So every spirit, as it is most pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace, and amiable sight;
For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form, and doth the body make.
[Footnote: Hymn in Honour of Beauty.]
What an absurd test! one is likely to exclaim, thinking of a swarthy Sappho, a fat Chaucer, a bald Shakespeare, a runt Pope, a club-footed Byron, and so on, almost ad infinitum. Would not a survey of notable geniuses rather indicate that the poet's dreams arise because he is like the sensitive plant of Shelley's allegory, which
Desires what it hath not, the beautiful?[Footnote: The Sensitive
Plant.]
Spenser himself foresaw our objections and felt obliged to modify his pronouncement, admitting—
Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drownd,
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness of the substance found,
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground
That will not yield unto her form's direction,
But is preformed with some foul imperfection.
But the modern poet is not likely to yield his point so easily as does Spenser. Rather he will cast aside historical records as spurious, and insist that all genuine poets have been beautiful. Of the many poems on Sappho written in the last century, not one accepts the tradition that she was ill-favored, but restores a flower-like portrait of her from Alcæus' line,
Violet-weaving, pure, sweet-smiling Sappho.
As for Shakespeare, here follows a very characteristic idealization of his extant portrait:
A pale, plain-favored face, the smile where-of
Is beautiful; the eyes gray, changeful, bright,
Low-lidded now, and luminous as love,
Anon soul-searching, ominous as night,
Seer-like, inscrutable, revealing deeps
Where-in a mighty spirit wakes or sleeps.
[Footnote: C. L. Hildreth, At the Mermaid (1889).]
The most unflattering portrait is no bar to poets' confidence in their brother's beauty, yet they are happiest when fashioning a frame for geniuses of whom we have no authentic description. "The love-dream of his unrecorded face," [Footnote: Rossetti, Sonnet on Chatterton.] has led to many an idealized portrait of such a long-dead singer. Marlowe has been the favorite figure of this sort with which the fancies of our poets have played. From the glory and power of his dramas their imaginations inevitably turn to