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 the 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
“a son
Much like his father, but his mother more.”
(ll. 56, 57.)
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.
“See, here be all the pleasures
That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts,
When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns
Brisk as the April buds in primrose season.
And first behold this cordial julep here,
That flames and dances in his crystal bounds,
With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed.
Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena
Is of such power to stir up joy as this,
To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.
Why should you be so cruel to yourself,
And to those dainty limbs, which Nature lent
For gentle usage, and soft delicacy?
But you invert the covenants of her trust,
And harshly deal, like an ill borrower,
With that which you received on other terms,
Scorning the unexempt condition
By which all mortal frailty must subsist,
Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,
That have been tired all day without repast,
And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin,
This will restore all soon.”
(ll. 668–689.)
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:
“I would not taste thy treasonous offer. None
But such as are good men can give good things;
And that which is not good is not delicious
To a well-governed and wise appetite.”
(ll. 702–705.)
But 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:
“Thus I hurl
My dazzling spells into the spongy air,
Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,
And give it false presentments.”
(ll. 153–156.)
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:
“A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men’s names
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.”
(ll. 205–209.)
When Comus, then, begins to practise the more dangerous art of this
witchery, acting in accordance with his confession of his manner,—
“under fair pretence of friendly ends,
And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
Baited with reasons not unplausible,”—
(ll. 160–162.)
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.
“I had not thought to have unlocked my lips
In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler
Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes,
Obtruding false rules pranked in reason’s garb.”
(ll. 756–759.)
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.
“Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric,
That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence;
Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced.
Yet, should I try, the uncontrollèd worth
Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits
To such a flame of sacred vehemence
That dumb things would be moved to sympathize,
And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake,
Till all thy magic structures, reared so high,
Were shattered into heaps o’er thy false head.”
(ll. 790–799.)
This 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
refers to it. Before the Elder Brother recounts the effect of lust upon
the soul he explains the hidden power of chastity.
“So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear;
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul’s essence,
Till all be made immortal.”
(ll. 453–463.)
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:
“Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend
The sublime notion and high mystery
That must be uttered to unfold the sage
And serious doctrine of Virginity;
And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know
More happiness than this thy present lot.”
(ll. 784–789.)
So powerfully, indeed, has the vision of beauty described in the
“Phædrus” and the “Symposium” affected 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.
“O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,
And thou unblemished form of Chastity!
I see ye visibly.”
(ll. 213–216.)
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 change 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.
“To whom the Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:—
‘If thou beest he—but Oh how fallen! how changed
From him!—who, in the happy realms of light,
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads, though bright.’”
(I. 81–87.)
And then, as Satan proceeds, his mind is directed to his own departed
glory.
“Yet not for those [_i.e._ the force of the Almighty’s arms]
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent, or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit.”
(I. 94–98.)
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.
“O thou that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Look’st from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new World—at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads—to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.”
(IV. 32–39.)
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.
“‘Know ye not, then,’ said Satan, filled with scorn,
‘Know ye not me? Ye knew me once no mate
For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar!
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown,
The lowest of your throng.’”
(IV. 827–831.)
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.
“Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same,
Or undiminished brightness, to be known
As when thou stood’st in Heaven upright and pure.
That glory then, when thou no more wast good,
Departed from thee; and thou resemblest now
Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul.”
(IV. 835–840.)
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.
“So spake the Cherub; and his grave rebuke,
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible. Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely—saw, and pined
His loss; but chiefly to find here observed
His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed
Undaunted.”
(IV. 844–851.)
In 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 whom 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 have 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:
“I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength,
Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed her own.
’Tis chastity, my brother, chastity.”
(ll. 418–420.)
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.
“O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings,
And thou unblemished form of Chastity!
I see ye visibly, and now believe
That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honour unassailed.”
(ll. 212–220.)
And 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.
“Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free.
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or, if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.”
(ll. 1018–1023.)
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.
“So spake the Cherub; and his grave rebuke,
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible.”
(IV. 844–846.)
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
is 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”:
“She that has that is clad in complete steel,
And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen,
May trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds,
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer,
Will dare to soil her virgin purity.”
(ll. 421–427.)
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,
“Virtue gives her selfe light, through darkenesse for to wade,”
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 sense
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]