Mysticism in English Literature | Page 8

the work of Richard Rolle,
Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and the author of the Cloud of
Unknowing, we have a body of writings dealing with the inner life, and

the steps of purification, contemplation, and ecstatic union which throb
with life and devotional fervour.
From the time of Julian of Norwich, who was still alive in 1413, we
find practically no literature of a mystical type until we come to
Spenser's Hymns (1596), and these embody a Platonism reached largely
through the intellect, and not a mystic experience. It would seem at first
sight as if these hymns, or at any rate the two later ones in honour of
Heavenly Love and of Heavenly Beauty, should rank as some of the
finest mystical verse in English. Yet this is not the case. They are
saturated with the spirit of Plato, and they express in musical form the
lofty ideas of the Symposium and the Phædrus: that beauty, more nearly
than any other earthly thing, resembles its heavenly prototype, and that
therefore the sight of it kindles love, which is the excitement and
rapture aroused in the soul by the remembrance of that divine beauty
which once it knew. And Spenser, following Plato, traces the stages of
ascent traversed by the lover of beauty, until he is caught up into union
with God Himself. Yet, notwithstanding their melody and their Platonic
doctrine, the note of the real mystic is wanting in the Hymns, the note
of him who writes of these things because he knows them.
It would take some space to support this view in detail. Any one
desirous of testing it might read the account of transport of the soul
when rapt into union with the One as given by Plotinus (Enn. vi. 9, §
10), and compare it with Spenser's description of a similar experience
(An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, 11. 253-273). Despite their poetic
melody, Spenser's words sound poor and trivial. Instead of preferring to
dwell on the unutterable ecstasy, contentment, and bliss of the
experience, he is far more anxious to emphasise the fact that "all that
pleased earst now seemes to paine."
The contradictory nature of his belief is also arresting. In the early part
of the Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, in-speaking of the glory of God
which is so dazzling that angels themselves may not endure His sight,
he says, as Plato does,
The meanes, therefore, which unto us is lent Him to behold, is on his
workes to looke, Which he hath made in beauty excellent.

This is the view of the true mystic, that God may be seen in all His
works, by the eye which is itself purified. Yet, in the last stanza of this
beautiful Hymn, this is how Spenser views the joy of the union of the
soul with its source, when it looks
at last up to that Soveraine Light, From whose pure beams al perfect
beauty springs, That kindleth love in every godly spright Even the love
of God; which loathing brings Of this vile world and these gay-seeming
things.
This is not the voice of the mystic. It is the voice of the Puritan, who is
also an artist, who shrinks from earthly beauty because it attracts him,
who fears it, and tries to despise it. In truth, the dominating feature in
Spenser's poetry is a curious blending of Puritanism of spirit with the
Platonic mind.
In the seventeenth century, however, England is peculiarly rich in
writers steeped in mystical thought.
First come the Quakers, headed by George Fox. This rediscovery and
assertion of the mystical element in religion gave rise to a great deal of
writing, much of it very interesting to the student of religious thought.
Among the Journals of the early Quakers, and especially that of
George Fox, there are passages which charm us with their sincerity,
quaintness, and pure flame of enthusiasm, but these works cannot as a
whole be ranked as literature. Then we have the little group of
Cambridge Platonists, Henry More, John Smith, Benjamin Whichcote,
and John Norris of Bemerton. These are all Platonic philosophers, and
among their writings, and especially in those of John Norris, are many
passages of mystical thought clothed in noble prose. Henry More, who
is also a poet, is in character a typical mystic, serene, buoyant, and so
spiritually happy that, as he told a friend, he was sometimes "almost
mad with pleasure." His poetical faculty is, however, entirely
subordinated to his philosophy, and the larger portion of his work
consists of passages from the Enneads of Plotinus turned into rather
obscure verse. So that he is not a poet and artist who, working in the
sphere of the imagination, can directly present to us mystical thoughts
and ideas, but rather a mystic philosopher who