;CISM IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY I ENGLISH LITERATURE BY ELBERT N. S. THOMPSON CHAPEL HILL 1921 IK; ; i? r MYSTICISM IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITEKATURE BY ELBERT N. S. THOMPSON CHAPEL HILL 1921 MYSTICISM IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE BY ELBERT N. S. THOMPSON Milton's undisguised scorn of the "libidinous and ignorant poetasters" of his generation may seem at first only another in- stance of his unbending attitude toward the lighter pleasures of the world. 1 Other poets, however, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries condemn the exclusive absorption of sonneteers and pas- toralists in themes of love, and offer as an offset their earnest pleas for sacred verse. For example, Robert Southwell, in the preface of Saint Peter's Complaint written eight years before the death of Elizabeth, accused poets of " abusing their talent, and making the follies and faynings of loue the customarie subiect of their base endeuours." Apparently, these amorists temporarily crowded all others from the field; for Nicholas Breton, in issuing The Mothers Blessing, complained, "that matter of good worth, either morall, or diuine, if it bee handled in verse, it is almost as ill as vertue ; it will not sell almost for any thing." Yet only a few years later, George Herbert published The Church Porch with greater assur- ance, convinced that A verse may finde him who a sermon flies, And turn delight into a sacrifice. Nor was his confidence in the appeal of sacred poetry misplaced. Before the close of the century other poets had voiced the senti- ment of Herbert's sonnet beginning : My God, where is that antient heat towards thee Wherewith whole shoals of Martyrs once did burn, Besides their other flames? Doth Poetry Wear Venus' livery, only serve her turn? Why are not Sonnets made of thee, and laves Upon thine Altar burnt? Cannot thy love Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise As well as any ehe? 1 Ch. Gov., 2, p. 480. 2 Elbert N. 8. Thompson 3 The popularity of sacred poetry throughout the seventeenth century was by no means a literary fashion. To be sure, Edmund Spenser, who exerted a dominant influence on the writers of the century succeeding, had lived to regret the "two Hymnes in the praise of love and beauty " composed " in the greener times of my youth," and had offered as atonement two corresponding hymns on heavenly love and beauty. Sir Philip Sidney's influence, too, wherever the Apology was known, operated in the same direction. Furthermore, the usage of French poets somewhat later encouraged Cowley and his contemporaries to handle Biblical story. Thus there came to be something of a vogue for sacred poetry. But its wide dissemination can not be attributed to fashion alone. The truly significant work of Vaughan, Traherne, Crashaw, Norris, Drummond, and many others came in response to the growing seriousness of the nation's temperament. Naturally, during the long and bitter conflict between the factions of the church, men's minds were chiefly engrossed in religious questions, and many poets turned from erotic songs to dedicate their talents to the church. Much of this sacred writing lies altogether outside the province of mysticism, unless the term be employed so vaguely as to be quite meaningless. Much more of it, also, can not be classed as literature, but must be left to theology, controversy, or practical ethics. If the significance of the word, mysticism, however, be not unwarrant- ably restricted, a considerable body of the finest literature of the seventeenth century falls within its field. Bacon's prose essays and Herrick's charming songs would be the most notable exceptions. In the fourteenth century mysticism had risen to its highest level of power. Mechthild, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, Euysbrock, Dante, St. Catherine of Sienna, Richard Rolle of Hampole, Walter Hilton, and Julian of Norwich all lived in that period. Their teaching in the vernacular determined to a great extent the thought of later generations. Hence in the seventeenth century, when English minds were deeply stirred by Christian theology, the under- current of mysticism came strongly to the surface, even though the English temperament has never been apt in abstract speculation, and though formal mysticism has not thriven naturally on English soil. The etymologist might use the word mysticism, which is derived from a root signifying close, of " any secret language or ritual 4 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature which is understood only by the initiated " ; or understand by the term the shutting of all ordinary channels of sensory impressions, so that the mystic becomes an "enclosed, self -withdrawn, intro- verted man." 2 But philosophers have commonly applied the word to a faith in "the internal manifestation of the Divine to the intuition or in the feeling of the secluded soul/ 5 Or, according to another definition, mysticism is " in its essence, a concentration of all the soul's energies upon a supernatural Object, conceived of and loved as a living personality." 3 This coincides with Dean Inge's idea that mysticism has its origin in a dim consciousness of the beyond, and is really an "attempt to realize the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature." He specifies as the founda- tion stones of such faith these four convictions : the soul as well as the eye can see and perceive; man in order to know God, must partake of his nature; without holiness no man can see God; and love is the sure guide on the upward path. 4 These various stipula- tions together describe a temperament or habit of mind that is familiar enough to readers of seventeenth-century English litera- ture. Even if one agree with Miss Underbill that "more than the apprehension of God, then, more than the passion for the Absolute, is needed to make a mystic," these men of letters would still be included in her interpretation ; for she continues : " These must be combined with an appropriate psychological make-up, with a nature capable of extraordinary concentration, an exalted moral emotion, a nervous organization of the artistic type." B Although the English temperament has never been entirely sympathetic toward formal, strictly speculative, mysticism on the one hand, or its extreme sectarian manifestations on the other, many English poets have satisfied these broader requirements. In the heat of religious controversy a reaction developed against dog- matism and formalism in belief and worship. Heart-weariness, too, like Lord Falkland's oppressed many finer natures. And the natural desire of man to know more of life than earthly experience reveals, was intensified by the crisis through which the nation was passing. To the more artistic, susceptible temperament the world appeared R. A. Vaughan, Howrs with the Mystics, 1, pp. 17-21. P. Berger, William Blake, p. 72. 4 W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism, pp. 5-8. 1 Mysticism, p. 108. Elbert N. 8. Thompson 5 suffused with heavenly light, and men, actuated by spiritual ideals, made the search for God the engrossing business of their lives. A plain evidence of this mystical strain in English character is revealed by the experiences of children in the seventeenth century. In Grace Abounding John Bunyan placed on record his early sins of orchard-robbing, violation of the Fourth Commandment, and profanity. Clearly he had felt them most keenly in youth or they would not have given this morbid tinge to his mature conscious- ness. Even more acute were the religious sensibilities of Nicholas Ferrar. He was the son of a wealthy London merchant. At the age of six he was already thoroughly familiar with Hebrew history and had learned the Psalms by heart. One night, unable to sleep, he rose and walked into the garden. Throwing himself face down- ward on the ground, he cried: "Yes, there is, there must be a God : and he, no question, if I duly and earnestly seek it of him, will teach me not only how to know, but how to serve him accept- ably. He will be with me all my life here, and at the end of it will make me happy hereafter." 8 Such emotion in childhood seems to us almost impossible; but Thomas Traherne told of a still more abnormal psychological experience. " Once I remember (I think I was about four years old) when I thus reasoned with myself. Sitting in a little obscure room in my father's poor house : If there be a God certainly He must be Infinite in Goodness, and that I was prompted to, by a real whispering instinct of nature. And if He be Infinite in Goodness and a perfect Being, in Wisdom and Love, certainly He must do most glorious things and give us infinite riches; how comes it to pass, therefore, that I am so poor?" 7 This " whispering instinct of nature " that Traherne mentioned, describes the very essence of mysticism ; it is the reception of divine truth through hidden, spiritual channels. To search for it in the Bible as Milton did in compiling Christian Doctrine or to trust, as Hooker did, in Christian institutions, is not mysticism. The mystic takes usually an extremely individualistic point of view, like that of Herbert in the Temple or of Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress. He turns his gaze inward, in the belief that the spirit of God is 6 F. Turner, Brief Memoifs, pp. 5-6. 7 Meditations, 2, 16. 6 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature within one, and that only an attentive heart is needed for a sensing of the truth. Bunyan, Ferrar, and Traherne, whose experiences have just been cited, were all imbued with deeply religious instincts. The same strain, nevertheless, occasionally rose to the surface in writers so unspiritual as James Howell. Not simply to exhibit his facility of expression, but to convey as well a real experience to his readers, that interesting adventurer wrote to one of his friends : 8 So having got into a close field, I cast my face upword, and fell to consider what a rare prerogative the optic virtue of the Eye hath, much more the intuitive virtue in the Thought, that the one in a moment can reach Heaven, and the other go beyond it. ... What then should we think of the magnitude of the Creator himself. Doubtless, 'tis beyond the reach of any human imagination to conceive it: In my private devotions I pre- sume to compare Him to a great Mountain of Light, and my soul seems to discern some glorious Form therein; but suddenly as she would fix her eyes upon the Object, her sight is presently dazzled and disgregated with the refulgency and corruscations thereof. Life, one suspects, in the seventeenth century had been set in part to a new key. The court, be it granted, was more corrupt than it had been. Hence it is not false to stress the difference between the new type of courtier and the old, between knights such as Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir John Suckling on the one hand, and Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Ealeigh, on the other. But the great bulk of the people in the later generation was at heart religious. Although it was in many ways an intensely practical age, even in their daily affairs men were governed by spiritual motives. Through all the active life and thinking of the time, the spiritual and the worldly operate together, as they do, ?or example, in those strange camp-letters of Sergeant Nehemiah Wharton. Many men lived through such an experience as Mrs. Browning's : When I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm.* And lessons so learned when the spiritual nature was set to this new rhythm were carried through in the humdrum duties of ordinary life; for in Matthew Arnold's words, 'Familiar Letters, 2, 50. ' Sonnets from the Portuguese, 7. filbert N. 8. Thompson 7 Tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfiU'd. M The experience has been by no means uncommon, especially among poets, who have risen most readily from what Eucken calls the natural to the spiritual level. 11 On that level, man perceives through new channels, and perhaps is only understood by those who feel with him. The difference between these two grades of experience has been well stated by Eucken and Bergson, but it would be better to let some of the old mystical writers present it in their own defence. The fact in question is quaintly recognized in the passage of the Religio Medici beginning : " Thus is Man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not onely like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible." 12 And possibly the ablest defence of this reading of life is presented by John Norris. He was born in 1657 in Wiltshire and received his education at Winchester and Oxford. Then in 1691 he took the parish at Bemerton, where holy George Herbert had closed his career in 1633. In that quiet spot, Norris preached and studied and wrote, until in 1711 he died, " having exhausted his strength by intense applica- tion and long habits of severe reasoning." On the south side of the little church a tablet marks the grave of the " Kecluse of Bemerton." John Norris recognized the difference between man's perceptive faculties on the lower and higher levels of existence. His poem, The Discouragement, reads in part: Thought I, for anything I know, What we have stamp'd for science here, Does only the appearance of it wear, And will not pass above, tho current here below; Perhaps they've other rules to reason by, And what's truth hero, with them's absurdity. We truth by a refracted ray View, like the sun at ebb of day; Whom the gross, treacherous atmosphere, Makes where it is not, to appear. M Morality. " See E. Underbill, Mysticism, pp. 36, 40. u Religio Medici, 1. 34. 7 8 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature In order to justify his belief that man's greatest good is nearness to this higher sphere of life, Norris wrote again in On a Musician: Poor dull mistake of low mortality, To call that madness which is ecstacy. Tis no disorder of the brain, His soul is only set fan higher strain. Out-soar he does the sphere of common sense, Rais'd to diviner excellence; But when at highest pitch, his soul out-flies, Not reason's bounds, but those of vulgar eyes. This is the mystic's best defence. He rises above the changing, temporal world to another by purely inner motive forces, and, although others may judge him abnormal or even mad, he realizes that he differs from them only in the possession of a truer sanity, a farther vision, than theirs. Because English poetry has been colored at all times by mystical feeling, the poets of the seventeenth century had necessarily their forerunners in the sixteenth. It was mysticism of the Platonic sort that Spenser, especially in The Fowre Hymnes, brought into literature. But Spenser, like Milton, was too eclectic, too compre- hensive, to be classed simply as a mystic. Of the early poets the Catholic martyr, Eobert Southwell, would be more adequately described by that term. Southwell was born in 1560 or 1561 and suffered death because of his faith in 1595. Knowing the imprisonment and tortures that he was forced to undergo, a reader finds an especial poignancy in some of his lyrics. Many other Elizabethans had written on the variability of Fortune and the futility of worldly ambition; but what Southwell wrote in confinement comes to us fraught with deeper than ordinary feeling. His condition there was " deplor- able and full of fears and dangers " ; others, his friends whom he mentions in the letter to his father, had already suffered "such cruel usages ... as can scarce be believed/' But as he fortified himself to " suffer anything that can come, how hard soever it may be," he realized that "life is but loss" and eased his heart in the lyric : By force I live, in will I wish to dye, In playnte I passe the length of lingring dayes; Free would my soule from mortall body flye, And tredd the track of death's desyrfid waies : Elbert N. 8. Thompson 9 Life is but losse where death is deemed gaine, And loathed pleasures breed displeasinge payne. The first significant feature of Southwell's poems is the stress that they place on the inner life to the disregard of the outer the true mystic's point of view. " Not where I breath, but where I love, I live/' he declared in one poem, and in another he returned to the same thought in the lines : Wiho lives in love, loves lest to live, And longe del ayes doth rue, If Him he love by Whome he lives, To Whome all love is dewe. Mourne, therefore, no true lover's death, Life onely him annoyes; And when he taketh leave of life, Then love beginns his joyes. Viewing the world in this way, Southwell, even in his distress, experienced true inward happiness : My conscience is my crowne, Contented thoughts niy rest; My hart is happy in it eelfe, My blisse is in my breste." Thus Southwell schooled himself to overlook confinement and torture, which were mere accidents of his bodily existence, and to think simply of his spiritual state, of which alone he could boast full control. On this matter Southwell reflects very plainly the influence of Plato. To them both this world with its seeming reality is merely the shadow of the stable, ideal world, and nowhere here on earth can one find more than imperfect copies of the true beauty, love, justice, and honor that exist elsewhere. One of the most thought- ful of the poems that develop the contrast between the earthly and the ideal reality is LooJce Home: Eetyred thoughtes enjoy their own delightes, As beauty doth in self-behoulding eye; Man's mynde a mirrhour is of heavenly sightes, A breife wherein all marveylls summ&d lye, Of fayrest formes and sweetest shapes the store, Most gracefull all, yet thought may grace them more. u See I Dye Alive, Life's Death, Love's Life, and Oontent and Ritche. 10 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature The mynde a creature is, yet can create, To Nature's paterns adding higher skill; Of fynest workes witt better could the state If force of witt had equall poure of will; Devise of man in working hath no ende; What thought can thinke an other thought can mende. Man's soule of endles bewtye's image is, Drawen by the worke of endles skill and might; This skillfull might gave many sparkes of blisse, And to discerne this blisse a native light; To frame God's image as His worthea requir'd, His might, His skill, His worde and will conspir'd. All that he had His image should present, All that it should present he could afforde, To that he coulde afforde his will was bente, His will was followed with performinge worde; Lett this suffice, by this conceave the rest, He should, he could, he would, he did the best. Few of Southwell's poems are so charged with thought as is this. It contains not only the Platonic concept of an ideal world, of which this is but an imperfect copy, but also Southwell's faith in the " native light " of the soul and the creative force of the mind and his confident optimism. Of these ideas Coleridge's exposition of the " esemplastic principle," " the shaping spirit of imagination," and Leibnitz's doctrine that this is the best possible world, are but enlargements. The usual conclusion, however, of Southwell's reasoning is that man's chief happiness lies in his ability to rise to this perfect state. He cries in one lyric: Fayre soule! how long shall veyles thy graces shroud? How long shall this exile withold thy right? When will thy sunn disperse this mortall cloude, Aj>d give thy glories scope to blaze their light? that a starr, more fitt for angells' eyes, Should pyne in earth, not shyne above the skyes! u And in another poem Southwell attempts to show the reasonable- ness of his position : Misdeeming Eye! that stoopest to the lure Of mortall worthes, not worth so worthy love; u At Home in Heaven. Elbert N. 8. Thompson 11 All beautye's base, all graces are impure, That do thy erring thoughtes from God remove. Sparkes to the fire, the beames yeld to the sunne, All grace to God, from Whome all graces runne. If picture move, more should the paterne please; No shadow can with shadowed thinge compare, And fayrest shapes, whereon our loves do ceaze, But sely signes of God's high beautyes are. Go, sterving sense, feede thou on earthly maste; Trewe love, in heaven seeke thou thy sweete repast." But in addition to this more common reflection of the Dialogues, Southwell's thought embraces much Neo-Platonism. Its almost inevitable tendency to pantheism, for example, is reflected in the phrase " God present is at once in every place." Yet this belief in the essential unity of creation, all being but an emanation from God, does not lessen Southwell's sense of man's individuality, or God's ; for " One soule in man is all in everye part," and " God in every place is ever one." 16 Seldom, however, do the English poets lose themselves in the speculations of the Christian Platonists. The reader, then, is not puzzled, as he is in reading Ficino, Bruno, or Boehme, with strange terms and difficult abstractions. The task set the reader of these poets is to look on life as they depict it and see nothing incongruous in their forms of expression. For example, in addressing the wound in Christ's side in this concrete way, O pleasant port! O place of rest! O royal rift! O worthy wound! Come harbour me, a weary guest, That in the world no ease have found, Southwell may seem to materialize his purely spiritual emotion. But the finding in everything visible and tangible a sacrament of spiritual life is an ever-present trait of mysticism, which often brings into sacred verse the appearence of materialism and irrever- ence. The reader has to perceive, as the author does, what lies beyond the symbols used to express the emotion. If this be done, such a poem as The Burning Babe, possibly Southwell's finest, can be appreciated for its simplicity, its power, its vision. v Lewd Love is Losse. M Of the Blessed Sacrament. 12 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature As I in hoary Winter's night stood shiveringe in the snowe, Surpris'd I was with sodayne heat, which made my hart to glowe; And liftinge upp a fearefull eye to vewe what fire was nere, A prety Babe all burninge bright, did in the ayre appeare, Who scorched with excessive heate, such floodes of teares did shedd, As though His floodes should quench His flames which with His teares were fedd; Alas ! quoth He, but newly borne, in fiery heates I f rye, Yet none approch to warme their hartes or feele my fire but I! My faultles brest the fornace is, the fuell woundinge thornes, Love is the fire, and sighes the smoke, the ashes shame and scornes; The fuell Justice layeth on, and Mercy blowes the coales, The mettall in this fornace wrought are men's defiled soules, For which, as nowe on fire I am, to worke them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to washe them in My bloode : With this He vanisht out of sight, and swiftly shroncke awaye, And straight I called unto mynde that it was Christmas-daye. In all these respects the poems of Southwell represent Platonism as it was adapted to the Christian belief by early churchmen and transmuted by the art of modern poets. For the Christian philoso- pher Platonism would signify, "an unshaken confidence in the ultimate validity of ideas, with a tendency to suspect the data of the senses, and to insist on the unreality of the phenomenal." 17 A Platonist, consequently, would believe that, transcending the reach of sensory experience and reason, there is a mystic, spiritual way of apprehending ultimate truth. He would find in the Dialogues, likewise, confirmation of his belief in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and would accept, as kindred teaching, the idea of an unchanging, intelligible world above this world of shadows, and would stress the need of focussing our aspirations on that other world. Such were the lessons that Plotinus for the philosophers and Augustine for the churchmen learned from Plato. The influence of Plato during the seventeenth century made itself felt in English scholarship chiefly at Cambridge, and in English poetry mainly through the writings of Edmund Spenser. At Cam- bridge Neo-Platonism found the soil best adapted to its growth, Spenser, himself a student of Pembroke Hall, wove together in The Fowre Hymnes and the first book especially of the Faerie Queene the fundamental teachings of the Socratic dialogues. Then from Spenser, who exerted the most potent single influence on the poets " P. H. Wicksteed, Dante and Aquinas, p. 25. Elbert N. 8. Thompson of the next century, the influence of Plato was handed down to Southwell, Drummond, Milton, and their contemporaries. Bearing this in mind one appreciates the historical position of the work done in his secluded home by William Drummond of Hawthornden. The opening sonnet of Flowres of Sion, after exhibiting "the instability of mortall glorie," concludes with the lines: Wherefore (my Minde) above Time, Motion, Place, Thee raise, and Steppes, not reach'd by Nature trace. The fourth sonnet, likewise, which Professor Kastner has traced to Petrarch employs these comparisons to expose the unreality of this life: The wearie Mariner so fast not flies An howling Tempest, Harbour to attaine, Nor Sheepheard hastes, when frayes of Wolves arise, 'So fast to Fold to save his bleeting Traine: As I (wing'd with Contempt and just Disdaine) Now flie the World, and what it most doth prize, And Sanctuarie seeke, free to remaine From wounds of abject Times, and Envies eyes. In the same key another sonnet was written: Why (worldlings) do ye trust fraile honours dreams? And leane to guilted Glories which decay? and in another Drummond makes this resolve : Hencefoorth on Thee (mine onelie Good) I thinke, For onelie Thou canst grant what I doe crave. 18 The same ideas recur again and again in the poetry of Drum- mond's age. Nicholas Breton, for instance, feeling the unreality of the phenomenal world, turned to the ideal : In Nature's beautie, all the best can be Are shadowing colours to deceiue the eye : But in this beautie may our spirits see A light wherein we live, and cannot die. 1 ' This light, of course, is God, and God, whom he identifies with Love, is the source of all things. Breton's own words are : u Sonnets, 20, 5. a Solus in toto laudandus Deus. l4 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature And this is God, and this same God is Love; For God and Love, in Charitie are one, and One onely light that shewea one onely Love: One onely Love, and that is God above. Assuredly, much of this poetry is imitative and uninspired. A reader is apt to remember only the first line of George Daniel's effort that begins: Lord! yet How dull am I? When I would flye; Up to the Eegion of thy Glories. 10 It frequently happens, therefore, that certain ideas of Plato are incorporated in the writings of poets who are not mystics at all. Lord Herbert, for example, never rose to anything higher than this Meditation: More more our Souls then, when they go from hence, And back unto the Elements dispense, All that built up our frail and earthly frame Shall through each pore and passage make their breach, Till they with all their faculties do reach Unto that place from whence at first they came. And therefore I who do not live and move By outward sense so much as faith and love, Which is not in inferior Creatures found, May unto some immortal state pretend, Since by these wings I hitherto may ascend Where faithful loving Souls with joys are crown'd." Yet no one would be impelled by even these verses to count the Quixotic knight of the Autobiography among the mystics. Even his brother, George Herbert, had little if any mysticism in his temperament. His poems show an unfaltering sense of the nearness of God ; mind and heart alike are wholly preoccupied with thoughts of him. In certain of his poems, furthermore, Herbert accepts the teachings of Plato. Of these pieces, the most obvious is the sonnet beginning, " Immortal Love, author of this great frame." Yet never in the Temple is there a vision as clear as Vaughan's " Ed. A. B. Grosart, p. 13. "See too The Idea. Elbert N. 8. Thompson * I saw eternity the other night Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright, or, I see them walking in an Air of glory, Whose light doth trample on my days: My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, Meer glimering and decays. Something more, then, than an occasional acceptance of Plato's thought is needed to make a mystic. No one of these poets represents all sides of Plato's varied genius so well as Spenser. 22 Like Plato, Spenser was endowed with both a highly spiritual and a richly sensuous temperament, so that he enjoyed to the fullest the beauty of the visible world and the impulse of the spiritual life. Both men had a marked gift for allegorical narrative, and each valued literature chiefly for its moral or ethical import. Not any of the lesser poets following Spenser was deep and broad enough in mental grasp to embrace all this; for even Milton could not harmonize all these diverse elements. Among late Elizabethan poets, then, we must look for Platonism in one or another of its partial manifestations. One of Pmmmond's most interesting poems, An Hymn of the Fairest Fair, contains in addition to its strict Platonism a good deal that Christian mystics had taught of God and the world. The poet conceives God, to whom his aspirations rise, as the great creator, who in his love called forth into existence all things that are. I Feele my Bosome glow with wontlesse Fires, Rais'd from the vulgar prease my Mind aspires (WingM with high Thoghts) vnto his praise to clime, From deepe Eternitie who call'd foorth Time; That Essence which not-mou'd makes each thing moue, Vncreat'd Beautie all-creating Loue; But by so great an object, radient light, My Heart appall'd, enfeebled restes my Sight, Thicke Cloudes bcnighte my labouring Ingine, And at my high attempts my Wits repine. Through these clouds, despite his thwarted faculties, the poet sees God on his throne : *L. Winstanley, The Fowre Hymnes and J. S. Harrison, Platonism in English Poetry. 16 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature As farre beyond the starrie walles of Heaven, As is the loftiest of the Planets seuen Sequestred from this Earth, in purest light, Out-shining ours, as ours doth sable Night, Thou, All-sufficient, Omnipotent, Thou euer-glorious, most excellent, God various in Names, in Essence one, High art enstalled on a golden Throne, Out-reaching Heavens wide Vastes, the Bounds or nought, Transcending all the Circles of our Thought. After this mystical vision of God, dwelling in indescribable light, far transcending all powers of thought, and boundless in his reach, Drummond attempts to define his being. He first stresses the unity of God, arguing that the Trinity, though threefold and symbolized in human life by the understanding, memory, and will, is one, as spring, well-head, and stream are one. He regards this God as the center of all life, and explains the creation according to Plotinus' doctrine of emanation. God first brought forth the " immortal Traines of Intellectual! Powr's " who attend him. They are ranged about the throne in heavenly bands, according to the hierarchic scheme of Dionysius. Beneath these heavenly hosts is the great and manifold world of nature, The Organes of thy Prouidence diuine, Bookes euer open, Signes that clearlie shine.* 8 Then human life finds its place. Originally, man stood above nature, until the sin in the garden displaced him; all nature served him, and angels passed freely from heaven to earth. Over this vast creation, spiritual and material, God rules in perfect unity. Yet Drummond sees his spirit everywhere ; Whole and entire all in thy Self e thou art, Ail-where diffus'd, yet of this all no part, For infinite, in making this faire Frame, (Great without quantitie) in all thou came, And filling all, how can thy State admit, Or Place or Substance to be voide of it? "Of. Dionysius the Areopagite: "All things have emanated from God, and the end of all is return to God," and "The degree of real existence possessed by any being is the amount of God in that being." From Vaughan, i, pp. 113-115. The orders assigned by Dionysius to the heavenly hosts are fully explained by the seventeenth-century poet and playwright, Thomas Heywood, in The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels. Elbert N. S. Thompson 17 So also are all times present to Him; All Times to thee are one, that which hath runne, And that which is not brought yet by the Sunne, To thee are present, who dost alwayes see In present act, what past is or to bee. This entire conception is in harmony with the teaching of the mystics. One is not surprised, then, to find the poem closing with their sense of the incomprehensibility of God. King, whose Greatnesse none can comprehend, Whose boundlesse Goodnesse doth to all extend, Light of all Beautie, Ocean without ground, That standing flowest, giuing dost abound, Eich palace, and Indweller euer blest, Neuer not working euer yet in Kest; 'What wit cannot conceiue, words say of Thee, Heere where as in a Mirrour wee but see, Shadowes of shadowes, Atomes of thy Might, Still owlie eyed when staring on thy Light, Grant that released from this earthly laile, And fred of Clouds which heere our Knowledge vaile, In Heauens high Temples, where thy Praises ring, 1 may in sweeter Notes heare Angels sing. In perfect keeping with this great poem is Drummond's solemn, awe-inspired meditation in prose on death. Many of the thoughts of A Cypresse Grove came to the author from foreign sources, Montaigne's Essais, Charron's De la Sagesse, and Kinghiere's Didloghi delta vita et della morte. 2 * But the stately movement of the prose and the rich coloring, are Drummond's own. He had brooded in quiet on this question of life and death until his thoughts, whatever their sources may have been, belonged to him. The world is beautiful, he sees, and the body serves the needs of the soul ; but, for all that, it is no fearful thing to die. "My Soule, what aileth thee," he cries, " to bee thus backward and astonished, at the remembrance of Death, sith it doth not reach Thee, more than Darknesse doth those f arre-shining Lampes above ? " Death merely permits man, like a storm-tossed mariner, to " stricke Saile and joyfullie enter the leas of a save Harbour." 25 Even savages have had " some roving guesses at Ages to come, and a Glow-worme M See notes to Professor Kastner's edition. * II, pp. 89-90. 18 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature light of another life." Drummond's own vision of that other life is finely expressed at the close : " Then sRall there bee an end without an end, Time shall finish, and Place shall bee altered, Motion yeelding vnto Rest, and another World of an Age eternall and vnchangeable shall arise." Thus the English sacred poets, true Platonists that they were, habitually contrasted the unreality of this world with the reality of the other. No one 01 them was more deeply imbued with this feeling than Henry Vaughan, the Welsh physician. Biding along the rustic roads on his professional errands, he was keenly alive to all the beauties of nature, especially the stars, God's " hosts of spyes." But he looked on these natural objects only as symbols of a higher beauty, "whose meaner showes and outward utensils these glories are." 2e Such a temperament may have been in the mind of John Norris when he wrote : " How happy is the Man that can do so! that can Conduct and Govern his Steps by the bright Views of the other world and not by the dim appearances of this." 2T Lovers of Wordsworth, therefore, have always taken a peculiar interest in Vaughan. The great romantic poet was oppressed with the idea that " the world is too much with us." Owing to exactly the same distrust of the business of life, Vaughan long before had written: The world Is full of voices; Man is call'd, and hurl'd By each; he answers all, Knows ev'ry note, and call, Hence, still Fresh dotage tempts, or old usurps his will.* Vaughan's prayer then is : Come and releive, And tame, and keepe downe with thy light Dust that would rise and dimme my sight! Lest left alone too long Amidst the noise and throng, Oppressed I, Striving to save the whole, by parcels dye. Or again, his mind still running in grooves that Wordsworth's followed, he petitions for " Midnight, p. 36, Retirement, p. 92. "A Discourse of Walking- by Faith, p. 134. * TMot*-nf+in*t r\ A1 5 1 Distraction, p. 413. Elbert N. S. Thompson 19 A living Faith, a Heart of flesh, The World an Enemie. Yet from inanimate nature Vaughan derived many truly Words- worthian lessons. Everything, as he understood the world, joins in praise of the Creator ; So hilla and valleys into pinging break, And though poor stones have neither speech nor tongue, While active winds and streams both run and speak, Yet stones are deep in admiration. 10 Consequently in The Starre, Vaughan resolves: Yet, seeing all things that subsist and be Have their Commissions from Divinitie, And teach us duty, I will see What man may learn from thee. From the lessons so learned came Vaughan's highest inspiration. One of the finest of his poems, though it was prompted by a verse of Romans, expresses only this fervent belief in the spirituality of all nature. And do they so? have they a Sense Of ought but Influence? Can they their heads lift, and expect, And grone too? why th' Elect, Can do no more: my volumes sed They were all dull, and dead; They judg'd them senselesse and their state Wholly Inanimate. Go, go; Seal up thy looks, And burn thy books! I would I were a stone, or tree, Or flowre by pedigree, Or some poor high-way herb, or Spring To flow, or bird to sing! Then should I (tyed to one sure state,) All day expect my date; But I am sadly loose, and stray A giddy blast each way. let me not thus range! Thou canst not change. This is possibly Vaughan's most usual theme. In moments when such impulse does not move him he often grows dull and clumsy " Day of Judgment, p. 403. The Bird, p. 497. Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature in thought and expression. He is invariably weakest if mind rather than sub-conscious emotion assumes the creative role. But whenever the world appears radiant with this white, heavenly light, the poet's emotion quickens, and moves upward on the spiritual ladder that mystics coveted to find. So in Vaughan's eyes the world appeared as it did to the Spanish mystic, Eose of Lima. For her the whole creation was filled with God. At sunrise she passed through her garden and invited all objects there to join her hymn of praise; The trees bowed as she passed by; the flowers swayed on their stalks and opened to the light; the birds sang and even the insects voiced their adoration. 81 Strange as all this seems, Vaughan too had experienced it; When in the East the Dawn doth blush, Here cool, fresh Spirits the air brush; Herbs (strait) get up; Flow'rs peepe and spread; Trees whisper praise, and bow the head. Birds from the shades of night releast Look round about, then quit the neast, And with united gladness sing The glory of the morning's King. The Hermit hears, and with meek voice Offers his own up, and their Joys; Then prays, that all the world may be Blest with as sweet an unity.** Another poet-mystic, Thomas Traherne, loved nature in this same two-fold way for its own beauty and as a symbol of the divine. That retired clergyman, though, seems never to have seen it in its proper earthly light, but always suffused with a sheen from heaven. Like Wordsworth, he had felt the shades of the "prison house " closing upon him as a growing boy, and had found himself in " a waste place covered with idleness and play, and shops, and markets, and taverns." * 8 Life was only interesting as it appeared to him illuminated by his own unique personality. What this was, his own words can best reveal: The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were B E. Underbill, If ystidsm, p. 313. * The Bee, p. 652. ** Meditations, 3. 14. Elbert N. 8. Thompson 21 at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstacy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street were moving jewels ; I knew not that they were born or should die. 8 * Just this same shimmer of unreality plays over Traherne's poems. Looking out on the world, he asks, Where are the silent streams, The living waters and the glorious beams, The sweet reviving bowers, The shady groves, the sweet and curious flowers, The springs and trees, the heavenly days, The flow'ry meads, and glorious rays, The gold and silver towers? Here, through this strange environment, moved no real substantial human figures; The streets were paved with golden stones, The boys and girls were mine, Oh how did all their lovely faces shine! The sons of men were holy ones, In joy and beauty they appeared to me, And every thing which here I found, While like an angel I did see, Adorned the ground.* 5 Such complete transformation of reality can he found in English literature only in the work of Traherne and Blake. Eeality to both men was entirely subjective not objective; for they gained con- sciousness of the finite through the infinite, as Malbranche did. Traherne seems even to anticipate the later philosophic denial of material reality. In The Preparative, at least, he writes : Tis not the object, but the light That maketh Heaven: 'tis a purer sight. Felicity Appears to none but them that purely see. The possession of this purer sight determined Traherne's peculiar temperament, and in his verse and prose alike there runs a mystical "Ibid., 3. 3. * Desire, p. 120; Wonder, p. 5. 22 Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century English Literature philosophy that resembles closely the subjective idealism of the nineteenth century. No one of these mystical poets, in calling on man to rise to a higher spiritual existence, meant any disparagement of the world in which our lives are passed. They were Platonists, in that regard, rather than Neo-Platonists. The material world, however unreal and shadow-like it may be called, is rich in beauty, and, as a symbol of the higher life, filled with significance. This idea is the most pervading of the few threads of mystical thought that are woven into Habington's Castara. The same opinion of the world appears is Crashaw's highly mystical poetry. And Francis Quarles, after the ascetic's indictment, False world, thou ly'st: thou canst not lend The least delight, can argue as a true Platonist that this world is fair only in com- parison with another. But possibly the best example of a poet's reconciling his love for things seen with a contempt bred of a stronger love elsewhere, is found in John Norris's Aspiration. Looking forth from the " dark prison " in which his soul lay enchained, Norris exclaimed: How cold this clime ! and yet my sense Perceives even here thy influence. Even here thy strong magnetic charms I feel, And pant and tremble like the amorous steel. To lower good, and beauties less divine Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline; But yet so strong the sympathy It turns, and points again to thee. A reader who has become accustomed to the poet's way of harmonizing these two feelings will not see in the opening lines of Comus any indication of that disregard of nature that Milton so unjustly has been accused of showing. It would be needless to quote Milton's vision of the life In regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call earth. Less commonly known is the beautiful sentiment of Vaughan at the close of The World: Elbert N. 8. Thompson 23 Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing, And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the Ring, But most would use no wing. O fools (said I,) thus to prefer dark night Before true light, To live in grots, and caves, and hate the day Because it shews the way, The way which from this dead and dark abode Leads up to God, A way where you might tread the Sun, and be More bright than he. The same aspiration evokes the prayer: Grant I may so Thy steps track here below, That in these Masques and shadows I may see Thy sacred way; And by those hid ascents climb to that day, Which breaks from thee Who art in all things, though invisibly. And with these lines come to mind many other poems by Vaughan, such as the lyric My Soul, There is a Countrie Afar beyond the stars; for he had come to the belief that some men " walk to the skie even in this life." Hence, although he felt a deep joy in this world, he loved the other so much more fervently that his creed is wholly summed up in these two injunctions: "run on and reach home with the light " and " fill thy bresst with home." 3