CHAPTER II
Theory of Love

I. HEAVENLY LOVE

Heavenly love, as conceived in the poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, refers to two distinct experiences. By this term the poets meant either the love known in the soul for the realities of the unseen world or the love which God had shown to man in his creation and preservation, and which man could experience through the indwelling of God’s spirit within him. In the explanation of the nature of these two experiences the teaching of Platonism played a very important part, directing the course of that love of man for heavenly things, and accounting for the presence of love in the Godhead.

To the discussion of the latter of these subjects Platonism was able to offer two conceptions, in which a rational explanation of God’s love as revealed in the creation could be found; one presenting the highest reality as beauty, the other as the good. The first conception was present in its theory of love. In the “Symposium” Plato had taught that love was a desire of birth in beauty, and that the highest love was a desire of birth in beauty absolute, the ultimate principle of all beauty. (“Symposium,” 206, 211–212.) Christianity, on the other hand, had taught that God is love. By identifying the absolute beauty of Plato with God, and by applying the Platonic conception of the birth of love to this Christian conception of God as love, God Himself was understood as enjoying his own beauty, thus begetting beings like to it in fairness. In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Love,” this idea forms the first division of the poem which treats of the love of God. (ll. 25–122.) At first God is conceived as living in Himself in love.

“Before this worlds great frame, in which al things
Are now containd, found any being place,
Ere flitting Time could wag his eyas wings
About that mightie bound, which doth embrace
The rolling Spheres, and parts their houres by space,
That high eternall powre, which now doth move
In all these things, mov’d in it selfe by love.”
(ll. 25–31.)

Loving itself, this Power brought forth, first the Son.

“It lov’d it selfe, because it selfe was faire;
(For faire is lov’d;) and of it selfe begot
Like to it selfe his eldest sonne and heire,
Eternall, pure, and voide of sinfull blot.”
(ll. 32–35.)

After the creation of the Son God begets the angels in His beauty.

“Yet being pregnant still with powrefull grace,
And full of fruitfull love, that loves to get
Things like himselfe, and to enlarge his race,
His second brood though not in powre so great,
Yet full of beautie, next he did beget
An infinite increase of Angels bright,
All glistring glorious in their Makers light.”
(ll. 53–59.)

After the fall of the angels God finally creates man.

“Such he him made, that he resemble might
Himselfe, as mortall thing immortall could;
Him to be Lord of every living wight,
He made by love out of his owne like mould,
In whom he might his mightie selfe behould:
For love doth love the thing belov’d to see,
That like it selfe in lovely shape may bee.”
(ll. 116–122.)

The second conception of the highest reality as the good is used in a more general way to explain the reason of creation. In the “Timæus” the Maker of the universe is conceived as creating the world in goodness. “Let me tell you,” says Timæus, “why the creator made this world of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be.” (“Timæus,” 29.) In Henry More the idea is expressed in the closing canto of his “Psychathanasia,” where he is accounting for the creation. (III. 4.) He has words of bitter denunciation for those who teach that God created the world merely as a manifestation of His power, His will. (III. iv. 22.) He maintains the Platonic teaching.

“When nothing can to Gods own self accrew,
Who’s infinitely happy; sure the end
Of this creation simply was to shew
His flowing goodnesse, which he doth out send
Not for himself; for nought can him amend;
But to his creature doth his good impart,
This infinite Good through all the world doth wend
To fill with heavenly blisse each willing heart.
So the free Sunne doth ’light and ’liven every part.”
(III. iv. 16.)

So closely allied in the English poets are the teachings of Platonism with the devotional spirit of Christian love that in the same man and even in the same experience the thought can pass most naturally from a conception of Christ’s love for God, as absolute beauty, to a subjective treatment of it as a personal experience. Thus in George Herbert’s lyric, “Love,” the invocation is to the love of Christ for God springing from His imperishable beauty; but in the second division of the poem this love has become a refining fire that can burn all lusts within the soul and enable it to see Him.

“Immortall Love, author of this great frame,
Sprung from that beauty which can never fade,
How hath man parcel’d out Thy glorious name,
And thrown it in that dust which Thou hast made.
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
“Immortall Heat, O let Thy greater flame
Attract the lesser to it; let those fires
Which shall consume the world first make it tame,
And kindle in our hearts such true desires
As may consume our lusts, and make Thee way:
Then shall our hearts pant Thee, then shall our brain
All her invention on Thine altar lay,
And there in hymnes send back Thy fire again.
“Our eies shall see Thee, which before saw dust—
Dust blown by Wit, till that they both were blinde:
Thou shalt recover all Thy goods in kinde,
Who wert disseizèd by usurping lust.”

The earlier conception of heavenly love, as related to absolute beauty, is not, however, the more important of the two themes of this poetry. From the very nature of the love itself, although it could be described in accordance with certain Platonic conceptions, it could not be the subject of a personal treatment; it gave no sufficient outlet for the passion of love. This was afforded only by that heavenly love which is the love of man for the unseen realities of the spiritual world. The full treatment which this latter subject receives in English poetry testifies to the strong hold which the teachings of Platonism had upon religious experience in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Platonism afforded not only the philosophic basis for the object of this passion, but it also acted as a corrective tendency in checking the influence of an alien idea, erotic mysticism.

Heavenly love, understood as a love known in the soul for a spiritual, or as it was then called, heavenly beauty, sprang out of the treatment to which Plato had subjected love in the “Symposium.” In English it appears in two separate forms, although in both it consists in gaining a correct idea of the relation of the beauty known to the senses as compared with that known by the soul. The only difference in the two expressions is that the object of the passion is variously described.

In Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Beautie” occurs the first form of this love. The heavenly beauty celebrated in this “Hymne” is the Platonic wisdom, Sapience, as Spenser calls it, the same high reality with which he had identified Una. (l. 186.) The subject of the love in the “Hymne” is formally presented as God, who is described as

“that Highest farre beyond all telling,
Fairer then all the rest which there appeare,
Though all their beauties joynd together were:
How then can mortall tongue hope to expresse,
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?”
(ll. 104–108.)

Yet the real subject is the praise of Sapience, to which somewhat more than one-third of the “Hymne” is devoted. A description of her transcendent beauty and her power to fill the soul of the beholder with true insight into the relative beauty of this world of sense and that of spirit is the climax of the poem. Among all the attributes of God mentioned, His truth, His love, His grace, His mercy, His might, His judgment (ll. 113–115), the greatest is Sapience, who is described as sitting in the very bosom of the Almighty. (l. 187.) The fairness of her face, he says, none can tell; no painter or poet can adequately describe her; his own powers are so weak that he can only admire, not presuming to picture her. (ll. 207–241.) So completely, however, does she occupy the field of spiritual vision in the happy mortals that behold her, that

“Ne from thenceforth doth any fleshly sense,
Or idle thought of earthly things remaine,
But all that earst seemd sweet, seemes now offense,
And all that pleased earst, now seemes to paine,
Their joy, their comfort, their desire, their gaine,
Is fixed all on that which now they see,
All other sights but fayned shadowes bee.
“And that faire lampe, which useth to enflame
The hearts of men with selfe consuming fyre,
Thenceforth seemes fowle, and full of sinfull blame;
And all that pompe, to which proud minds aspyre
By name of honor, and so much desyre,
Seemes to them basenesse, and all riches drosse,
And all mirth sadnesse, and all lucre losse.
“So full their eyes are of that glorious sight,
And senses fraught with such satietie,
That in nought else on earth they can delight,
But in th’ aspect of that felicitie,
Which they have written in their inward ey;
On which they feed, and in their fastened mynd
All happie joy and full contentment fynd.”
(ll. 270–290.)

According to Spenser, then, heavenly love is the love felt in the soul when the sight of wisdom in her beauty dawns upon the inner vision. It is a love gained through speculation; and though the object is conceived of as yonder in heaven, it is still the beauty which is seen here in the mind. (l. 17.) Instead of the poetical device of the Mount of Heavenly Contemplation used in the “Faerie Queene” to signify the refinement of the spiritual vision necessary to the sight of this heavenly wisdom, Spenser has been able to explain in detail the way along which the soul must travel to gain its goal. It is the dialectic of the “Symposium” (211), the progress through ever ascending gradations of beauty up to the first absolute beauty changed only in the externals as required by the Christian conception of the heavenly hierarchy. But throughout the long series of upward stages through which his mind passes, one may feel the quickening of his spirit at the thought of the highest beauty, in which lies the unity of the poem. In the contemplation of this heavenly beauty the poem begins and ends.

“Rapt with the rage of mine own ravisht thought,
Through contemplation of those goodly sights,
And glorious images in heaven wrought,
Whose wondrous beauty breathing sweet delights,
Do kindle love in high conceipted sprights:
I faine to tell the things that I behold,
But feele my wits to faile, and tongue to fold.”
(ll. 4–10.)
“And looke at last up to that soveraine light,
From whose pure beams al perfect beauty springs,
That kindleth love in every godly spright,
Even the love of God, which loathing brings
Of this vile world, and these gay seeming things;
With whose sweete pleasures being so possest,
Thy straying thoughts henceforth for ever rest.”
(ll. 298–304.)

The second form which the doctrine of heavenly love assumed in English is found in William Drummond’s “Song II—It autumn was, and on our hemisphere.” The conception of heavenly beauty is not the ethical notion of Spenser’s “Hymne,” but a less stimulating idea of the beauty of an intelligible world of which this world is but a copy. The attraction in this idea lay in its appeal to Drummond’s peculiar imagination, delighting, as it did, in the sight of vastness. The poem is an exhortation to the lover, who is Drummond himself, to cease his mourning for his dead love, and to raise his mind to a love of heaven and of the beauty of God there to be seen. The two ideas which Platonism contributed are the notion of an intelligible world above this world of sense, and of an absolute beauty of which all beauty on earth is but a shadow.

The conception of a world above this world was suggested by Plato in his “Phædo” and explained by Plotinus in his Enneads (VI. vii. 12) as a pure intelligible world. “For since,” says Plotinus, “we say that this All [the universe] is framed after the Yonder, as after a pattern, the All must first exist yonder as a living entity, an animal; and since its idea is complete, everything must exist yonder. Heaven, therefore, must exist there as an animal, not without what here we call its stars, and this is the idea of heaven. Yonder, too, of course, must be the Earth, not bare, but far more richly furnished with life; in it are all creatures that move on dry land and plants rooted in life. Sea, too, is yonder, and all water ebbing and flowing in abiding life; and all creatures that inhabit the water, and all the tribes of the air are part of the all yonder, and all aerial beings, for the same reason as Air itself.” In the “Phædo” (110–111), Plato lends color to his account by calling attention to the fairness of the place and to the pleasantness of life there. Drummond has seized upon this idea of an immaterial world where all is fair and happy, and interprets it as the heaven whither the young woman who has died is urging him to direct his love. Thus in her addresses to Drummond she speaks of the character of the world where she lives.

“Above this vast and admirable frame,
This temple visible, which World we name,
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
There is a world, a world of perfect bliss,
Pure, immaterial, bright, ...
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
A world, where all is found, that here is found,
But further discrepant than heaven and ground.
It hath an earth, as hath this world of yours,
With creatures peopled, stor’d with trees and flow’rs;
It hath a sea, ...
It hath pure fire, it hath delicious air,
Moon, sun, and stars, heavens wonderfully fair:
But there flowr’s do not fade, trees grow not old,
The creatures do not die through heat nor cold.”
(ll. 111–136.)

It is to this world that she urges him to raise his mind, for all that earth has to offer is a vain shadow.

“But thou who vulgar footsteps dost not trace,
Learn to raise up thy mind unto this place,
And what earth-creeping mortals most affect,
If not at all to scorn, yet to neglect:
O chase not shadows vain, which when obtain’d,
Were better lost, than with such travail gain’d.”
(ll. 181–186.)

These shadows are worldly honor and fame.

At this point the poem naturally passes on to develop the second suggestion found in Platonism, that the beauty of earth is but a shadow or reflexion of the absolute beauty. As was common in that time, this absolute beauty is identified with God. Accordingly, the young woman appeals to Drummond to trust in God’s beauty, which alone can fill the soul with bliss. If the power of earthly beauty—the glance of an eye—can make him leave all else, what, she asks, must be the love kindled by the “only Fair”; for though the wonders of earth, of sea, and heaven are beautiful, they are but shadows of Him.

“O leave that love which reachest but to dust,
And in that love eternal only trust,
And beauty, which, when once it is possest,
Can only fill the soul, and make it blest.
Pale envy, jealous emulations, fears,
Sighs, plaints, remorse, here have no place, nor tears;
False joys, vain hopes, here be not, hate nor wrath;
What ends all love, here most augments it, death.
If such force had the dim glance of an eye,
Which some few days thereafter was to die,
That it could make thee leave all other things,
And like the taper-fly there burn thy wings;
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
If once thou on that only Fair couldst gaze,
What flames of love would he within thee raise!
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
“Those golden letters which so brightly shine
In heaven’s great volume gorgeously divine;
The wonders all in sea, in earth, in air,
Be but dark pictures of that sovereign Fair;
Be tongues, which still thus cry unto your ear,
(Could ye amidst world’s cataracts them hear,)
From fading things, fond wights, lift your desire,
And in our beauty, his, us made, admire:
If we seem fair, O think how fair is he
Of whose fair fairness shadows, steps, we be.
No shadow can compare it with the face,
No step with that dear foot which did it trace.”
(ll. 197–234.)

This “Song,” then, though drawing on a different phase of Platonism—its more philosophic and fanciful side,[6] not its deep ethical truth—follows the same order of thought as Spenser’s “Hymne,” and like that presents heavenly love as a love known in the soul and growing out of a correct notion of the relative values of the visible beauty of the senses and the invisible beauty of mind.

In Drummond heavenly love is a progression out of the romantic love of woman. It is not explicitly so stated in the “Song,” but in a sonnet, the subject of which refers to the young woman of the longer poem, he writes:

“Sith it hath pleas’d that First and only Fair
To take that beauty to himself again,
Which in this world of sense not to remain,
But to amaze, was sent, and home repair;
The love which to that beauty I did bear
(Made pure of mortal spots which did it stain,
And endless, which even death cannot impair),
I place on Him who will it not disdain.”
(Poems, Second Pt. S. xiii.)

This is a note heard in other poets where heavenly love is described as naturally growing out of earthly love when the right idea of the nature of the object of that lower passion has been learned. Thus in Milton it is taught that the love of woman must not be passion, but must be a scale by which the mind may mount to the heavenly world. The passion which Adam feels for the loveliness that hedges the presence of Eve—

“when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best:
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
and, to consummate all,
Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed—”
(VIII. 546–559.)

is described by Raphael “with contracted brow” as merely transported touch, in reality the same feeling shared by the beasts of the field. (VIII. 582.) Raphael, accordingly, directs Adam to love only the rational in Eve’s nature, for true love has his seat in the reason.

“What higher in her society thou find’st
Attractive, human, rational, love still:
In loving thou dost well, in passion not,
Wherein true Love consists not. Love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges—hath his seat
In Reason, and is judicious, is the scale
By which to Heavenly Love thou may’st ascend,
Not sunk in carnal pleasure.”
(VIII. 586–594.)

In Phineas Fletcher’s sixth “Piscatorie Eclogue,” where there is a long discussion on the nature of love, human love is shown to be a love merely of the passing charms of woman: of her form, which will decay; of her voice, which is but empty wind; and of her color, which can move only the sense. (Stz. 20–22.) No attempt is made to describe the nature of the higher love, but a simple exhortation to raise this love of woman to a love of the “God of fishers” closes the account.

“Then let thy love mount from these baser things,
And to the Highest Love and worth aspire:
Love’s born of fire, fitted with mounting wings;
That at his highest he might winde him higher;
Base love, that to base earth so basely clings!
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
“Raise then thy prostrate love with tow’ring thought;
And clog it not in chains and prison here:
The God of fishers, deare thy love hath bought:
Most deare He loves; for shame, love thou as deare.”
(Stz. 24, 25.)

Heavenly love, then, whether springing from the desire within the soul to see wisdom in her beauty, or from a desire to raise the mind from a love of earth to the intelligible world, or from the desire to find a worthy object in the love of the rational in woman, when freed from all the grossness of physical passion, is a contemplative love of a less perishing beauty than can be found on earth. And just as the transition was easy from the love which God himself knows to the soul’s love of God, so was the change from the love of soul for a higher reality than earthly beauty to the immortal love of God for the soul. Thus in Sidney’s sonnet the subtle change is effected.

“Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou my mind aspire to higher things:
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beames, and humble all thy might,
To that sweet yoke, where lasting freedomes be:
Which breakes the clowdes and opens forth the light,
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,
In this small course which birth drawes out to death,
And thinke how evill becommeth him to slide,
Who seeketh heav’n, and comes of heav’nly breath.
Then farewell world, thy uttermost I see,
Eternall Love maintaine thy life in me.”
(S. cx.)

The appeal which Platonism made to the English poets in its doctrine of a heavenly love was through its power to stir the minds with a deep sense of that beauty which God was understood to possess. The application of the principle of beauty to God resulted in a note of joy and in an exaltation of soul in the religious mind, which, after forsaking the beauty of this world of sense, could enjoy the great principle of beauty in the beatific vision of God. Such a strain of joy may be heard in Drummond, in John Norris, and even in the quiet lyrics of George Herbert.

The sight of God in His absolute beauty is considered by these poets as the end of the soul’s endeavor. According to John Norris God is the divine excellence,

“Which pleases either mind or sense,
Tho’ thee by different names we call!
Search Nature through, there still wilt be
The Sum of all that’s good in her Variety.”

He thus exhorts the soul to rise to a sight of Him.

“But do not thou, my Soul, fixt here remain,
All streams of Beauty here below
Do from that immense Ocean flow,
And thither they should lead again.
Trace then these Streams, till thou shalt be
At length o’erwhelm’d in Beauty’s boundless Sea.”
(“Beauty,” stz. 4, 10.)

According to Drummond, the one “choicest bliss” of life is the possession of God’s beauty as a burning passion within the soul. In “An Hymn of True Happiness” he teaches that supreme felicity does not consist in the enjoyment of earth’s treasures, of sensuous beauty, or of other sensual delights, and not even in knowledge and fame.

“No, but blest life is this,
With chaste and pure desire,
To turn unto the loadstar of all bliss,
On God the mind to rest,
Burnt up with sacred fire,
Possessing him, to be by him possesst.”
(ll. 61–66.)
“A love which, while it burns
The soul with fairest beams,
In that uncreated sun the soul it turns,
And makes such beauty prove,
That, if sense saw her gleams,
All lookers-on would pine and die for love.”
(ll. 97–102.)

The essential nature of this beatific vision is described either as a sense of eternal rest or of eternal joy. In Norris’s “Prospect,” the soul is preparing for the great change that will come when it is free from the body; and its greatest change is described as a sight of “the only Fair.”

“Now for the greatest Change prepare,
To see the only Great, the only Fair,
Vail now thy feeble eyes, gaze and be blest;
Here all thy Turns and Revolutions cease,
Here’s all Serenity and Peace:
Thou’rt to the Center come, the native seat of rest.
Here’s now no further change nor need there be;
When One shall be Variety.”
(Stz. 5.)

In Drummond’s “Teares on the Death of Mœliades” the joy of the departed soul is repeatedly emphasized as a rest in the enjoyment of God’s beauty. Thus, in closing, the dead is addressed:

“Rest, blessed spright, rest satiate with the sight
Of him whose beams doth dazzle and delight,
Life of all lives, cause of each other cause,
The sphere and centre where the mind doth pause;
Narcissus of himself, himself the well,
Lover, and beauty, that doth all excel.
Rest, happy ghost, and wonder in that glass
Where seen is all that shall be, is, or was,
While shall be, is, or was do pass away,
And nought remain but an eternal day:
For ever rest.”
(ll. 179–188.)

The note of joy in the beatific vision is heard in Drummond and Norris. In Drummond earthly love is a care, a war within our nature; but love

“Among those sprights above
Which see their Maker’s face,
It a contentment is, a quiet peace,
A pleasure void of grief, a constant rest,
Eternal joy which nothing can molest.”
(“Urania,” Madrigal 2.)

And again:

“O blest abode! O happy dwelling-place
Where visibly th’ Invisible doth reign!
Blest people, who do see true beauty’s face,
With whose dark shadows he but earth doth deign,
All joy is but annoy, all concord strife,
Match’d with your endlesse bliss and happy life.”
(“Urania,” S. v.)

In Norris’s “Seraphick Love” a more violent strain is detected. He has forsaken the beauty of earth because he has seen a fairer beauty in contemplation, and to this source of all good and beauty he thus addresses the close of his poem.

“To thee, thou only Fair, my Soul aspires
With Holy Breathings, languishing Desires
To thee m’ inamour’d, panting Heart does move,
By Efforts of Ecstatic Love.
How do thy glorious streams of Light
Refresh my intellectual sight!
Tho broken, and strain’d through a Skreen
Of envious Flesh that stands between!
When shall m’ imprison’d Soul be free,
That she thy Native Uncorrected Light may see,
And gaze upon thy Beatifick Face to all Eternity?”
(Stz. 4.)

The violence of passion in these poets is absent in George Herbert, and even the presence of the beatific vision, as a conscious experience of the soul known after the long travail of its search for beauty, is not in the least discernible. Still, the conviction that there is a higher beauty than that seen on earth, and that in truth lies this beauty, is felt beneath the mildness of Herbert’s devotion. In two sonnets, which he sent to his mother in 1608, he laments the decay of any true love for God among the poets, and contrasts the beauty of God with the beauties of the amorists. To him the beauty of God lies in the discovery.

“Such poor invention burns in their [the amorists’] low minde,
Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go
To praise, and on Thee, Lord, some ink bestow.
Open the bones, and you shall nothing finde
In the best face but filth; when, Lord, in Thee
The beauty lies in the discoverie.”
(S. i.)

He is, accordingly, content to sing the praises of God.

“Let foolish lovers, if they will love dung,
With canvas, not with arras, clothe their shame;
Let Follie speak in her own native tongue:
True Beautie dwells on high; ours in a flame
But borrow’d thence to light us thither;
Beautie and beauteous words should go together.”
(“The Forerunners,” ll. 25–30.)

So intimately has this notion of the spiritual nature of true beauty blended with the simple experience of his devotional life that he can ask

“Is there in truth no beautie?
Is all good structure in a winding-stair?
May no lines passe, except they do their dutie
Not to a true, but painted chair?
       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
Must purling streams refresh a lover’s loves?
Must all be vail’d while he that reades divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?”[7]

As for himself, he says:

“I envie no man’s nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme,
Who plainly say, My God, my King.”
(“Jordan.”)

In that truth he found his beauty.

Platonism, then, came as a direct appeal to the religious mind of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which was so constituted that the element of philosophic revery was blended most naturally with a strain of pure devotional love. Although the ultimate postulates of that philosophy were intellectual principles, they were such as could be grasped by the soul only in its deep passion of love for spiritual beauty. The condemnation which Baxter passes upon other philosophies could not be brought with truth against Platonism. “In short,” he says, “I am an enemy of their philosophy that vilify sense.... The Scripture that saith of God that He is life and light, saith also that He is love, and love is complacence, and complacence is joy; and to say God is infinite, essential love and joy is a better notion than with Cartesians and Cocceians to say that God and angels and spirits are but a thought or an idea. What is Heaven to us if there be no love and joy?”[8] This desire of life and love, along its upper levels of thought, was satisfied by Platonism; it enabled the poets to forecast the life of the soul in heaven, and of its anticipation on earth as a love of beauty.

There was a strong tendency, however, throughout this period of religious poetry, toward a phase of devotional love which may be called erotic mysticism, or that love for Christ which is characterized less by admiration and more by tenderness and mere delight in the pure sensuous experience of love. Contemplation of Christ’s divine nature as essential beauty is totally absent from this passion. Christ as the object of this love is conceived only as the perfection of physical beauty; and the response within the soul of the lover is that of mere sensuous delight either in the sight of his personal beauties or in the realization of the union with him. This strain of religious devotion is heard in Herbert, in Vaughan, and Crashaw. In Herbert, who confessed that he entered the service of the church in order to be like Christ, “by making humility lovely,”—a confession which breathes pure emotion,—there was joined so sensuous a strain that “he seems to rejoice in the thoughts of that word Jesus, and say, that the adding these words, my Master, to it, and often repetition of them, seemed to perfume his mind, and leave an oriental fragrancy in his very breath.”[9] The spectacle of the crucified Saviour of man was especially influential in keeping this strain of mystical devotion alive; and the minds of these poets are continually dwelling upon the beauty of his mangled hands and feet. In a nature so eminently intellectual as John Donne’s, this strain of feeling is still present, and in his explanation of the grounds for such a love is found an excellent account of its varying phases. In one of his sermons he says:

“I love my Saviour, as he is the Lord, he that studies my salvation: and as Christ, made a person able to work my salvation; but when I see him in the third notion, Jesus, accomplishing my salvation, by an actual death, I see those hands stretched out, that stretched out the heavens, and those feet racked, to which they that racked them are footstools: I hear him, from whom his nearest friends fled, pray for his enemies, and him, whom his Father forsook, not forsake his brethren: I see him that clothes this body with his creatures, or else it would wither, and clothes this soul with his righteousness, or else it would perish, hang naked upon the cross; ... when I conceit, when I contemplate my Saviour thus, I love the Lord, and there is reverent adoration in that love, I love Christ, and there is a mysterious adoration in that love, but I love Jesus, and there is a tender compassion in that love....” (Works, II. 181.)

Whenever Platonism enters into this tender passion it always elevates the emotion into a higher region, where the more intellectual or spiritual nature of Christ or God is the object of contemplation; and it does this by affording the poets a conception of the object of the soul’s highest love, as a philosophical principle, whether of beauty, of good, or of true being.

The first way by which this elevation of a purely sensuous passion into a higher region was effected was through the Platonic conception of the “idea.” Plato had taught that in love the mind should pass from a sight of the objects of beauty through ever widening circles of abstraction to the contemplation of absolute beauty in its idea. This can be known only by the soul, and is the only real beauty. Spenser’s “Hymne of Heavenly Love” is the best example of the application of this idea to the love of Christ. In this poem he sings the praise of Christ as the God of Love. He finds the chief manifestation of Christ’s love in his sacrifice. At first he treats this as a spectacle to move the eye. He dwells upon the mangling of Christ’s body (ll. 241–247), and exhorts the beholder to