II. EARTHLY LOVE
The influence of Platonism upon the love poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England is felt in two distinct forms. In the first place, the teachings of that philosophy were used to explain and dignify the conception of love as a passion having its source in a desire for the enjoyment of beauty; and in the second place, the emphasis laid by Platonism upon the function of the soul as opposed to the senses resulted in a tendency to treat love as a purely spiritual passion devoid of all sensuous pleasure. In the first phase the teachings of Platonic theory were made to render service according to the conventional love theory known as Petrarchism; and in its second phase Platonism contributed its share in keeping alive the so-called metaphysical mood of the seventeenth-century lyric.
According to the conventional method of Petrarchism, the object of the poet’s love was always a lady of great beauty and spotless virtue, and of a correspondingly great cruelty. Hence the subjects of the Petrarchian love poem were either the praise of the mistress’s beauty or an account of the torment of soul caused by her heartless indifference. By applying the doctrines of Platonism to this conventional manner, a way was found to explain upon a seemingly philosophic basis the power of the lover’s passion and of beauty as its exciting cause. The best example in English of this application of Platonic theory is Spenser’s two hymns,—“An Hymne in Honour of Love” and “An Hymne in Honour of Beautie.”
The professed aim of Spenser in these hymns differs in no wise from the purpose of the Petrarchian lover. Both are written to ease the torments of an unrequited passion. In the “Hymne in Honour of Love” he addresses love in his invocation:
“Love, that long since hast to thy mighty powre,
Perforce subdude my poore captived hart,
And raging now therein with restlesse stowre,
Doest tyrannize in everie weaker part;
Faine would I seeke to ease my bitter smart,
By any service I might do to thee,
Or ought that else might to thee pleasing bee.”
(ll. 4–10.)
In his closing stanzas he expresses the wish of coming at last to the object of his desire. (ll. 298–300.) In the “Hymne in Honour of Beautie,” he openly confesses a desire that through his hymn
“It may so please that she at length will streame
Some deaw of grace, into my withered hart,
After long sorrow and consuming smart.”
(ll. 29–31.)
The only respect in which these hymns differ from the mass of love poetry of their time is in the method by which Spenser treated the common subject of the poetical amorists of the Renaissance. In singing the praises of love and beauty he drew upon the doctrines of Italian Platonism, and by the power of his own genius blended the purely expository and lyrical strains so that at times it is difficult to separate them. The presence of Platonic doctrine, however, is felt in the dignified treatment of the passion of love and of beauty.
In the “Hymne in Honour of Love” love is described as no merely cruel passion inflicted by the tyrannical Cupid of the amorist, but as the manifestation in man of the great informing power which brought the universe out of chaos and which now maintains it in order and concord. According to Ficino, the greatest representative of Italian Platonism during the Renaissance, one truth established by the speech of Eryximachus in the “Symposium” is that love is the creator and preserver of all things. “Through this,” Ficino says in his “Commentarium in Convivium,” “fire moves air by sharing its heat; the air moves the water, the water moves the earth; and vice versa the earth draws the water to itself; water, the air; and the air, the fire. Plants and trees also beget their like because of a desire of propagating their seed. Animals, brutes, and men are allured by the same desire to beget offspring.” (III. 2.) And in summing up his discussion he says, “Therefore all parts of the universe, since they are the work of one artificer and are members of the same mechanism like to one another both in being and in life, are linked together by a certain mutual love, so that love may be rightly declared the perpetual bond of the universe and the unmoving support of its parts and the firm basis of the whole mechanism.” (III. 3.) Holding to this conception of love Spenser comes to a praise of the
“Great god of might, that reignest in the mynd,
And all the bodie to thy hest doest frame,”
(ll. 46–47.)
with an explanation of His power as the creating and sustaining spirit of the universe. Before the world was created love moved over the warring elements of chaos and arranged them in the order they now obey.
“Then through the world his way he gan to take,
The world that was not till he did it make;
Whose sundrie parts he from them selves did sever,
The which before had lyen confused ever,
“The earth, the ayre, the water, and the fyre,
Then gan to raunge them selves in huge array,
And with contrary forces to conspyre
Each against other, by all meanes they may,
Threatning their owne confusion and decay:
Ayre hated earth, and water hated fyre,
Till Love relented their rebellious yre.
“He then them tooke, and tempering goodly well
Their contrary dislikes with loved meanes,
Did place them all in order, and compell
To keepe them selves within their sundrie raines,
Together linkt with Adamantine chaines.”
(ll. 77–92.)
The second subject which was treated in the light of Platonism was that of beauty. In the “Hymne in Honour of Beautie” the topic is treated from three points of view. First, the “Hymne” outlines a general theory of æsthetics to account for the presence of beauty in the universe lying without us (ll. 32–87); second, it explains the ground of reason for the beauty to be found in the human body (ll. 88–164); and third, it accounts for the exaggerated notion which the lover has of his beloved’s physical perfections. (ll. 214–270.)
Spenser’s general theory of æsthetics is a blending of two suggestions he found in his study of Platonism. According to Ficino, beauty is a spiritual thing, the splendor of God’s light shining in all things. (II. 5; V. 4.) This conception is based upon the idea that the universe is an emanation of God’s spirit, and that beauty is the lively grace of the divine light of God shining in matter. (V. 6.) But according to another view, the universe is conceived as the objective work of an artificer, working according to a pattern. “The work of the creator,” says Plato in the “Timæus” (28, 29), “whenever he looks to the unchangeable and fashions the form and the nature of his work after an unchangeable pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect.... If the world be indeed fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have looked to that which is eternal ... for the world is the fairest of creations and he is the best of causes.” By blending these ideas Spenser was able to conceive of God as creating the world after a pattern of ideal beauty, which, by virtue of its infusion into matter, is the source of that lively grace which the objects called beautiful possess. At first he presents the view of creation which is more in accordance with the Mosaic account,
“What time this worlds great workmaister did cast
To make al things, such as we now behold:
It seemes that he before his eyes had plast
A goodly Paterne to whose perfect mould,
He fashioned them as comely as he could,
That now so faire and seemely they appeare,
As nought may be amended any wheare.
“That wondrous Paterne
· · · · ·
Is perfect Beautie, which all men adore,
Whose face and feature doth so much excell
All mortall sence, that none the same may tell.”
(ll. 32–45.)
Spenser now passes on to the theory of the infusion of beauty in matter, by which its grossness is refined and quickened, as it were, into life.
“Thereof as every earthly thing partakes,
Or more or lesse by influence divine,
So it more faire accordingly it makes,
And the grosse matter of this earthly myne,
Which clotheth it, thereafter doth refyne,
Doing away the drosse which dims the light
Of that faire beame, which therein is empight.
“For through infusion of celestiall powre,
The duller earth it quickneth with delight
And life-full spirits privily doth powre
Through all the parts, that to the looker’s sight
They seeme to please. That is thy soveraine might,
O Cyprian Queene, which flowing from the beame
Of thy bright starre, then into them doest streame.”
(ll. 46–59.)
At this point of his “Hymne” Spenser pauses to refute the idea that beauty is
“An outward shew of things, that onely seeme”
(l. 94.)
His pausing to overthrow such an idea of beauty is quite in the manner of the scientific expositor in the Italian treatises and dialogues written throughout the Renaissance. Ficino, for instance, combats the idea, which he says some hold, that beauty is nothing but the proportion of the various parts of an object with a certain sweetness of color. (V. 3.) In like manner Spenser says it is the idle wit that identifies beauty with proportion and color, both of which pass away.
“How vainely then doe ydle wits invent,
That beautie is nought else, but mixture made
Of colours faire, and goodly temp’rament,
Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade
And passe away, like to a sommers shade,
Or that it is but comely composition
Of parts well measurd, with meet disposition.”
(ll. 67–73.)
Spenser overthrows this contention by doubting the power of mere color and superficial proportion to stir the soul of man. (ll. 74–87.) He has proved the power of beauty only too well to maintain such a theory. He thus seeks for the source of its power in the soul.
The Platonic theory of beauty teaches that the beauty of the body is a result of the formative energy of the soul. According to Ficino, the soul has descended from heaven and has framed a body in which to dwell. Before its descent it conceives a certain plan for the forming of a body; and if on earth it finds material favorable for its work and sufficiently plastic, its earthly body is very similar to its celestial one, hence it is beautiful. (VI. 6.) In Spenser this conception underlies his account of the descent of the soul from God to earth.
“For when the soule, the which derived was
At first, out of that great immortall Spright,
By whom all live to love, whilome did pas
Downe from the top of purest heavens hight,
To be embodied here, it then tooke light
And lively spirits from that fayrest starre,
Which lights the world forth from his firie carre.
“Which powre retayning still or more or lesse,
When she in fleshly seede is eft enraced,
Through every part she doth the same impresse,
According as the heavens have her graced,
And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit for her selfe, adorning it with spoyle
Of th’ heavenly riches, which she robd erewhyle.
· · · · ·
“So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairely dight
With chearefull grace and amiable sight.
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take:
For soul is forme, and doth the bodie make.”
(ll. 109–136.)
The obvious objection which one might make to this theory, that it does not cover the whole ground inasmuch as it could never account for the fact of the existence of a good soul in any but a beautiful form, was answered by the further explanation that when the matter of which the soul makes its body is unyielding, the soul must content itself with a less beautiful form. (Ficino, VI. 6.) Thus Spenser adds:
“Yet oft it falles, that many a gentle mynd
Dwels in deformed tabernacle drownd,
Either by chaunce, against the course of kynd,
Or through unaptnesse in the substance sownd,
Which it assumed of some stubborne grownd,
That will not yield unto her formes direction,
But is perform’d with some foule imperfection.”
(ll. 144–150.)
After an exhortation to the “faire Dames” to keep their souls unspotted (ll. 165–200), Spenser outlines the true manner of love and in the course of his poem he accounts for that manifestation of power which the beloved’s beauty has over the mind of the lover. According to Ficino, true lovers are those whose souls have departed from heaven under the same astral influences and who, accordingly, are informed with the same idea in imitation of which they frame their earthly bodies. (VI. 6.) Thus Spenser writes that love is not a matter of chance, but a union of souls ordained by heaven.
“For Love is a celestiall harmonie,
Of likely harts composd of starres concent,
Which joyne together in sweet sympathie,
To work ech others joy and true content,
Which they have harbourd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowres, where they did see
And know ech other here belov’d to bee.
“Then wrong it were that any other twaine
Should in loves gentle band combyned bee,
But those whom heaven did at first ordaine,
And made out of one mould the more t’ agree:
For all that like the beautie which they see,
Streight do not love: for love is not so light,
As straight to burne at first beholders sight.”
(ll. 200–213.)
He then explains the Platonist’s views of love as a passion. Ficino had stated that the lover is not satisfied with the mere visual image of the beloved, but refashions it in accordance with the idea of the beloved which he has; for the two souls departing from heaven at the same time were informed with the same idea. The lover, then, when he beholds the person of the beloved, sees a form which has been made more in conformity with the idea than his own body has; consequently he loves it, and by refining the visual image of the beloved from all the grossness of sense, he beholds in it the idea of his own soul and that of the beloved; and in the light of this idea he praises the beloved’s beauty. (VI. 6.) So Spenser:
“But they which love indeede, looke otherwise,
With pure regard and spotlesse true intent,
Drawing out of the object of their eyes,
A more refyned forme, which they present
Unto their mind, voide of all blemishment;
Which it reducing to her first perfection,
Beholdeth free from fleshes frayle infection.”
(ll. 214–220.)
Here there is no distinction of lover and beloved; but soon Spenser passes on to consider the subject from the lover’s standpoint:
“And then conforming it unto the light,
Which in it selfe it hath remaining still
Of that first Sunne, yet sparckling in his sight,
Thereof he fashions in his higher skill,
An heavenly beautie to his fancies will,
And it embracing in his mind entyre,
The mirrour of his owne thought doth admyre.
“Which seeing now so inly faire to be,
As outward it appeareth to the eye,
And with his spirits proportion to agree,
He thereon fixeth all his fantasie,
And fully setteth his felicitie,
Counting it fairer, then it is indeede,
And yet indeede her fairenesse doth exceede.”
(ll. 221–234.)
With a description of the many beauties the lover sees in the beloved—the thousands of graces that make delight on her forehead—the poem ends. (ll. 235–270.)
The feature in this theory of Platonism which appealed to Spenser was the high nature of the beauty seen in comeliness of form, as explained by its doctrine of æsthetics. A sense of beauty as a spiritual quality spreading its divine radiance over the objects of the outward world envelops the poem in a golden haze of softened feeling characteristic of Spenser’s poetic manner. The scientific terms of the Platonic theorist melt away into the gentle flow of his verse. The soul being informed with its idea, as Ficino had put it, has become in his “Hymne in Honour of Beautie” that “faire lampe” which has “resemblence of that heavenly light” of beauty (ll. 102, 124); or the idea of beauty in the soul is spoken of as
“the light
Which in it selfe it hath remaining still;”
(ll. 221–222.)
or, as the lover’s “spirits proportion.”
In accordance with the same sense of beauty Spenser in the “Hymne in Honour of Love” stops to explain away the cruelty which love seems to show in afflicting him, an innocent sufferer, by calling attention to the fact that such suffering is necessary to try the lover’s sincerity in his worship of so high a thing as the beauty of his beloved. Love is not physical desire, but a soaring of the mind to a sight of that high beauty,
“For love is Lord of truth and loialtie,
Lifting himselfe out of the lowly dust,
On golden plumes up to the purest skie,
Above the reach of loathly sinfull lust,
· · · · ·
“Such is the powre of that sweet passion,
That it all sordid basenesse doth expell,
And the refyned mynd doth newly fashion
Unto a fairer forme which now doth dwell
In his high thought, that would it selfe excell;
Which he beholding still with constant sight,
Admires the mirrour of so heavenly light.”
(ll. 179–199.)
And even though the lover may not win the good graces of his lady, he is happy in the sight of her beauty.
“And though he do not win his wish to end,
Yet thus farre happie he him selfe doth weene,
That heavens such happie grace did to him lend,
No thing on earth so heavenly, to have seene,
His harts enshrined saint, his heavens queene,
Fairer then fairest, in his fayning eye,
Whose sole aspect he counts felicitye.”
(ll. 214–220.)
Because of this love of beauty, Spenser was able to find more material in the Renaissance criticism of Platonic æsthetics for his “Hymne in Honour of Beautie” than in the corresponding hymn on love. Besides the conception of the creative power of love, his “Hymne in Honour of Love” draws upon a few suggestions which could dignify the power of the passion. The saying of Diotima to Socrates in the “Symposium,”—“Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality” (208)—is made to do service in differentiating the passion of love in men from that in beasts. By satisfying physical desire beasts
“all do live, and moved are
To multiply the likenesse of their kynd,
Whilest they seeke onely, without further care,
To quench the flame, which they in burning fynd:
But man, that breathes a more immortal mynd,
Not for lusts sake, but for eternitie,
Seekes to enlarge his lasting progenie.”
(ll. 102–109.)
Further, to add a sense of mystery to the nativity of the god of love, Spenser refers to the myth of Penia and Poros, and also in the manner of the Platonist tries to reconcile two contrary assertions about the mysterious nature of love’s birth. In Diotima’s account of “the lesser mysteries of love,” she says that love is the offspring of the god Poros or Plenty, and of Penia or Poverty. (“Symposium,” 203.) In Phædrus’s oration on love he began by affirming that “Love is a mighty god, and wonderful among gods and men, but especially wonderful in his birth. For he is the eldest of the gods.” (“Symposium,” 178.) Agathon, however, differs from his friend Phædrus in saying that love is the youngest of the gods. (“Symposium,” 195.) This disagreement was a source of perplexity to the Platonist of the Renaissance; thus Ficino gives a division of his commentary to a reconciliation of these statements. (V. 10.) He solves the difficulty by stating that when the Creator conceived the order of angels, with whom Ficino identifies the gods of ancient mythology, the love guiding God was before the angels, hence is the most ancient of the gods; but when the created angelic intelligences turned in their love to the Creator, the impelling love was the youngest, coming after the creation of the angels. According to these notions of the nativity of the god of love, Spenser opens his “Hymne.”
“Great god of might, that reignest in the mynd,
And all the bodie to thy hest doest frame,
Victor of gods, subduer of mankynd,
That doest the Lions and fell Tigers tame,
Making their cruell rage thy scornefull game,
And in their roring taking great delight;
Who can expresse the glorie of thy might?
“Or who alive can perfectly declare,
The wondrous cradle of thine infancie?
When thy great mother Venus first thee bare,
Begot of Plentie and of Penurie,
Though elder then thine owne nativitie:
And yet a chyld, renewing still thy yeares;
And yet the eldest of the heavenly Peares.”
(ll. 46–59.)
Spenser’s “Hymnes” are the most comprehensive exposition of love in the light of Platonic theory in English. The attempt, however, which he made to place love upon a basis of philosophic fact is imitated in a much less prominent way in other poets. Spenser himself refers to the subject in “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.” In that poem Colin unfolds to Cuddy the high nature of love’s perfection. At the court, he says, love is the all-engrossing topic (ll. 778–786); but it is love so shamefully licentious that its “mightie mysteries” are profaned. (l. 790.) Love, however, is a religious thing and should be so conceived. To support this statement Colin explains the creative power of love manifest throughout the wide range of nature (ll. 843–868) and points out that in man it is a love of beauty. (ll. 869–880).
In a few of Jonson’s masques there are slight attempts to dignify the subject of love in the manner of Spenser’s “Hymnes.” In “The Masque of Beauty” love is described as the creator of the universe, and beauty is mentioned as that for which the world was created. In one of the hymns occurs this stanza:
“When Love at first, did move
From out of Chaos, brightned
So was the world, and lightned
As now.
1. Echo. As now!
2. Echo. As now!
Yield Night, then to the light,
As Blackness hath to Beauty:
Which is but the same duty.
It was for Beauty that the world was made,
And where she reigns, Love’s lights admit no shade.”
In a second song a reference is made to the mysterious nativity of love.
“So Beauty on the waters stood,
When Love had sever’d earth from flood!
So when he parted air from fire,
He did with concord all inspire!
And then a motion he them taught,
That elder than himself was thought.
Which thought was, yet, the child of earth,
For Love is elder than his birth.”
In “Love’s Triumph Through Callipolis” the same ideas appear. In this masque, after the band of sensual lovers has been driven from the suburbs of the City of Beauty (Callipolis), and a lustration of the place has followed, Euclia, or “a fair glory, appears in the heavens, singing an applausive Song, or Pæan of the whole.”
“So love emergent out of chaos brought
The world to light!
And gently moving on the waters, wrought
All form to sight!
Love’s appetite
Did beauty first excite:
And left imprinted in the air
These signatures of good and fair,
Which since have flow’d, flow’d forth upon the sense
To wonder first, and then to excellence,
By virtue of divine intelligence!”
In the same masque love is defined in accordance with the myth of Penia and Poros:
“Love is the right affection of the mind,
The noble appetite of what is best:
Desire of union with the thing design’d,
But in fruition of it cannot rest.
“The father Plenty is, the mother Want,
Plenty the beauty which it wanteth draws;
Want yields itself: affording what is scant:
So both affections are the union’s cause.”
In “Love Freed From Ignorance and Folly” the sustaining power of love in keeping the parts of the universe in concord is used to combat the accusation that love is mere cruelty. Love, who is represented as a captive of the Sphynx, thus replies to the charge:
“Cruel Sphynx, I rather strive
How to keep the world alive,
And uphold it; without me,
All again would chaos be.”
In “The Barriers” where Truth and Opinion—a division of the state of knowing according to its degree of certainty common in Plato as knowledge and opinion (“Republic,” V. 476–478)—hold a discussion on marriage, an angel declares that
“Eternal Unity behind her [i.e. Truth] shines,
That fire and water, earth and air combines.”
Here under the name of Unity the true nature of love is indicated.
In Drayton’s seventh eclogue Batte replies to a charge of cruelty against love which is made by his fellow-shepherd, Borril, with the
“substancyall ryme
that to thy teeth sufficiently shall proove
there is no power to be compard to love.”
His argument is that love is the great bond of the universe.
“What is Love but the desire
of the thing that fancy pleaseth?
A holy and resistlesse fiere
weake and strong alike that ceaseth,
which not heaven hath power to let
Nor wise nature cannot smother,
whereby Phœbus doth begette
on the universal mother.
that the everlasting chaine
which together al things tied,
and unmooved them retayne
and by which they shall abide;
that concent we cleerely find
all things doth together drawe,
and so strong in every kinde
subjects them to natures law.
whose hie virtue number teaches
in which every thing dooth moove,
from the lowest depth that reaches
to the height of heaven above.”
(ll. 165–184.)
A more common appropriation of the teachings of Platonism was made in the love lyrics—chiefly the sonnet—written in the Petrarchian manner. Petrarchism was as much a manner of writing sonnets as it was a method of making love. On its stylistic side it was characterized by the use of antitheses, puns, and especially of conceits. In the Platonic theory of love and beauty a certain amount of material was offered which could be reworked into a form suited for the compact brevity of the sonnet. Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare are the three chief sonnet writers of the last decade of the sixteenth century in whose work this phase of Platonism is to be found; but its presence, though faint, can be felt in others.
One way in which this theory was applied is found in the manner in which these poets speak of the beauty of their beloved. Plato has stated that wisdom is the most lovely of all ideas, and that, were there a visible image of her, she would be transporting. (“Phædrus,” 250.) Sidney seizes upon this suggestion, and by identifying his Stella with wisdom he can frame a sonnet ending in a couplet that shall have the required epigrammatic point. He writes:
“The wisest scholler of the wight most wise,
By Phœbus doome, with sugred sentence sayes:
That vertue if it once meete with our eyes,
Strange flames of love it in our soules would rayse.
But for that man with paine this truth discries,
While he each thing in sences ballances wayes,
And so, nor will nor can behold these skyes,
Which inward Sunne to heroicke mindes displaies.
Vertue of late with vertuous care to stir
Love of himselfe, takes Stellas shape, that hee
To mortal eyes might sweetly shine in her.
It is most true, for since I did her see,
Vertues great beautie in her face I prove,
And finde defect; for I doe burne in love.”
(xxv.)
Shakespeare is able to praise the beauty of the subject of his sonnets by identifying him with the absolute beauty of the Platonic philosophy, and by describing him in accordance with this notion. Thus he confesses that his argument is simply the fair, kind, and true, back of which statement may be inferred the theory upheld by Platonism that the good, the beautiful, and the true are but different phases of one reality. His love, he says, cannot be called idolatry because his songs are directed to this theme, for only in his friend are these three themes united into one.
“Let not my love be call’d idolatry,
Nor my belovéd as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
‘Fair, kind, and true’ is all my argument,
‘Fair, kind, and true’ varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
‘Fair, kind, and true,’ have often liv’d alone,
Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.”
(cv.)
In another sonnet one phase of this argument is given a detailed treatment, and the poet’s object is to praise the beauty of his friend by describing its contrast with the beauty of earth, just as if he were speaking of absolute beauty. In this sonnet he uses the Platonic phraseology of the substance and the shadow, by which he means first, the reality that makes a thing what it is, the substance, not the matter or stuff of which it is made; and second, the reflection of that reality in the objective world, the shadow of the substance, not the obscuration of light.[[10]] He thus writes of his friend’s beauty as if it were the substance of beauty, beauty absolute, of which all other beauty is but a reflection.
“What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring and foison of the year,
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And you in every blesséd shape we know,
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.”
(liii.)
Spenser, too, praises his beloved by conceiving her as absolute beauty, of which all other objects are but shadows. In the light of her beauty all the glory of the world appears but a vain show.
“My hungry eyes through greedy covetize,
still to behold the object of their paine:
with no contentment can themselves suffize.
but having pine and having not complaine.
For lacking it they cannot lyfe sustayne,
and having it they gaze on it the more:
in their amazement lyke Narcissus vaine
whose eyes him starv’d: so plenty makes me poore.
Yet are mine eyes so filled with the store
of that faire sight, that nothing else they brooke,
but lothe the things which they did like before,
and can no more endure on them to looke.
All this worlds glory seemeth vayne to me,
and all their showes but shadowes saving she.”
(xxxv.)
In George Daniel the idea of the substance and shadow again occurs. He says that it is enough for him if he may behold his mistress’s face, although others may boast of her favors; for in contemplating her glories he sees how all other forms are but empty shadows of her perfection.
“It is Enough to me,
If I her Face may see;
Let others boast her Favours, and pretend
Huge Interests; whilst I
Adore her Modestie;
Which Tongues cannot deprave, nor Swords defend.
· · · · ·
“But while I bring
My verse to Sing
Her Glories, I am strucke with wonder, more;
And all the Formes I see,
But Emptie Shadowes bee,
Of that Perfection which I adore.
“Be silent then,
All Tongues of Men,
To Celebrate the Sex: for if you fall
To other Faces, you
Wander, and but pursue
Inferior objects, weake and partiall.”
(Ode xxiv.)
A second tenet of Platonism which was reworked into English love poetry was its conception of love. As Spenser had explained in his “Hymne in Honour of Beautie,” true love has its source in the life of two souls in heaven. (ll. 200–213.) Drummond uses the idea to explain the purity of his love.
“That learned Grecian, who did so excel
In knowledge passing sense, that he is nam’d
Of all the after-worlds divine, doth tell,
That at the time when first our souls are fram’d,
Ere in these mansions blind they come to dwell,
They live bright rays of that eternal light,
And others see, know, love, in heaven’s great height,
Not toil’d with aught to reason doth rebel.
Most true it is, for straight at the first sight
My mind me told, that in some other place
It elsewhere saw the idea of that face,
And lov’d a love of heavenly pure delight;
No wonder now I feel so fair a flame,
Sith I her lov’d ere on this earth she came.”
(“Poems.” First Pt., S. vii.)
In Vaughan the same theory of love is again referred to as a proof of the poet’s lofty passion. In “To Amoret. Walking in a Starry Evening,” he says that even were her face a distant star shining upon him, he would be sure of a sympathy between it and himself, because their minds were united in love by no accident or chance of sight, but were designed for one another.
“But, Amoret, such is my fate,
That if thy face a star
Had shin’d from far,
I am persuaded in that state,
’Twixt thee and me,
Of some predestin’d sympathy.
“For sure such two conspiring minds,
Which no accident, or sight,
Did thus unite;
Whom no distance can confine
Start, or decline,
One for another were design’d.”
(Stzs. 3, 4.)
In a second lyric, “A Song to Amoret,” he describes his love as superior to that which a “mighty amorist” could give, because it is a love that was born with his soul in heaven.
“For all these arts I’d not believe,
—No, though he should be thine—
The mighty amorist could give
So rich a heart as mine.
“Fortune and beauty thou might find,
And greater men than I:
By my true resolvèd mind
They never shall come nigh.
“For I not for an hour did love,
Or for a day desire,
But with my soul had from above
This endless, holy fire.”
(Stzs. 4–6.)
Thus far the tenets of Platonic theory have been used in a more or less direct way; but in several instances the Platonic idea is present only in the writer’s mind, and the reader is left to unravel it by his own ingenuity. Thus Shakespeare urges his friend to marry because in his death truth and beauty will both end—a possible inference being that his friend is ideal beauty.
“Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have Astronomy,
But not to tell of good, or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with Princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
Thy end is Truth’s and Beauty’s doom and date.”
(xiv.)
In another sonnet Shakespeare plays with words in an attempt to excuse his truant muse for not praising his friend’s beauty. His muse may say that since his friend is true beauty he needs no praise.
“O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?
Both truth and beauty on my love depends;
So dost thou too, and therein dignified.
Make answer, Muse; wilt thou not haply say
‘Truth needs no colour with his colour fix’d;
Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix’d?’”
But so closely identified is the praise of his friend’s beauty with the immortality conferred by poetry that Shakespeare cannot justly excuse the silence of his muse
“Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so; for’t lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages yet to be.”
(ci.)
Again, Shakespeare describes how, when absent from his friend, he is able to play with the flowers as shadows of his friend’s beauty.
“They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it Winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.”
(xcviii.)
In Spenser the lover is able to make an appeal for pity by reference to the Platonic conception of the idea of the beloved which the lover is supposed to behold in his soul.
“Leave lady in your glasse of christall clene,
your goodly selfe for evermore to vew;
and in my selfe, my inward selfe, I meane,
most lively lyke behold your semblant trew.
Within my hart, though hardly it can shew,
thing so divine to vew of earthly eye:
the fayre Idea of your celestiall hew,
and every part remaines immortally:
And were it not that, through your cruelty,
with sorrow dimmed and deformed it were:
the goodly ymage of your visnomy,
clearer than christall would therein appere.
But if your selfe in me ye playne will see,
remove the cause by which your fayre beames darkened be.”
(xlv.)
The end which this conception of making love after the manner of the Platonist served was thought to be found in a purification of love. By praising the beauty of the beloved in such lofty terms the poet was able to set off the purity of his love from any connection with mere sensual desire. Thus Spenser testifies to the ennobling power of the beauty of his beloved’s eyes.
“More then most faire, full of the living fire
Kindled above unto the maker neere:
no eies but joyes, in which al powers conspire,
that to the world naught else be counted deare.
Thrugh your bright beams doth not ye blinded guest,
shoot out his harts to base affections wound;
but Angels come to lead fraile mindes to rest
in chast desires on heavenly beauty bound.
You frame my thoughts and fashion me within,
you stop my toung, and teach my hart to speake,
you calme the storme that passion did begin,
strong thrugh your cause, but by your vertue weak,
Dark is the world, where your light shined never:
well is he borne that may behold you ever.”
(viii.)
In Sidney there is a direct reference to the power of Plato’s thought to lead the mind from the desire with which he is struggling.
“Your words, my freends me causelesly doe blame,
My young minde marde whom love doth menace so:
· · · · ·
That Plato I have reade for nought, but if he tame
Such coltish yeeres; that to my birth I owe
Nobler desires:”
(xxi.)
The application of the tenets of Platonic theory to the writing of love lyrics in the Petrarchian manner, however, was never anything more than a courtly way of making love through exaggerated conceit and fine writing. Fulke Greville saw clearly the relation between the love of woman and the love of the idea of her beauty. In the tenth sonnet of his “Cælica” he asks what can love find in a mind where all is passion; rather he says go back to
“that heavenly quire
Of Nature’s riches, in her beauties placed,
And there in contemplation feed desire,
Which till it wonder, is not rightly graced;
For those sweet glories, which you do aspire,
Must, as idea’s, only be embraced,
Since excellence in other forme enjoyed,
Is by descending to her saints destroyed.”
The love of the idea of beauty, however, in its absolute nature is nowhere present in the mass of love lyrics written between 1590 and 1600. The term is used to give title to Drayton’s “Idea,” and to denominate the object of twelve sonnets addressed by Craig to “Idea”; and anagrams on the French word for the term L’Idée, Diella and Delia, are used to name two series of poems by Linche and Samuel Daniel, respectively. Crashaw’s “Wishes” is addressed to “his (supposed) mistresse,” as an idea. No better commentary on the whole movement can be made than these words of Spenser in which it is easily seen how the method conduced only to feeding the lower desires of the soul in love. Writing in 1596, in the midst of the period when sonnet writing was most popular in England, he says, speaking of his two “Hymnes”:
“Having in the greener times of my youth, composed these former two Hymnes in the praise of Love and beautie, and finding that the same too much pleased those of like age and disposition, which being too vehemently caried with that kind of affection, do rather sucke out poyson to their strong passion, then hony to their honest delight, I was moved ... to call in the same. But being unable so to doe, by reason that many copies thereof were formerly scattered abroad, I resolved at least to amend, and by way of retraction to reforme them, making in stead of those two Hymnes of earthly or naturall love and beautie, two others of heavenly and celestiall.”
The great representative of Platonism in English poetry thus condemns the less vital phase of Platonic thought. The great weakness of the theory lay in the fact that it had no moral significance; and just here lay the great strength of Plato’s ethics. Although preaching that beauty was a spiritual thing, this phase of Platonic æsthetics never blended with the conception of the beauty of moral goodness. And it failed to do this because it is a theory not of Plato but of Plotinus, who throughout the period of the Renaissance was understood to expound the true meaning of Plato’s thought. But Plato left no system of æsthetics; Plotinus, however, constructed a theory to account for beauty in its strictest sense. Now Ficino in his propaganda of Platonic theory throughout the Renaissance interpreted Plato’s “Symposium” in the light of Plotinus and thus in his commentary, the source of all Renaissance theorizing on love, is found the theory reflected in the English poets. This fusion of Plato’s ethics with the æsthetics of Plotinus was not perfect; and to the deep moral genius of Spenser’s mind the disparity soon became evident.
The Platonic theory of love had enabled the English poets to write about their passion as a desire of enjoying the spiritual quality of beauty in their beloved. In those poets in whom the Petrarchistic manner is evident, it is the object of love on which the attention centres; only in a slight way did they treat of the nature of love as a passion. The result of the discussion of love, as opened by Platonism, ended, however, in an attempt to place love upon a purely spiritual basis and to write about it as if it were a psychological fact that was to be known by analysis. A consideration of beauty, as the object of love, is absent; attention is directed to the quality of the passion as one felt in the soul rather than by the sense; and when the attraction of woman is present in this love it is carefully differentiated from the attraction of sex. In the body of love lyrics written in the seventeenth century the distinctive traits of this passion are clearly explained.
The chief trait of this kind of love is that it concerns only the soul. The union of the lover and the beloved is simply a union of their souls which because of the high nature of the soul can triumph over time and space. The character of this union is described in Donne’s “Ecstacy.” The two lovers are described as sitting in silence, watching one another. While thus engaged their souls are so mysteriously mingled that they are mixed into one greater soul which is not subject to change. Even when the passion descends from this height to the plane of human affections there is no essential change in the purity of the love.
“Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swell’d up, to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
· · · · ·
“As, ’twixt two equal armies, Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls—which to advance their state,
Were gone out—hung ’twixt her and me.
· · · · ·
“This ecstacy doth unperplex
(We said), and tell us what we love;
We see by this, it was not sex;
We see, we saw not, what did move:
“But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix’d souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this, and that.
· · · · ·
“When love with one another so
Interanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
“We then, who are this new soul, know,
Of what we are composed, and made,
For th’ atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
· · · · ·
“And if some lover, such as we
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change when we’re to bodies gone.”
In a like strain Randolph in “A Platonic Elegy” praises his love as that founded on reason, not on sense. The true union in love, he says, is the meeting of essence with essence.
“Thus they, whose reasons love, and not their sense,
The spirits love; thus one intelligence
Reflects upon his like, and by chaste loves
In the same sphere this and that angel moves.
· · · · ·
“When essence meets with essence, and souls join
In mutual knots, that’s the true nuptial twine.
Such, lady, is my love, and such is true:
All other love is to your sex, not you.”
(ll. 31–34, 45–48.)
The great value which this purely spiritual love was supposed to possess was that it was unaffected either by time or distance. The union, not being one known to sense, could exist as well in the absence of the lovers as in the presence of both. This thought is a great comfort and is emphasized as the peculiarity in the lovers’ passion that sets it apart from the vulgar kind. Thus Donne in the song, “Soul’s Joy,” consoles his beloved with the assurance that their souls may meet though their bodies be absent.
“Soul’s joy, now I am gone,
And you alone,
—Which cannot be,
Since I must leave myself with thee,
And carry thee with me—
Yet when unto our eyes
Absence denies
Each other’s sight,
And makes to us a constant night,
When others change to light;
O give no way to grief,
But let belief
Of mutual love
This wonder to the vulgar prove,
Our bodies, not we move.
“Let not thy wit beweep
Words but sense deep;
For when we miss
By distance our hope’s joining bliss
Even then our souls shall kiss;
Fools have no means to meet,
But by their feet;
Why should our clay
Over our spirits so much sway,
To tie us to that way?
O give no way to grief, etc.”
In his “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” Donne again recurs to the subject of separation and explains by the figure of the compass how their souls will be one. The love in which the mind is bent on the objects of sense cannot admit of absence; but the love shared by Donne and his mistress is so refined that their souls suffer only an expansion and not separation in absence.
“Dull sublunary lover’s love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
“But we by a love so far refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss.
“Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
“If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
“And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.”
(Stzs. 4–8.)
Even in death this love will still live. Thus Lord Herbert explains that his love has passed over into that of the soul, and it will be as immortal as the soul.
“But since I must depart, and that our love
Springing at first but in an earthly mould
Transplanted to our souls, now doth remove
Earthly affects, which time and distance would,
Nothing now can our loves allay,
Though as the better Spirits will,
That both love us and know our ill,
We do not either all the good we may.
Thus when our Souls that must immortal be,
For our loves cannot die, nor we (unless
We die not both together) shall be free
Unto their open and eternal peace.
Sleep, Death’s Embassador, and best
Image, doth yours often so show,
That I thereby must plainly know,
Death unto us must be freedom and rest.”[[11]]
The second characteristic of this love is that it is purely contemplative, informing the mind with knowledge rather than satisfying the senses with pleasure. Habington has left a poem entitled “To the World. The Perfection of Love,” in which he contrasts this love in which the soul is engaged with thoughts with the love of sense.
“You who are earth, and cannot rise
Above your sence,
Boasting the envyed wealth which lyes
Bright in your mistris’ lips or eyes,
Betray a pittyed eloquence.
“That, which doth joyne our soules, so light
And quicke doth move,
That, like the eagle in his flight,
It doth transcend all humane sight,
Lost in the element of love.
“You poets reach not this, who sing
The praise of dust
But kneaded, when by theft you bring
The rose and lilly from the spring,
Τ’ adorne the wrinckled face of lust.
“When we speake love, nor art, nor wit
We glosse upon:
Our soules engender, and beget
Ideas which you counterfeit
In your dull propagation.
“While time seven ages shall disperse,
Wee’le talke of love,
And when our tongues hold no commerse,
Our thoughts shall mutually converse;
And yet the blood no rebell prove.
“And though we be of severall kind,
Fit for offence:
Yet are we so by love refin’d,
From impure drosse we are all mind,
Death could not more have conquer’d sence.”
By virtue of this contemplation in love the passion was freed from any disturbing element due to absence, just as the restriction of love to the soul had been thought to do. Vaughan boasts to Amoret that he can dispense with a sight of her face or with a kiss because when absent from her he can court the mind.
“Just so base, sublunary lovers’ hearts
Fed on loose profane desires,
May for an eye
Or face comply:
But those remov’d, they will as soon depart,
And show their art,
And painted fires.
“Whilst I by pow’rful love, so much refin’d,
That my absent soul the same is,
Careless to miss
A glance or kiss,
Can with these elements of lust and sense
Freely dispense,
And court the mind.”
In the examples thus far given, the character of the passion as shared by lover and beloved has been merely described. There was an attempt made in some of this poetry to define love as if it were a something to be analyzed—a product, as it were, of psychological elaboration. Vaughan has indicated the two traits in the love lyrist of the seventeenth century, when he gives the following title to a lyric,—“To Amoret, of the Difference ’Twixt Him and Other Lovers, and What True Love Is.” In defining “What True Love Is,” the poets show that it cannot be desire, but is rather an essence pure in itself, and in one instance it is described as something unknowable either to sense or to mind.
Donne has left a letter in verse “To the Countess of Huntingdon,” in which he carefully explains how love cannot be desire. Sighing and moaning may be love, but it is love made in a weak way; love should never cast one down, but should elevate.
“I cannot feel the tempest of a frown;
I may be raised by love, but not thrown down;
Though I can pity those sigh twice a day,
I hate that thing whispers itself away.
Yet since all love is fever, who to trees
Doth talk, doth yet in love’s cold ague freeze.
’Tis love, but with such fatal weakness made,
That it destroys itself with its own shade.”
(ll. 27–34.)
At first love was mere desire, ignorant of its object; but now love is a matter of the soul, and it is profane to call rages of passion love.
“As all things were one nothing, dull and weak,
Until this raw disorder’d heap did break,
And several desires led parts away,
Water declined with earth, the air did stay,
Fire rose, and each from other but untied,
Themselves unprison’d were and purified;
So was love, first in vast confusion hid,
An unripe willingness which nothing did,
A thirst, an appetite which had no ease,
That found a want, but knew not what would please.
What pretty innocence in those days moved!
Man ignorantly walk’d by her he loved;
Both sigh’d and interchanged a speaking eye;
Both trembled and were sick: both knew not why.”
(ll. 37–51.)
This state may well become this early age, but now
“passion is to woman’s love, about,
Nay, farther off, than when we first set out.
It is not love that sueth, or doth contend;
Love either conquers, or but meets a friend;
Man’s better part consists of purer fire,
And finds itself allow’d, ere it desire.”
(ll. 55–60.)
The reason for this lies in the fact that love begins in the soul, and not in the sight.
“He much profanes whom valiant heats do move
To style his wandering rage of passion, Love.
Love that imparts in everything delight,
Is fancied in the soul, not in the sight.”
(ll. 125–128.)
In Jonson’s “Epode” in “The Forest,” the same differentiation of love from passion is present, and an attempt is made to define love as an essence. The love of the present is nothing but raging passion.
“The thing they here call Love, is blind desire,
Arm’d with bow, shafts, and fire;
Inconstant, like the sea, of whence ’tis born,
Rough, swelling, like a storm.”
True love, however, is an essence, a calmness, a peace.
“Now, true love
No such effects doth prove;
That is an essence far more gentle, fine,
Pure, perfect, nay divine;
· · · · ·
this bears no brands, nor darts,
To murder different hearts,
But in a calm, and godlike unity,
Preserves community.”
In Donne in his “Love’s Growth,” there is an expression of doubt whether his love can be as pure as he thought it was, because it seems to suffer an increase in the spring, and is not a thing without component elements. But if love is no quintessence, he says, it must be mixed with alien passions and thus not be pure. He silences his doubts, however, by explaining after the analogy of concentric rings of waves of water about the centre of disturbance how his love is one and unelemented.
“I scarce believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.
“But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix’d of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
“Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
· · · · ·
“If, as in water stirr’d more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee.”
(I. 34, 35.)
Again, in “The Dream,” he fears the strength of his beloved’s affection if it is mingled with a sense of fear, or shame, or honor.
“That love is weak where fear’s as strong as he;
T’is not all spirit, pure and brave,
If mixture it of fear, shame, honour have;”
(I. 39.)
This refinement of the subject of love is carried to an even greater excess. Love is such a passion that it can be defined only by negatives. It is above apprehension, because sense and soul both can know the object of their love. In the poem of Donne’s “Negative Love,” in which this idea is expressed, it is probable that the poet has in mind the description of The One which Plotinus outlines in the “Enneads.” Summing up his discussion of The One, or The Good, in which he has pointed out how it is above intellect, Plotinus says: “If, however, anything is present with the good, it is present with it in a way transcending knowledge and intelligence and a cosensation of itself, since it has not anything different from itself.... On this account says Plato [in the “Parmenides,” speaking of the one] that neither language can describe, nor sense nor science apprehend it, because nothing can be predicated of it as present with it.” (“Enneads,” VI. vii. 41.) Transferring this idea of the transcendency of The One to his love, Donne had the form of thought for his lyric.
“I never stoop’d so low, as they
Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey;
Seldom to them which soar no higher
Than virtue, or the mind to admire.
For sense and understanding may
Know what gives fuel to their fire;
My love, though silly, is more brave;
For may I miss whene’er I crave,
If I know yet what I would have.
“If that be simply perfectest,
Which can by no way be express’d
But negatives, my love is so.
To all, which all love, I say no.
If any who deciphers best,
What we know not—ourselves—can know,
Let him teach me that nothing. This
As yet my ease and comfort is,
Though I speed not, I cannot miss.”
This reference to the knowledge of self also occurs in Plotinus in the preceding sentence to the passage already extracted. “For the mandate,” he says, “‘know thyself,’ was delivered to those, who, on account of the multitude which they possess, find it requisite to enumerate themselves, and in order that by knowing the number and quality of the things contained in their essence, they may perceive that they have not a knowledge of all things, or, indeed, of anything [which they ought to know], and who are ignorant over what they ought to rule, and what is the characteristic of their nature.” (VI. vii. 41.)
This highly metaphysical conception of love, the character of which has been shown in a few selected examples, became in the course of time known as “Platonic Love.” Scattered throughout the lyric poetry of the seventeenth century may be found certain poems labelled “Platonic Love.” Their presence among the author’s work is no testimony whatsoever that it is colored by any strain of Platonism, but merely signifies that at one time in his career the poet wrote love lyrics according to the prevailing manner of the time. For about 1634 Platonic love was a court fad. Howell, writing under date of June 3, 1634, says: “The Court affords little News at present, but that there is a Love call’d Platonick Love which much sways there of late: it is a Love abstracted from all corporeal gross Impressions and sensual Appetite, but consists in Contemplations and Ideas of the Mind, not in any carnal Fruition. This Love sets the Wits of the Town on work; and they say there will be a Mask shortly of it, whereof Her Majesty and her Maids of Honour will be part.”[[12]]
The masque referred to is D’Avenant’s “The Temple of Love” (1634). In Thomas Heywood’s “Love’s Mistress or the Queen’s Masque” (1640) the myth of Cupid and Psyche is interpreted in accordance with the notion of Platonic love; and in D’Avenant’s “Platonick Lovers” (1636) the subject of Platonic love is ridiculed. It is probable that the rise of this custom at the court was due to the presence of Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles I. Margaret of Valois had made Platonic love known in France; and had shown how licentiousness of conduct was compatible with its practice. “She had a high harmonious soul,” writes Howell,[[13]] “much addicted to music and the sweets of love, and oftentimes in a Platonic way; She would have this Motto often in her mouth; Voulez vous cesser d’aymer? possedez la chose aymée.... She had strains of humors and transcendencies beyond the vulgar, and delighted to be call’d Venus Urania.” It is probable that the young queen wished to follow such an example and made known to the English court this new way of love gallantry. The practice of making love in the Platonic way grew so popular at any rate as to become a question of serious discussion. John Norris says, “Platonic Love is a thing in every Bodies Mouth,” and after comparing it with the love described by Plato in the “Symposium,” he concludes, “But why this should be call’d by the name of Platonic Love, the best reason that I know of, is because People will have it so.”[[14]] Algernon Sidney has left an account of love as a desire of enjoying beauty. He concludes that since man is midway between angels and beasts, his love will share in the peculiarities of both the celestial and the sensual passion.[[15]] Walter Charleton ridicules the subject and unmasks its immorality, although his purpose is not in any way to purify the morals of his readers.[[16]] Robert Boyle wrote, but did not publish, a series of letters, “wherein [among other subjects] Platonic love was explicated, celebrated, and wherein the cure of love was proposed and prosecuted.”[[17]]
The ideas expressed in these poems on Platonic love are not essentially different from those in the lyrics which have been already discussed. At times, as in Stanley’s “Love’s Innocence,” the Platonic manner is understood as one devoid of all danger. It was in this way that Vaughan looked upon his love for Amoret. “You have here,” he says, “a flame, bright only in its own innocence, that kindles nothing but a generous thought, which though it may warm the blood, the fire at highest is but Platonic; and the commotion, within these limits, excludes danger.”[[18]] On the other hand, Carew’s “Song to a Lady, not yet Enjoyed by her Husband,” shows how the stock ideas was used to cloak the immorality of the poet’s thought. George Daniel has left a series of poems revealing the several phases of this love ranging between the two extremes. He writes one “To Cinthia, coying it,” in which its innocence is preached. “To Cinthia Converted” describes the union of the two souls. “To the Platonicke Pretender” warns the ladies from listening to this love when taught by a libertine. “Pure Platonicke” explains the spiritual nature of the passion by contrast with sensual love. “Court-Platonicke” shows how at court it was used merely as a means to an improper end. “Anti-Platonicke” recites the feelings of the sensual lover.[[19]] In Lord Herbert are found two other phases of this love. The first and second of his poems named “Platonick Love” are complimentary poems addressed to a lady; the first, telling her how the love inspired by her refines his soul, and the second celebrating Platonic love in general application.
“For as you can unto that height refine
All Loves delights, as while they do incline
Unto no vice, they so become divine,
We may as well attain your excellence,
As, without help of any outward sense
Would make us grow a pure Intelligence.”
(Stz. 2.)
In the third “Platonicke Love” the lover is represented as wavering between despair and hope with a slight balance in favor of the latter. He is disconsolate because he finds no hope
“when my matchless Mistress were inclin’d
To pity me, ’twould scarcely make me glad,
The discomposing of so fair a mind
Being that which would to my Affections add.”
(Stz. 1.)
He finds hope, however, in the thought that
“though due merit I cannot express,
Yet she shall know none ever lov’d for less
Or easier reward. Let her remain
Still great and good, and from her Happiness
My chief contentment I will entertain.”
(Stz. 7.)
He ends with hope still living:
“Then, hope, sustain thy self: though thou art hid
Thou livest still, and must till she forbid;
For when she would my vows and love reject,
They would a Being in themselves project,
Since infinites as they yet never did,
Nor could conclude without some good effect.”
(Stz. 16.)
Platonic love, as such an example proves, was but synonymous with hopeless love.
Platonic love, then, meant either a love devoid of all sensual desire, an innocent or hopeless passion, or it was a form of gallantry used to cloak immorality. Its one characteristic notion was that true love consisted in a union of soul with soul, mind with mind, or essence with essence. This idea of restricting love to the experience of soul as opposed to the enjoyment of sense is the one notion which runs beneath many of the love lyrics written in the seventeenth century; and it is the point attacked by opponents. In John Cleveland, “To Cloris, a Rapture,” and in Campion’s “Song”[[20]] the poets exhort their beloved to enjoy this high union of soul. In Carew’s “To My Mistress in Absence,” in Lovelace’s “To Lucasta. Going beyond the Seas,” and in Cowley’s “Friendship in Absence,” the triumph of love over time and space is explained by the mingling of souls in true love. In Sedley’s “The Platonick” and in Ayres’s “Platonic Love” are found examples of the hopelessness of the passion. In Aytoun’s “Platonic Love” which was taken by Suckling to form a poem—the “Song,” beginning, “If you refuse me once”—the lover modestly confesses that he cannot rise to the heights of such a pure passion, and requests a more easy way. In Cleveland’s “The Anti-Platonick” and “Platonick Love,” in Brome’s “Epithalamy,” in Cowley’s “Platonick Love” and “Answer to the Platonicks,” and in Cartwright’s “No Platonique Love,” the claims of the opponents are expressed in all the grossness of Restoration immorality.
The atmosphere in which the metaphysical treatment of love flourished was intensely intellectual. The poets in whom the strain is clearest were trying to accomplish two thing: they wished to oppose the idea of passion in love, and they endeavored to account for the attraction of sex in the love which they themselves experienced. However much these poets wished to exclude the notion of sex, their minds were constantly busied in trying to solve the source of its power. In Donne, the greatest representative of the metaphysical manner, this purpose is very evident. He wrote his longest poem, “An Anatomy of the World,” to show how, by reason of the death of a certain young woman, “the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented.” In reply to Jonson’s criticism, that this poem was “full of blasphemies,” Donne remarked that “he described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she was.”[[21]] Here lies the secret of Donne’s treatment of woman; he was interested in her, not as a personality, but as an idea. In solving the nature of this idea he recurred to certain Platonic conceptions by which he thought to explain the source of her power.
These Platonic conceptions are two. Woman is identified with virtue; she is the source of all virtue in the world, others being virtuous only by participating in her virtue. Thus in a letter “To the Countess of Huntingdon” he shows how virtue has been raised from her fallen state on earth by appearing in woman. She was once scattered among men, but now summed up in one woman.
“If the world’s age and death be argued well
By the sun’s fall, which now towards earth doth bend,
Then we might fear that virtue, since she fell
So low as woman, should be near her end.
“But she’s not stoop’d, but raised; exiled by men
She fled to heaven, that’s heavenly things, that’s you;
She was in all men thinly scatter’d then,
But now a mass contracted in a few.
“She gilded us, but you are gold; and she
Informed us, but transubstantiates you.
Soft dispositions, which ductile be,
Elixirlike, she makes not clean, but new.
“Though you a wife’s and mother’s name retain,
’Tis not as woman, for all are not so;
But virtue, having made you virtue, is fain
To adhere in these names, her and you to show.
“Else, being alike pure, we should neither see;
As, water being into air rarefied,
Neither appear, till in one cloud they be,
So, for our sakes, you do low names abide.”
Beneath this torture of conceits may be seen the idea that woman is that very virtue of which Plato has spoken in his “Phædrus.” Sidney has used the idea to compliment Stella; but Donne’s purpose is to show how woman, as woman, is to be identified with it, and that the differentiation in the concept resulting from the fact that she may be a wife or a mother is due to the necessity that this virtue become visible on earth.
The second Platonic conception through which Donne conveys his idea of woman’s nature is the universal soul. In his lyric, “A Fever,” he says, speaking of the object of his love:
“But yet thou canst not die, I know;
To leave this world behind, is death;
But when thou from this world wilt go,
The whole world vapours with thy breath.
“Or if, when thou, the world’s soul, go’st
It stay, ’tis but thy carcase then.”
And in “An Anatomy of the World” this idea of the death of the world in the death of a woman is explained at length.
Holding thus to this idea of woman, and striving to differentiate love from passion, Donne was able to confine his notion of love to the soul; and through the metaphysical manner of his poetic art he was able to express this notion in the most perplexing intricacies of thought. As Dryden has said, “he affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign: and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.”[[22]] By imitating his style the other lyric poets of the seventeenth century produced the species of love poems which have already been analyzed. His skill and his sincerity of aim are lacking in their verse; and the result was either a weak dilution of his thought or a striving for his manner in praising a lower conception of love.