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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Spenser's conception of the organization of the universe, as it is set forth in the allegory of the garden of Adonis, and in the Mutability cantos, has recently been given considerable attention. Professor Edwin Greenlaw opened the subject with the suggestion that the poet owed part of the ideas developed in these two passages to Lucretius. Several objections have been made to his theory. M. Denis Saurat points out some inconsistencies in Professor Greenlaw's interpretation, and prefers to regard the passage on the garden of Adonis as lyrical and without serious or sustained philosophic content. Professor Ronald B. Levinson finds Spenser's theory of form and matter in Bruno's Spaccio. Miss Evelyn Albright draws attention to the inconsistency between the Platonic idealism of The Fowre Hymnes (together with certain passages in Colin Clout's Come Home A gaine) and any Lucretian materialism in The Faerie Queene. To these critics Professor Greenlaw replied, in effect, that no one had disproved his contention of Lucretian influence in the passage on the garden of Adonis, and that the well-known eclecticism of the Renaissance accounts for the mixture of Platonic and Lucretian philosophy in Spenser.
1 “Spenser and Lucretius,” Studies in Philology, xvii (1920), 439–464. He has added further material in two other articles'. “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost” Studies in Philology, xvii (1920), 320–359; and, “Some Old Religious Cults in Spenser,” Studies in Philology, xx (1923), 216–243.
2 “Les idées philosophique de Spenser,” Yearbook of the New Society of Letters at Lund, 1924, pp. 20–30.
3 “Spenser and Bruno,” PMLA, xliii (1928), 675–681.
4 “Spenser's Cosmic Philosophy and his Religion,” PMLA, xliv (1929), 715–759. She finds that Spenser's matter is not atomic but consists of the four elements, controlled by the opposing forces of love and strife, and she believes that the poet got this physical theory from the writings of Empedocles.
5 “Spenser's Mutabilitie,” PMLA, xxv (1930), 684–695.
6 Odyssey, vii. See also Orlando Furioso, x, 61–63.
7 Natalis Comes (or Conti), Mythologiae, sive explicationis fabularum (Frankfurt, 1584), pp. 275–276 (iii, 19). A recent study of Spenser's use of this book has been made by C. W. Lemmi [“The Symbolism of the Classical Episodes in The Faerie Queene,” Philological Quarterly, viii (1929), 270–287].
8 P. 277 (Tibullus, i, 3).
9 See for example Chaucer's Parlement of Foules and his translation of The Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 1349–1454. An excellent brief survey of the subject is to be found in H. R. Patch's “Some Elements in Mediaeval Descriptions of the other World,” PMLA, xxxiii (1918), 619–627.
10 The identification of the Elysian fields with Eden rested on the assertion of the early fathers of the Church that the heathen borrowed their ideas of paradise from Moses. Tertullian, in his Apology, asserts that “the Elysian plains … can only be from our mysteries” (Works, trans. by Rev. C. Dodgson, Oxford, 1854, p. 98). Justin Martyr asserted that the Homeric garden of Alcinoüs was copied from Moses (Address to the Greeks, ch. 28). Contemporary expression of the idea is to be found in Arthur Golding's Epistle, prefixed to his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses ll. 529–536; and in Raleigh's History of the World, i, ch. 3, sect. 3.
11 Joshua Simmler, in his scholia to the Aethici Cosmographia first published in 1575, printed with parallel Greek and Latin text in 1577, identifies the kingdom of Adonis mentioned by Pliny, with Eden. He says: “Adonis] Non dubito nomen hac vitiosum esse, neque usquam invenio provinciam hujus nominis. forte pro Eden posuit: quo nomine orientalem regionem, in qua fuit Paradisus Domini, sacrae literae nominant. Atque huic nostrae sententiae astipulatur quod postea scribit, Armodium fluvium lustrare regionem Adonis & Mesopotamiam. nam Eden non longé abfuisse à Mesopotamia, ostendit Moses, qui ex Eden fluere scribit Euphratem & Tigrim, flumina Mesopotamiam ambientia.”
An anonymous reader added an “Observationum libellus” to Comes' Mythologiae, Padua, 1616, which begins with an article on “Adonis Horti,” the substance of which is to the effect that the garden of Eden, or terrestrial paradise is like the paradise of the Chaldeans and Persians. It is the abode of the blest. Adonis is Edonis, or Eden. The gardens of Adonis, mentioned by Pliny, are the same as the garden of Eden. Here he quotes Simmler, as above.
12 Mythologiae, p. 274. He goes on to mention various earthly allocations, including the antipodes. The places mentioned by Spenser are, of course, well-known haunts of Venus.
13 See for example St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, pt. i, quest. 102, and pt. ii, quest. 175, art. 3, and Orlando Furioso, xxxiv, 48.
14 See note 9 above.
15 See Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, trans. by J. S. Phillmore, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1912), i, 58. The temple was “planted by Dionysus for himself in laurels; the laurels were set round in a ring, enclosing within their circuit the area of a neatly proportioned temple. He had clothed the laurels with ivies and vines and erected his own image within, knowing that time would make the trees meet, and thereby provide him with a kind of roof. The vault of branches is now so compact that neither rain or wind can penetrate the sanctuary.”
16 See for example Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs; Claudian, On Stilicho's Consulship, ii, 424–476; and the reproduction of this passage from Claudian in Boccaccio's Genealogiae deorum, i, ch. 1; and in Vincenzo Cartari's Le Imagini de i Dei de gli Antichi (Lyons, 1581), pp. 20 ff.; also Plotinus, Enn., iv, 8.3 and iv, 8.1.
17 For a discussion of Plato's influence on later fables of purgatory and paradise, see J. A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato, London, 1905, pp. 101 ff.
18 He argues that, since Homer says that the earth is equidistant from heaven and hell, he must mean the moon, or “heavenly earth” (p. 281); for the moon, or Proserpina, is “herself the bound and limit of Hades; which Homer also covertly but not unelegantly signified, when he said,” etc., “On the Face appearing in the Orb of the Moon,” Morals, trans. by William W. Goodwin (Boston, 1870), v, 285.
19 In Som. Scip. i, 11.
20 “Sagittarius,” ll. 150–163; B. Googe translation, London, 1588, p. 159. For a study of the popularity and character of this work see Foster Watson, The Zodiacus Vitae of Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus: An Old School-Book (London, 1908).
21 See Boethius, Consolat. Philosoph., iv, pr. 6, for the rule of Fate in the mutable world, and Plutarch for Hecate as Fate.
22 iv, ii, 47.
23 See, for example, Boethius, Consolat. Philosoph., iii, 9.
24 See G. Grote, Aristotle, ed. by A. Bain and G. C. Robertson (London, 1872), ii, 252 ff.
25 See his De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit, where various suggested locations of the archetype are mentioned.
26 “Pisces,” ll. 169–194. I quote from Googe's translation, which is very close to the Latin. See the ed. of 1588, pp. 231–232.
27 Commentary on the Parmenides, cap. 33, Opera Omnia (Basle, 1576), p. 1151.
28 An objection first raised by Socrates, cf. Parmenides, and Sophist.
29 Opera Omnia, Basle, 1576, p. 1770.
30 See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, i, quest. 102. The article on “Paradise” in McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia is excellent and furnishes the necessary bibliography of the subject. An anthology of discussions is to be found in Ugolino's Thesaurus antiquitatum sacrorum (Venice, 1747), vol. vii; see also Raleigh's History of the World, i, 3.
31 See M. F. Santarem, Essai sur l'histoire de la cosmographie et de la cartographie pendant le moyen âge, 3 vols. (Paris, 1849–1852), ii, index.
32 Epistolae, vi, Opera Omnia, p. 818.
33 “Sagittarius,” ll. 150–163.
34 Observations on the Faerie Queene (London, 1754), p. 59.
35 Republic, x.
36 On the Face Appearing in the Orb of the Moon.
37 In Somn. Scip., i, 12.
38 Ll. 120–147.
39 Parlement of Foules. Mandeville describes a paradise at the antipodes which is enclosed with a wall “all covered with mosse as it seemeth.”—The Voiage and Travayle of Sir John Maundeville, ed. John Ashton (London, 1887), pp. 210–212 (reprinted from the Pynson edition of 1568).
40 The earth was commonly called Pluto's domain by the Platonists. See for example, Macrobius, In Somn. Scip., i, 11. The pseudo-Platonic Axiochus, accepted as genuine in the Renaissance, describes the departure of the soul at death to “the uncertain spot, and some dwelling under ground … and the gates before the road to Pluto's domain are fast bound by iron locks and keys,” Works of Plato, trans. George Burges (London, 1854), vi, 53. See the material of Peter's keys in Milton's Lycidas.
41 F.Q. ii, xii, 47. This account of Genius, or Agdistes, Spenser seems to have got out of Comes. Professor E. C. Knowlton, in his article on “The Genii of Spenser” [Studies in Philology, xxv (1928), 439–456], discusses the significance of Old Genius as lord of creation.
42 “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost,” pp. 332–333.
43 See Professor Greenlaw, “Spenser and Lucretius,” p. 442, and M. Saurat, “Les idées philosophiques de Spenser,” p. 22.
44 Oracula Magica cum scoliis … Pselli, p. 67 [in Sibyllina Oracula (Paris, 1607).
46 See my article on this subject in Studies in Philology, xxviii (1931), pp. 18–57.
46 Opere di Girolamo Benivieni (Venice, 1522), bk. ii, ch. 11.
47 See for example Raleigh's remark that the seven ages of man are comparable to the seven planets, “whereof our infancy is compared to the moon, in which we seem only to live and grow, as plants” (History of the World, i, 2, 5).
48 “On the Face Appearing in the Orb of the Moon,” sect. 28, 30.
49 Mythologiae, p. 275. See also Ovid, Met. i, 101–111, and Claudian, De Nuptiis Honorii et Mariae.
50 Mythologiae, p. 275.
51 “On the Face Appearing in the Orb of the Moon,” pp. 277 ff.
52 Devine Weekes and Works … translated by Joshua Sylvester, 4th edition, (London, 1613), Second Week, p. 220:
Nor thinke that Moses paints fantastik-wise
A mystike tale of fained Paradise:
('Twas a true Garden, happy Plenties horn,
And seat of graces) lest thou make (forlorn)
An Ideali Adams food fantasticali;
His sinne suppos'd, his paine Poeticall:
Such Allegories serue for shelter fit
To curious Idiots of erronious wit;
And chiefly then when reading Histories,
Seeking the spirit, then doe the body leese.
53 Ll. 354–358.
54 Ll. 106–119, quoted below.
55 “Spenser and Lucretius,” p. 445.
56 Commentary on the Parmenides, p. 1151.
57 “Spenser's Cosmic Philosophy and His Religion,” pp. 729–730.
58 See Prof. Greenlaw, “Spenser and Lucretius,” p. 446.
59 “Ovid as a Source for Spenser's Monster-Spawning Mud Passages,” Modern Language Notes, xlv (1930), 166–168. The reference is to Ovid, Met. i, 416–437.
60 “Pisces,” ll. 169–194.
61 “Spenser and Lucretius,” pp. 449–450.
62 “Spenser and Lucretius,” p. 451.
63 Opera Omnia, p. 1474.
64 “Aquarius,” ll. 332–334.
65 Professor Ronald B. Levinson (“Spenser and Bruno,” pp. 675–681) traces this idea to Bruno's Spaccio, but it was current for at least a century before Bruno adopted it. Spenser's exposition contains no element which is peculiar to Bruno.
66 “Spenser's Cosmic Philosophy and His Religion,” pp. 731 ff.
67 Jowett trans., 45–52, see below for quotation.
68 Bari, 1929, p. 75.
69 Epistle, ll. 346–354.
70 Jowett trans., 50.
71 This is a difficult passage in Lucretius, and I have accepted Professor Greenlaw's interpretation of it; see “Spenser and Lucretius,” pp. 448–452.
72 Met., xv, 252–260. Chaucer echoes the passage in the Knight's Tale, 3011–3015.
73 Consolat. Philosoph., iii, pr. 8.
74 Miss Albright finds it in Empedocles, and in Lipsius.
76 Compare Ovid, Met., xv, 234–236.
Tempus edax rerum, tuque invidiosa vetustas,
Omnia destruitis; vitiataque dentibus aevi
Paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte.
76 Consolat. Philosoph., ii, met. 3. And see Philo, “On the Incorruptability of the World,” Works, trans. by C. D. Yonge (London, 1855), iv, 35; and the Timaeus.
77 Opera Omnia, pp. 1151 ff.
78 Pp. 1153–1154.
79 For a discussion of the problem of mutability in the Platonic system, see Charles Werner, Aristote et L'Idéalisme Platonicien (Paris, 1910), pp. 11–47.
80 See for example references in the Phaedrus, Theocritus' Syracusiae, Pausanias, or, for a bibliography of the subject, Lilii Greg. Gyraldi, Opera Omnia (ed. Basle, 1580), i, 395 ff. (“Historiae Deorum,” Synt. xiii).
81 Cf. Julian the Apostate's Dialogue of the Caesars, “But Constantine,” said Silenus, “are you not offering us mere gardens of Adonis as exploits?” “What do you mean,” he asked, “by gardens of Adonis?” “I mean,” said Silenus, “those that women plant in pots, in honour of the lover of Aphrodite, by scraping together a little earth for a garden bed. They bloom for a little space and fade forthwith” (Loeb Classics, trans., ii, 399).
St. Jerome, in his commentary on Isaiah 65, says, “Fertur sapientissimi apud Grecos meritò celebrata & laudata sententia: qui omnes saeculi voluptates, & pompam mundi atque luxuriam celeriter transeuntem, hortos Adonidis vocat” (ed, Coloniae Agrippinae, 1616), iv, 215 g.
82 Edition of 1559, p. 23.
83 Natural History, xix, 19 (4).
84 Paris, 1536, p. 9.
85 The scholia are by Reinhard Lorich and first appeared in the Frankfurt edition of 1546. They were included in the London edition of 1583, and in numerous others. I quote from the edition of Frankfurt, 1565, f. 115. For a survey of the use of Aphthonius in the schools see Brinsley's Ludus Literarius, ed. by E. T. Campagnac, Liverpool and London, 1917, p. 183.
86 Lib. ii, cap. 1, on gardens: “Mi senex, quae haec amoenitas est? inquam, quis splendor? Cælum hîc habes Langi, non hortum. nec astrorum illi ignes profectò magis nitent in serenâ nocte, quàm hi tui scintillantes micantesque variè flores. Adonidis aut Alcinoi hortos loquuntur? nugae, ad istos comparati.”
Again, in ch. 2 he says that gardens have been prized in all ages, “Sacras litteras lustras? videbis unà cum orbe nato natos hortos: quos Deus ipse primo homini domicilium attribuit, & velut sedem beatae vitae. Profanas? ecce Adonidis, & Alcinoi, & Tantali, & Hesperidum hortos proverbia & fabulae loquuntur.” Opera Omnia (Vesaliae, 1675), iv, 564–565.
87 See note 10, above.
88 Paradise Lost, ix, 439–443.
89 See note 11 above.
90 Mythologiae, iv, ch. 13, p. 401.
91 Bk. v, ch. 16.
92 P. 535.
93 L. 26.
91 The Mystical Hymnes of Orpheus, trans. by Thomas Taylor (Chiswick, 1824), p. 115 note.
95 Saturnalia, i, 21.
96 De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Frankfurt, 1836), p. 237. The notes on this passage are valuable.
97 It has been pointed out that this passage comes from Ovid; see W. P. Cumming, “Ovid as a source for Spenser's Monster-Spawning Mud Passages,” Modern Language Notes, xlv (1930), 166–168. The reference is to Met. 416–437, especially 430–431:
Quippe ubi temperiem sumpsere umorque callorque;
Concipiunt: & ab his oriuntur cuncta duobus.
Spenser had directly paraphrased Ovid in the preceding stanza.
98 St. 47.
99 Googe's translation, ed. 1588, pp. 229–230. “Pisces,” ll. 88–94.
Dic quaesto, cur Sol lucet? Nam quod sua per se est
Lucida materia: an potius sua forma dat illi
Hanc lucem, quae tam vastum complectitur orbem?
Nimirum tribuit rebus forma omnibus esse,
Ut perhibent physici: quibus et nos adstipulamur.
Forma igitur solis causa est ut luceat: et non
Materia: a forma vis et decor effluit omnis.
100 F. Q., iii, vi, 8, 9. Spenser is paraphrasing Ovid, Met. i, 416 ff.
101 Professor Greenlaw quotes Bruno “On Cause, Principle, and One” for a statement that life “ is the form of all things,” (“Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost,” p. 333 n).
102 Consolat. Philosoph., iii, pr. 11 (Loeb Classics trans.).
103 Other associations with the name, Adonis, point in the same direction. Comes recognizes that he is the same as Attis and Osiris, and that all three are symbols of the generative principle in nature. Julian the Apostate describes Attis as the generative principle which proximately creates the world. He is mad because he descended into matter, but a god because he modeled chaos into beauty (Upon the Mother of the Gods).
It was recognized that the Hebrew Adonai was the same word as the Greek Adonis.—L'Abbé Migne, Dictionnaire Universel de Mythologie Ancienne et Moderne (Paris, 1855). Adonai was especially used in the Christian liturgy to signify the second person in the trinity—A. Vacant & E. Mangenot, Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique (Paris, 1903)—corresponding roughly to the Word, or demiurge of the Neo-Platonists. Reuchlin quotes Joshua for the name Adonai as signifying life: “De quo intelligunt Cabalistae diuinum Geneseos hunc iussum: Producat terra animam uiuentem ad speciem suam, scilicet, ad diuinam Ideam, quae in ipsa est terra uiuentium in uirtute Dei uiui earn uitam influentis per nomen Adonai, ut cognoscatis, autore Iosue, quod Deus uiuus intra uos est, & disperdet in conspectu uestro contrarias fortitudines” De Arte Cabalistica (Basle, 1494), i, 3005–3006.
Piero Valeriano Bolzani identifies the four angels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, with Venus, Mars, Jove, and the Sun (Milton's Satan found Uriel in charge of the sun, Par. Lost, iii, 648). Of the last he says: “& Solem quartum, foeminae marisque vim habentem, omnis planè generationis initium, & Urielem nominat & Adonim Hebraeus. Orpheus ea quatuor uno refert versu, quòd mas, quòd foemina, quòd rerum genitura, quòd Adonis” Hieroglyphica (Basle, 1567), p. 322 verso.
101 Ll. 3003–3015 (probably taken from Boethius, Consolat. Philosoph. ii, met. 8; iv, pr. 6; iii, pr. 10, & pr. 11 lines 61–73).
105 “On the Face Appearing in the Orb of the Moon,” p. 219.
106 In Somn. Scip., i, 12.
107 Proclus, On Timaeus, T. Taylor, trans. (London, 1820), ii, 481.
108 Works of Plato, trans. by Sydenham and T. Taylor (London, 1804), iv, 331 n.
109 Rhenum, 1689, p. 77.
110 In Somn. Scip., i, 11. See also Ficino, De Christiana Religione, ch. 14; and Badius (Ascensius) commentary on Virgil, Paris, 1507, ff. 349 verso ff.
111 Origen, and after him Irenaeus and Clemens Alexandrinus, asserted that the Eden paradise was in the third heaven visited by St. Paul, and that it was there that souls received their education, cf. McClintock and Strong's Cyclopaedia, art. “Paradise.” Origen was enormously popular with the Rennaissance.
112 Thomas Warton pointed this out in his Observations on the Faerie Queene (London, 1754), p. 64; but he did not understand its implications.
113 Plato, in the Phaedo myth, says that the gods dwell with men on the “true surface of the earth.”
114 Professor Padelford supposes that Spenser is saying in this elaborate myth simply that Amoret was brought up in this world, where too much luxury and ease and “social largesse” spoiled her so that she was the victim of lust, only to be rescued by the chaste Britomart. [“The Allegory of Chastity in The Faerie Queene,” Studies in Philology, xxi (1924), 376.] But that interpretation does not at all agree with what Spenser says of the character of Amoret. He is clearly describing the ideal nurture of his embodiment of all feminine virtue.
115 See also Sidney's refutation of chance creation, Arcadia, iii, ch. 10.
116 Curiously enough, Lucretius was quoted as an authority on the nature of the gods, both by Comes, and by Ficino in his commentary on the Symposium, and in the De Voluptate.
117 “Spenser and Lucretius,” p. 448.
