“Wherefore the soul cut off from lowly sense
By harmlesse fate, far greater libertie
Must gain: for when it hath departed hence
(As all things else) should it not backward hie
From whence it came? but such divinitie
Is in our souls that nothing lesse than God
Could send them forth (as Plato’s schools descrie)
Wherefore when they retreat a free abode
They’ll find, unlesse kept off by Nemesis just rod.”
(II. 14.)

In this life of union the soul will realize the deep fecundity of her own nature; for in her are innate ideas. To establish this theory of innate ideas into which Plato’s theory of reminiscence has been transformed in Plotinus (cf. “Enneads,” IV. iii. 25), More educes four considerations. They must exist because (1) like is known only by like (II. 31); (2) no object or number of objects can give the soul a universal concept (II. 36); (3) the apprehension of incorporeal things cannot be made by sense, therefore the soul must have the measure of such within her own nature (II. 38, 39); and (4) the process of learning shows that it is education, or the drawing out of the mind what was in it potentially (II. 42). Inasmuch, then, as innate ideas exist within the mind, called out by experience in life, how much more will they be evoked in that high union with God!

“But sith our soul with God himself may meet,
Inacted by his life, I cannot see
What scruple then remains that moven might
Least doubt but that she wakes with open eye,
When fate her from this body doth untie.
Wherefore her choisest forms do then arise,
Rowz’d up by union and large sympathy
With Gods own spright: she plainly then descries
Such plentitude of life, as she could nere devise.”
(III. 2.)

But this union of the soul with The One may be thought to obliterate self-identity after death and teach only a universal absorption of all souls into The One. To combat this idea More contends in his “Anti-monopsychia” that by virtue of the “Deiformity” of the soul, by which he means its ability to be joined with God, the soul in death is so

“quickned with near Union
With God, that now wish’d for vitalitie
Is so encreas’d, that infinitely sh’ has fun
Herself, her deep’st desire unspeakably hath wonne.
“And deep desire is the deepest act,
The most profound and centrall energie,
The very selfnesse of the soul, which backt
With piercing might, she breaks out, forth doth flie
From dark contracting death, and doth descrie
Herself unto herself; so thus unfold
That actual life she straightwayes saith, is I.”
(Stz. 35, 36.)

In the “Psychathanasia” the Plotinian doctrines of the immanent unity of The One and of the mystical union of the soul with it are not so much present as positive arguments incorporated in the sequence of thought, but are felt as controlling ideas in the mind of the writer. The reason for this lies in the fact that in the argument of Plotinus (IV. vii) these two truths of his philosophy are not specifically elaborated. To More, however, as indeed to all students of Plotinian metaphysics, these are the significant ideas of his system. More thus brings them in at opportune times throughout his argument in “Psychathanasia.”

The conception of the ever present unity of The One in all things is the fundamental idea in the first division of his thought. The tenacity with which he clings to this doctrine is remarkable. His argument had brought him to the point where he had shown that all life—of plants and animals, as well as of men—was immortal. What, then, is the state of the plantal and animal soul after death? (I. ii. 49–53.) More does not answer directly, but replies that although men cannot know this, it is not permitted to reason it down.

“But it’s already clear that ’tis not right
To reason down the firm subsistencie
Of things from ignorance of their propertie.”
(I. ii. 59.)

Consequently when he comes to consider man’s immortality, he says that all the preceding argument—the general reflection on the “self-motion and centrall stabilitie” of the soul—may be dismissed as needless.

“Onely that vitalitie,
That doth extend this great Universall,
And move th’ inert Materialitie
Of great and little worlds, that keep in memorie.”
(II. i. 7.)

It is because of the firm conviction with which he holds to the conception of the pervading unity of The One that he expands the idea at length in the third and fourth cantos of the first book.

The second idea, that of the mystical union of the individual soul with The One, is an incentive to More’s thought and feelings throughout the course of his entire argument. From the fact that the soul can dive as deep as matter, and rise to the height of a blissful union with God, he derives the necessary inspiration for his “mighty task.”

“This is the state of th’ ever-moving soul,
Whirling about upon its circling wheel;
Certes to sight it variously doth roll,
And as men deem full dangerously doth reel,
But oft when men fear most, itself doth feel
In happiest plight conjoin’d with that great Sun
Of lasting blisse, that doth himself reveal
More fully then, by that close union,
Though men, that misse her here, do think her quite undone.”
(I. ii. 8.)

When in the course of his argument he arrives at a discussion of the rational power of the soul, he launches out into a treatment of the vast scope of man’s will and mind which

“should bring forth that live Divinity
Within ourselves, if once God would consent
To shew his specious form and nature eminent:
“For here it lies like colours in the night
Unseen and unregarded, but the sunne
Displayes the beauty and the gladsome plight
Of the adorned earth, while he doth runne
His upper stage. But this high prize is wonne
By curbing sense and the self seeking life
(True Christian mortification)
Thus God will his own self in us revive,
If we to mortifie our straightened selves do strive.”
(II. iii. 12, 13.)

Again, when his argument brings him to the point at which the independence of soul from body is to be proved, he breaks out with an exclamation of the bliss of that union of soul with God, when

“reason shines out bright,
And holy love with mild serenity
Doth hug her harmlesse self in this her purity;”
(III. ii. 28.)

and passes on to a description of The One as seen in the vision

“Unplac’d, unparted, one close Unity,
Yet omnipresent; all things, yet but one;
Not streak’d with gaudy multiplicity,
Pure light without discolouration,
Stable without circumvolution,
Eternal rest, joy without passing sound.”
(III. ii. 36.)

Finally in the last canto of his third book he testifies to the vanity of that knowledge of the reasons for the soul’s immortality, even as he had given them (III. ii. 11), and confesses that the only sure stay in the storm of life is a faith in “the first Good.”

“But yet, my Muse, still take an higher flight,
Sing of Platonick Faith in the first Good,
That Faith that doth our souls to God unite
So strongly, tightly, that the rapid floud
Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud
Can stain, nor strike us off from th’ unity,
Wherein we steadfast stand, unshak’d, unmov’d,
Engrafted by a deep vitality
The prop and stay of things is Gods benignity.”
(III. iv. 14.)

As in his “Psychozoia” it was noted how the omnipresence of Psyche appealed to More’s religious sense of the nearness of God to His children, so in his other treatises, especially his “Psychathanasia,” the mystical union of the soul with The One is for More another name for the love of God as known in the soul of the Christian. The Christian religion had taught that God is love, a conception far removed from Platonism, whether of the dialogues or of the “Enneads” of Plotinus. But the tendency to find in Platonism a rational sanction for religious truth was so strong in the theology of the Cambridge school, to which More belonged, that this conception of God as love—which, indeed, is held by the Christian not as an idea but as a fact of his inmost religious experience—was interpreted in the light of the speculative mysticism of Plotinus; and thus the formless One, the ultra-metaphysical principle above all being, became the Christian God of love.

III. ETERNITY OF THE SOUL AND OF MATTER

In the work of Vaughan and Spenser two distinct phases of another form of Platonic idealism are presented: one in which the poet looks back upon eternity as a fact of the soul’s past experience, and the other in which he directs a forward glance to the future when the soul shall find its eternal rest.

In the expression of his sense of eternity, Vaughan recurs to the doctrine of the preëxistence of the soul as it is expounded in Plato. In Vaughan this idea is felt as an influence either affording the substance of his thought or determining the nature of his imagery. The idea which Vaughan carries over into his own poetry is found in Plato’s account in the “Phædrus” of the preëxistence of the soul in a world of pure ideas before its descent into the body. “There was a time,” says Plato, “when with the rest of the happy band they [i.e. the human souls] saw beauty shining in brightness: we philosophers following in the train of Zeus, others in company with other gods; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we held shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell.” (“Phædrus,” 250.)

This idea occurs in two forms in Vaughan. In “The Retreat” the reminiscence of a past is described as a fact of Vaughan’s religious experience. He longs to travel back to the time when, in his purity, he was nearer to God than he is now in his sinful state.

“Happy those early days, when I
Shin’d in my angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walk’d above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back—at that short space—
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud, or flow’r,
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispence
A sev’ral sin to ev’ry sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
O how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain,
Where first I left my glorious train:
From whence th’ enlighten’d spirit sees
That shady City of palm-trees.
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way!
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move;
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.”

The second form of this idea appears in Vaughan’s poem called “Corruption.” Man is represented as enjoying the happiness of innocence in the garden of Eden, where he was in close touch with the beauties of heaven. Here he had a glimpse of his heavenly birth; but when, by reason of sin, he was forced to leave that place, he found earth and heaven no longer friendly.

“Sure, it was so. Man in those early days
Was not all stone and earth;
He shin’d a little, and by those weak rays
Had some glimpse of his birth.
He saw heaven o’er his head, and knew from whence
He came, condemnèd, hither;
And, as first love draws strongest, so from hence
His mind sure progress’d thither.
Things here were strange unto him; sweat and till;
All was a thorn or weed.
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
This made him long for home, as loth to stay
With murmurers and foes;
He sigh’d for Eden, and would often say
‘Ah! what bright days were those!’
Nor was heav’n cold unto him: for each day
The valley or the mountain
Afforded visits, and still Paradise lay
In some green shade or fountain.
Angels lay leiger here: each bush, and cell,
Each oak, and highway knew them;
Walk but the fields, or sit down at some well,
And he was sure to view them.”

In this poem, although there is no such parallelism with the account of a preëxistent state as it is given in Plato, the fundamental idea is the same as that of “The Retreat.” Vaughan describes man’s life in Eden as one of closer intimacy with his celestial home than his lot on earth affords him, just as he had described the experience of his own “angel-infancy” and its contrast to his earthly life. In both poems is present the conviction that the human soul once lived in a state of pure innocence; and in both is heard the note of regret at the loss of this through sin.

In Vaughan’s poem, “The World,” the influence of Plato’s account of the preëxistent life of the soul is felt only in affording the character of the imagery which Vaughan has used to express his idea. In the “Phædrus” Plato describes the progress of the soul in its sight of the eternal ideas in the heaven of heavens. Each soul, represented as a charioteer guiding a pair of winged horses, is carried about by the revolution of the spheres, and during the progress it beholds the ideas. The souls of the gods have no difficulty in seeing these realities; “but of the other souls,” says Plato, “that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world, and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed, or have their wings broken, through the ill-driving of the charioteers.” (“Phædrus,” 248.)

In this account of the revolution of the soul about the eternal realities of true being, Vaughan found the suggestion for his poem, “The World.” Instead of the revolution of the soul about true being, he describes the revolution of time about eternity. The figure of the charioteer is absent, too, but it is by the use of the “wing” that those who make the revolution about eternity mount up into the circle, just as in Plato. Time in the poem also is represented as being “driven about by the spheres.” Such coincidences of imagery show that Vaughan found in Plato’s fanciful account of the soul’s preëxistent life in heaven the medium through which he expressed his view of the relation of the life of the present day world to that of eternity. At first he pictures the revolution of the world about the great ring of light which he calls eternity:

“I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d: in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.”

He then describes the lover busied in his trifles,—his lute, his fancies, and his delights. Next moves the statesman, pursued by the shouts of multitudes. The next to follow are the miser and the epicure.

“The doting lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain;
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights,
Wit’s sour delights;
With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of pleasure
Yet his dear treasure,
All scatter’d lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flow’r.
“The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight fog, mov’d there so slow,
He did nor stay, nor go;
Condemning thoughts—like sad eclipses—scowl
Upon his soul,
And clouds of crying witnesses without
Pursued him with one shout.
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
“The fearful miser on a heap of rust
Sate pining all his life there, did scarce trust
His own hands with the dust,
Yet would not place one piece above, but lives
In fear of thieves.
Thousands there were as frantic as himself,
And hugg’d each one his pelf;
The downright epicure plac’d heav’n in sense,
And scorn’d pretence;
While others, slipp’d into a wide excess,
Said little less;
The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave,
Who think them brave;
And poor, despisèd Truth sate counting by
Their victory.”

At this point Vaughan ends his catalogue of human types and comments upon the unwillingness of the many to soar up into the ring by the aid of the wing.

“Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing, and weep, soar’d up into the ring;
But most would use no wing.
O fools—said I—thus to prefer dark night
Before true light!
To live in grots and caves, and hate the day
Because it shows the way;
The way, which from this dead and dark abode
Leads up to God.”

Spenser finds his suggestion of the eternal in life, not in a consciousness of a past existence, but in a conception of the world of matter built up in accordance with the Platonic doctrine of stability of the substance amid the flux of changing forms. This conception of the world is explained by him in his description of the “Garden of Adonis” in the “Faerie Queene” and in his “Two Cantos of Mutabilitie.”

The conception of matter which Spenser teaches is the doctrine of Plotinus expressed in accordance with the account of flux and stability of natural phenomena explained by Plato in the “Timæus.” According to Plotinus matter is an indestructible “subject” of forms which endures through all the various changes which it is constantly undergoing, and this unchanging something is never destroyed. (“Enneads,” II. iv. 6.) In the “Timæus” Plato had outlined a theory of flux with which this doctrine of the indestructibility of matter could be easily harmonized. In his discussion of the world of natural phenomena he distinguishes three natures, as he calls them, and likens them to a father, a child, and a mother. “For the present,” he says in the “Timæus” (50), “we have only to conceive of three natures: first, that which is in process of generation; secondly, that in which the generation takes place; and thirdly, that of which the thing generated is a resemblance. And we may liken the receiving principle to a mother, and the source or spring to a father, and the intermediate nature to a child.” According to this piece of poetic imagery he describes the various manifestations of matter in the outward world. The elements are constantly changing in and out of one another and have in them nothing permanent. They cannot be called “this” or “that,” but only “such.” Only the receiving principle, the universal nature, “that must be always called the same; for while receiving all things, she never departs at all from her own nature, and never in any way or at any time assumes a form like that of any of the things which enter into her; she is the natural recipient of all impressions, and is stirred and informed by them, and appears different from time to time by reason of them.” (“Timæus,” 50.)

The explanation of the myriad changes of matter of the outward world of sense after the manner of this account by Plato is found in Spenser’s description of the “Garden of Adonis.” The term “garden of Adonis” is found in Plato’s “Phædrus” (276), where is meant an earthen vessel in which plants are nourished to quick growth only to decay as rapidly. On this term Spenser’s imagination built its superstructure of fancy by which the garden of Adonis became symbolic of the world of natural phenomena described after the manner of Plato in the “Timæus” and Plotinus in the “Enneads.” The garden is described at first as a seminary of all living things, conceived first as flowers:

“In that same Gardin all the goodly flowres,
Wherewith dame Nature doth her beautifie,
And decks the girlonds of her paramoures,
Are fetcht: there is the first seminarie
Of all things, that are borne to live and die,
According to their kindes. Long worke it were,
Here to account the endlesse progenie
Of all the weedes, that bud and blossome there;
But so much as doth need, must needs be counted here.”
(III. vi. 30.)

Spenser’s imagination now changes, and he conceives of the objects in this garden as naked babes, in accordance with the suggestion of the intermediate nature which Plato conceived as a child. Genius as the porter of the place is thus described:

“He letteth in, he letteth out to wend,
All that to come into the world desire;
A thousand thousand naked babes attend
About him day and night, which doe require,
That he with fleshly weedes would them attire:
Such as him list, such as eternal fate
Ordained hath, he clothes with sinfull mire,
And sendeth forth to live in mortall state,
Till they againe returne backe by the hinder gate.”
(III. vi. 32.)

Again there is a change, and the objects issuing from this garden are forms which borrow their substance from the matter of chaos.

“Infinite shapes of creatures there are bred,
And uncouth formes, which none yet ever knew,
And every sort is in a sundry bed
Set by it selfe, and ranckt in comely rew
Some fit for reasonable soules t’ indew,
Some made for beasts, some made for birds to weare,
And all the fruitfull spawne of fishes hew
In endlesse rancks along enraunged were,
That seem’d the Ocean could not containe them there.”
(III. vi. 35.)

When these forms are sent forth from the garden they take for their substance the matter found in chaos which is ever eternal.

“Daily they grow, and daily forth are sent
Into the world, it to replenish more;
Yet is the stocke not lessened, nor spent,
But still remaines in everlasting store,
As it at first created was of yore.
For in the wide wombe of the world there lyes,
In hateful darkenesse and in deepe horrore,
An huge eternall Chaos, which supplyes
The substances of natures fruitfull progenyes.
“All things from thence doe their first being fetch,
And borrow matters whereof they are made,
Which when as forme and feature it doth ketch,
Becomes a bodie, and doth then invade
The state of life, out of the griesly shade.
That substance is eterne, and bideth so,
Ne when the life decayes, and forme does fade,
Doth it consume, and into nothing go,
But chaunged is, and often altred to and fro.”
(III. vi. 36–37.)

Spenser now stops the play of fancy and becomes the philosopher, explaining the doctrine of matter as taught by Plotinus. The substance of things is eternal and abides in potency of further change.

“The substance is not changed, nor altered,
But th’ only forme and outward fashion;
For every substance is conditioned
To change her hew, and sundry formes to don,
Meet for her temper and complexion:
For formes are variable and decay,
By course of kind, and by occasion;
And that faire flower of beautie fades away,
As doth the lilly fresh before the sunny ray.”
(II. vi. 38.)

Finally, Spenser closes his account of the garden with a mingling of fancy and philosophy. He adopts the suggestion of Plato that the source of the many changes in natural phenomena is a father, and blends the conception with the myth of Venus and Adonis. In the garden Venus is represented as enjoying the pleasure of the presence of Adonis perpetually, for he is described as the father of the various forms who abides eternal in all change.

“There wont faire Venus often to enjoy
Her deare Adonis joyous company,
And reape sweet pleasure of the wanton boy;
There yet, some say, in secret he does ly,
Lapped in flowers and pretious spycery,
By her hid from the world, and from the skill
Of Stygian Gods, which doe her love envy;
But she her selfe, when ever that she will,
Possesseth him, and of his sweetnesse takes her fill.
“And sooth it seemes they say: for he may not
For ever die, and ever buried bee
In balefull night, where all things are forgot;
All be he subject to mortalitie,
Yet is eterne in mutabilitie,
And by succession made perpetuall,
Transformed oft, and chaunged diverslie:
For him the Father of all formes they call;
Therefore needs mote he live, that living gives to all.”
(III. vi. 46, 47.)

The attraction which this doctrine of the indestructibility of matter had for Spenser lay in the comforting assurance which it brought him of an eternity when things should be at rest. Throughout Spenser is heard a note of world weariness.

“Nothing is sure, that growes on earthly ground.”

These words placed in the mouth of Arthur (I. ix. 11) are essentially characteristic of Spenser’s outlook on the things of this world: they are his lacrimæ rerum. The “Cantos of Mutabilitie” is the best instance in point. These two cantos celebrate the overthrow of Mutability by Nature. To the claim of preëminence among the gods which Mutability lays before Nature, and which she bases upon the fact that everything in the wide universe is subject to constant change, Dame Nature replies that though they be subject to change, they change only their outward state, each change working their perfection; and she further remarks that the time will come when there shall be no more change. At the end of Mutability’s plea Dame Nature thus answers the charge:

“I well consider all that ye have sayd,
And find that all things stedfastnes doe hate
And changed be: yet being rightly wayd
They are not changed from their first estate;
But by their change their being doe dilate:
And turning to themselves at length againe,
Doe worke their owne perfection so by fate:
Then over them Change doth not rule and raigne;
But they raigne over change, and doe their states maintaine.
“Cease therefore daughter further to aspire,
And thee content thus to be rul’d by me:
For thy decay thou seekst by thy desire;
But time shall come that all shall changed bee,
And from thenceforth, none no more change shall see.”
(VII. vii. 58, 59.)

On this decision of Nature Spenser bases his assurance of a time when the soul shall have its final rest. With a prayer to the great God of Sabaoth that he may see the time when all things shall rest in Him, Spenser closes his work on his great unfinished poem—the “Faerie Queene.”

“Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd,
Of that same time when no more Change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things firmely stayd
Upon the pillours of Eternity,
That is contrayr to Mutabilitie:
For, all that moveth, doth in Change delight:
But thenceforth all shall rest eternally.
With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:
O Thou great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight.”
(VII. viii. 2.)

In the theory of the preëxistence of the soul and in the conception of the indestructibility of matter Vaughan and Spenser were able to find teachings which were akin to the most intimate experiences of their lives. Although the phase of Platonic idealism which taught in these two distinct ways the eternity of human life and of the world about us did not have so vital an influence upon English poetry as did the opening of a world of moral beauty, its presence is nevertheless indicative of the strong hold which Platonism had upon some of the finest poetic minds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England. Even when these poets were writing from the fulness of their own personal experience, it was in the moulds of Platonic philosophy that their thought was cast.

The elements of Platonism, then, that enter into the English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have their source in the dialogues of Plato and the “Enneads” of Plotinus. The body of this teaching—its æsthetics, its metaphysics, and its ethics—was seen by the poets in its relation to Christian doctrine and to the passion of romantic love. The more permanent results for good are found in the fusion of Platonism with the ideals of Christian living and with its longing for perfection. If one passage in Plato may adequately sum up the teaching of Platonism most influential in English poetry, it is the passage in “Phædrus” in which the beauty of wisdom is taught (“Phædrus,” 250).

But beauty in its stricter import is a thing known to the sense, and is carried over into the moral world only to indicate the value of moral ideas. Plato recognized this; and in this connection it is significant that in the part of “Phædrus,” where he speaks of the loveliness of wisdom, he is aware of the power of pure beauty. “But of beauty,” he says, “I repeat again that we saw her there [in the ideal world] shining in company with the celestial forms; and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and the other ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be equally lovely. But this is the privilege of beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight” (250).

Spenser was the poet who caught the spirit of this teaching. Pastorella’s beauty is presented not as Una’s, the beauty of wisdom, nor as Britomart’s, the beauty of the inward purity of womanhood; but it is a beauty of pure form.

“And soothly sure she was full fayre of face,
And perfectly well shapt in every lim,
Which she did more augment with modest grace,
And comely carriage of her count’nance trim,
That all the rest like lesser lamps did dim.”
(VI. ix. 9.)

And yet as she stands on the little hillock she is encompassed with a cloud of glory.

“Upon a litle hillocke she was placed
Higher then all the rest, and round about
Environ’d with a girland, goodly graced,
Of lovely lasses, and them all without
The lustie shepheard swaynes sate in a rout;
The which did pype and sing her prayses dew,
And oft rejoyce, and oft for wonder shout,
As if some miracle of heavenly hew
Were downe to them descended in that earthly vew.”
(VI. ix. 8.)

They saw in the object before their eyes the idea of beauty in earthly form. The miracle is no more and no less than this; it is “the privilege of beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight.”