When Lust
By unchast 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,
Ling’ring, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body, that it lov’d,
And linkt itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.
Mask at Ludlow Castle.
This philosophy of imbruted souls becoming thick shadows is so remote from any ideas entertained at present of the effects of Sin, and at the same time is so agreeable to the notions of Plato (a double favourite of Milton, for his own sake, and for the sake of his being a favourite with his Italian Masters), that there is not the least question of its being taken from the Phaedo.
Ἡ τοιαύτη ψυχὴ βαρύνεταί τε καὶ ἕλκεται πάλιν εἰς τὸν ὁρατὸν τόπον, φόβῳ τοῦ ἀειδοῦς τε καὶ ᾅδου, περὶ τὰ μνήματα καὶ τοὺς τάφους κυλινδουμένη· περὶ ἃ δὴ καὶ ὤφθη ἄττα ψυχῶν σκιοειδῆ φαντάσματα, οἷα παρέχονται αἱ τοιαῦται ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα, αἱ μὴ καθαρῶς ἀπολυθεῖσαι——
There is no wonder, now one sees the fountain Milton drew from, that, in admiration of this poetical philosophy (which nourished the fine spirits of that time, though it corrupted some), he should make the other speaker in the scene cry out, as in a fit of extasy,
How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo’s lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns—
The very ideas which Lord Shaftesbury has employed in his encomiums on the Platonic philosophy; and the very language which Dr. Henry More would have used, if he had known to express himself so soberly.
3. Having said so much of Plato, whom the Italian writers have helped to make known to us, let me just observe one thing, to our present purpose, of those Italian writers themselves. One of their peculiarities, and almost the first that strikes us, is a certain sublime mystical air which runs through all their fictions. We find them a sort of philosophical fanatics, indulging themselves in strange conceits “concerning the Soul, the chyming of celestial orbs, and presiding Syrens.” One may tell by these marks, that they doted on the fancies of Plato; if we had not, besides, direct evidence for this conclusion. Tasso says of himself, and he applauds the same thing in Petrarch, “Lessi già tutte l’opere di Platone, è mi rimassero molti semi nella menta della sua dottrina.” I take these words from Menage, who has much more to the same purpose, in his elegant observations on the Amintas of this poet.
One sees then where Milton had been for that imagery in the Arcades,
then listen I
To the celestial Syrens’ harmony,
That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres
And sing to those that hold the vital shears,
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of Gods and men is wound.
The best comment on these verses is a passage in the xth Book of Plato’s Republic, where this whole system, of Syrens quiring to the fates, is explained or rather delivered.