Granted that there has been a strain
of deliberate perversity running through its course, cropping out in the
erotic excesses of the late-classic period, springing up anew in one
phase of the Italian renaissance, transplanted to France and England,
where it appeared at the time of the English restoration, growing again
in France at the time of the literary revolution, thence spreading
across the channel into England again. Yet this is a minor current. The
only serious view of the poet's moral nature is that nurtured by the
Platonism of every age. Milton gave it the formulation most familiar to
English ears, but Milton by no means originated it. Not only from his
Greek studies, but from his knowledge of contemporary Italian aesthetics,
he derived the idea of the harmony between the poet's life and his
creations which led him to maintain that it is the poet's privilege to
make of his own life a true poem.
"I am wont day and night," says Milton, "to seek for this idea of the
beautiful through all the forms and faces of things (for many are the
shapes of things divine) and to follow it leading me on as with certain
assured traces.
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