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.