I should like to acknowledge my thanks to Mr. W. H. Heck for his service of transcription in the British Museum Library and to Miss M. P. Conant for a similar kindness in research work in the Harvard College Library. To Professor George Edward Woodberry I am most deeply grateful for innumerable suggestions and invaluable advice. The work was undertaken at his suggestion, and throughout the past two years has progressed under his kindly criticism. But the help and inspiration which I have received from him antedate the inception of the essay, extending back to the earlier days of undergraduate life. The work is thus inseparably connected with the training in the study of literature which he has given, and his help in its completion is only an episode in a long series of kindnesses which he has been ever willing to show. ORANGE, N.J., June 1, 1903. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE IDEALS OF CHRISTIAN VIRTUES 1 I. HOLINESS 1 II. TEMPERANCE 12 III. CHASTITY 30 CHAPTER II THEORY OF LOVE 67 I. HEAVENLY LOVE 67 II. EARTHLY LOVE 104 CHAPTER III GOD AND THE SOUL 167 I. NATURE OF GOD 167 II. NATURE OF THE SOUL 186 III. ETERNITY OF THE SOUL AND OF MATTER 202 BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 INDEX 229 PLATONISM IN ENGLISH POETRY CHAPTER I IDEALS OF CHRISTIAN VIRTUES I. HOLINESS The fundamental doctrine of Platonism as it was understood throughout the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the reality of a heavenly beauty known in and by the soul, as contrasted with an earthly beauty known only to the sense. In this the Christian philosophic mind found the basis for its conception of holiness. Christian discipline and Platonic idealism blended in the “Faerie Queene” in the legend of the Red Cross Knight.