Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
Plato · en
with an explanation of His power as the creating and sustaining spirit
of the universe. Before the world was created love moved over the
warring elements of chaos and arranged them in the order they now obey.
“Then through the world his way he gan to take,
The world that was not till he did it make;
Whose sundrie parts he from them selves did sever,
The which before had lyen confused ever,
“The earth, the ayre, the water, and the fyre,
Then gan to raunge them selves in huge array,
And with contrary forces to conspyre
Each against other, by all meanes they may,
Threatning their owne confusion and decay:
Ayre hated earth, and water hated fyre,
Till Love relented their rebellious yre.
“He then them tooke, and tempering goodly well
Their contrary dislikes with loved meanes,
Did place them all in order, and compell
To keepe them selves within their sundrie raines,
Together linkt with Adamantine chaines.”
(ll. 77–92.)
The second subject which was treated in the light of Platonism was that
of beauty. In the “Hymne in Honour of Beautie” the topic is treated from
three points of view. First, the “Hymne” outlines a general theory of
æsthetics to account for the presence of beauty in the universe lying
without us (ll. 32–87); second, it explains the ground of reason for the
beauty to be found in the human body (ll. 88–164); and third, it
accounts for the exaggerated notion which the lover has of his beloved’s
physical perfections. (ll. 214–270.)
Spenser’s general theory of æsthetics is a blending of two suggestions
he found in his study of Platonism. According to Ficino, beauty is a
spiritual thing, the splendor of God’s light shining in all things. (II.
5; V. 4.) This conception is based upon the idea that the universe is an
emanation of God’s spirit, and that beauty is the lively grace of the
divine light of God shining in matter. (V. 6.) But according to another
view, the universe is conceived as the objective work of an artificer,
working according to a pattern. “The work of the creator,” says Plato in
the “Timæus” (28, 29), “whenever he looks to the unchangeable and
fashions the form and the nature of his work after an unchangeable
pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect.... If the world be
indeed fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have
looked to that which is eternal ... for the world is the fairest of
creations and he is the best of causes.” By blending these ideas Spenser
was able to conceive of God as creating the world after a pattern of
ideal beauty, which, by virtue of its infusion into matter, is the
source of that lively grace which the objects called beautiful possess.
At first he presents the view of creation which is more in accordance
with the Mosaic account,