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]]