His robe turn’d white, and flow’d upon his feet;
Fair rounds of radiant points invest his hair;
Celestial odors breathe thro’ purple air;
And wings, whose colors glitter’d on the day,
Wide at his back their gradual plumes display.
The form ethereal bursts upon his sight,
And moves in all the majesty of light.’”
“Do you suppose that the Gesta was known to the poet?” asked Frederick Thompson.
“Hardly—he is far more likely to have taken the incidents of his poem from the Divine Dialogues of the Platonist Moore; who affixes to his version of the tale some reflections well worth reading. ‘The affairs of this world,’ says the old Platonist, ‘are like a curious but intricately contrived comedy; and we cannot judge of the tendency of what is past—or acting at present, before the entrance of the last act, which shall bring in righteousness in triumph; who though she hath abided many a brunt, and has been very cruelly and despitefully used in the world, yet at last, according to our desires, we shall see the knight overcome the giant.’ ... But impatiently to call for vengeance upon every enormity before that time, is rudely to overturn the stage before the entrance of the fifth act, out of ignorance of the plot of the comedy; and to prevent the solemnity of the general judgment, by more paltry and particular executions.”
“Thanks for the old Platonist’s remarks,” said Herbert. “I could have wished them more elaborate, were not Schiller’s Fridolin waiting for the conclusion of them, to come upon our stage.”