That with the glory of so goodly sight, Of those fair forms, may lift themselves up higher, Hymn of Heavenly Beauty. And in the same, as in a brazen book, His goodness, which his beauty doth declare; Hymn of Heavenly Beauty. For, having yet in his deducted spright That wondrous Pattern, wheresoere it be, But ah! believe me, there is more than so, That works such wonders in the minds of men; I that have often proved, too well it know, And who so list the like assays to ken, Shall find by trial, and confess it then, Hymn in Honour of Beauty. These same Hymns also show that Love of Fame was present to Spenser as the 'last infirmity of noble minds,' and that to him Love of Beauty was the only one-if any that could overcome it: ‘And that fair lamp, which useth to inflame Which they have written in their inward eye, Hymn in Honour of Beauty. Thenceforth all world's desire will in thee die, Whose glorious beams all fleshly sense doth daze Blinding the eyes and lumining the spright.' Hymn of Heavenly Love. This is not all. In the letter which he affixed to his great poem the Faerie Queene,' he informed Sir Walter Raleigh that in that continued allegory or dark conceit,' 'I labour to pourtray in Arthur, before he was King, the image of a brave knight perfected in the twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle doth devise, the which is the purpose of these first twelve books. So have I laboured to do in the person of Arthur, whom I conceive . . . to have seen in a dream or vision the Faerie Queene, with whose excellent beauty ravished, he awaking, resolved to seek her out . . . in Faerie land. In that Faerie Queene I mean Glory in my general intention.' So that the concern of the greatest poem of that age is 'moral beauty'; and the whole soul of the knight perfected in the twelve private moral virtues or beauties, is possessed by love of Glory or Fame. And we find that, though for the purpose of the poem Glory is supposed to be all-beautiful and the love of Glory all-sufficient, Spenser cannot refrain from making, incidentally, this so-perfected knight conscious that his Love of Glory is an infirmity: The Prince by chance did on a Lady light As if some pensive thought constrained her gentle spright. In a long purple pall whose skirt with gold And your fair beauty do with sadness spill? Or doen you love? or doen you lack your will? "Fair Sir," said she, half in disdainful wise, Through great desire of glory and of fame Ne aught I weene are you therein behind That have three years sought one yet nowhere can her find." The Prince was inly movéd at her speech, Well weeting true what she had rashly told; Yet with fair semblaunt sought to hide the breach Now seeming flaming hot, now stony cold: What wight she was that poplar branch did hold? Faerie Queene, Book ii., Canto ix. So that Milton may well call Love of Fame that last infirmity of noble minds'; and the love against which such a noble mind as Shakespeare's struggled, may well be this. Although the pitch of devotion to Beauty reached by Shakespeare, and shown in his Sonnets, is approached, as far as contemporary poets are concerned, by Spenser only, the Platonic ideas of Love and Beauty were the creed of all. In connection with the 'Phoenix and Turtle' we shall see this evidenced; but by tapping one of the many channels by which had travelled from Italy that influence which flooded and fertilized the England that was to produce Shakespeare, we may see still more plainly how perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the age it was for him to so address Ideal Beauty;-and not this alone. In his introduction to a reprint of Hoby's translation of Castiglioni's 'Il Cortegiano,' Professor Raleigh says: 'No single book can serve as a guide to the Renaissance, or as an index to all that is embraced by the comprehensive energy of that significant appelation." But if one, rather than another, is to be taken for an abstract or epitome of the chief moral and social ideas of the age that one must be "The Courtier." It is far indeed from being the greatest book of its time; it is hardly among the greatest. But it is in many ways the most representative. Take it for all in all, the "Book of the Courtier" reflects as in a mirror the age that gave it birth.'1 First published in Italy in 1528, it was translated into French in 1538, into Spanish in 1540, and into English in 1561. The English translator, Hoby, says Professor Raleigh, 'was a pioneer of Italian studies in England; and his book, reprinted again and again, became one of the most influential books of the ensuing age,-the age of Shakespeare and Spenser and Sidney.' 2 There were English re-issues in 1565 (?), 1577, 1588, and 1603; and the book 1 The Tudor translations, vol. xxiii., The Courtier (1900), pp. viii-x. 2 We owe our illustration from The Courtier to Mr. George Wyndham's notice of the book in his Introduction to his edition of Shakespeare's "Poems." Except as regards The Courtier, our Introduction and Analysis were written before we had had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Wyndham's book. |