as noted at the beginning of this chapter, one need have but little hesitation in maintaining this position.

Lovel, commanded by the Lady Frampul to tell what love is, that she may be sure there is such a thing, expresses amazement that such an infidel should come to Love's lists, and concludes his first speech with a definition:

For, what else

Is Loue, but the most noble, pure affection
Of what is truly beautifull, and faire ?
Desire of vnion with the thing beloued? 1

A definition which practically amounts to this is evolved by Socrates in his questioning of Agathon:

Yes, my friend, and the remark is a just one. love is the love of beauty, and not deformity?

He assented.

And if this is true,

And the admission has been already made that love is of that which a man wants and has not?

True, he said."

Beaufort breaks in with an illustration of this definition of Lovel's:

I haue read somwhere, that man and woman
Were, in the first creation, both one piece,

And being cleft asunder, euer since,

Loue was an appetite to be reioyn'd.3

This, as Lovel very quickly points out, is taken from the Symposium. There Aristophanes says:

And first let me treat of the nature and state of man; for the original human being was not like the present, but different. In the first place, the sexes were originally three in number, not two as they are now; there was man, woman, and the union of two, having a name corresponding to this double nature; this once had a real existence, but is now lost, and the name only is preserved as a term of reproach. In

1 3. 2. 73-6.

Symposium 201 (Jowett's translation).

3

$ 3. 2. 80-3.

the second place, the primeval man was round and had four hands and four feet, back and sides forming a circle, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods; and of them is told the tale of Otus and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the councils of Zeus and of the gods. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as the had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifice and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained.

At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: "I have a notion which will humble their pride and mend their manners; they shall continue to exist, but I will but them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us". . . . He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after another he bade Apollo give the face and half of the neck a turn in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: this would teach him a lesson of humility. He was also to heal their wounds and compose their forms. . . . After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one, and would have perished from hunger without ever making an effort, because they did not like to do anything apart. . . . And this was being the distruction of them, when Zeus in pity invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round in front . . . and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race continue . . . so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man.

1

In the description of love which Lovel expands from his definition, there are a great many details which are not to be found in the Symposium; however, the kernel of the ideas expressed is present in Plato's work, as I shall further proceed to demonstrate. Lovel's principal points are embodied in the following lines:

1 Symposium 189-91.

Loue is a spirituall coupling of two soules,
So much more excellent, as it least relates
Vnto the body.1

True loue hath no vnworthy thought, no light,
Loose, vn-becoming appetite, or straine,
But fixed, constant, pure, immutable.2

They are the earthly, lower forme of louers,
Are only taken with what strikes the senses!

Nor doe they trespasse within bounds of pardon,
That giuing way, and licence to their loue,
Di-uest him of his noblest ornaments,
Which are his modesty, and shamefac'tnesse :
And so they doe, that haue vnfit designes,
Vpon the parties, they pretend to loue.

The bating of affection soone will follow :
And Loue is neuer true, that is not lasting."

In the passages from the Symposium which follow, these same conclusions are reached, though Plato's purpose, of course, was not the same. He was concerned with the relation of man with man, while Jonson's conception of love is based upon nothing but the relation of the sexes-the love of man for

woman.

2

But the Love who is the son of the common Aphrodite is essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul-the most foolish beings are the objects of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddess who is his mother is far younger, and she was born of the union of male and female, and partakes of both sexes."

Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, and who is inconstant because he is a lover of the inconstant, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wings and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises;

whereas the love of the noble mind, which is in union with the unchangeable, is everlasting.1

'Well,' she said, 'I will teach you;-love is only birth in beauty, whether of body or soul.'

And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; this will lead him on to consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form.3

Lovel's discourse on valor in the fourth scene of Act 4 has been recognized as decidedly superior to that on love delivered at the earlier session of the court in Act 3. Ward writes: The notion of a trial of Lovel's passion by a declamatory test would have better suited a masque than a comedy; but no Miltonic afflatus buoys up the noble morality of the appellant's speeches. The oration in honor of true valor is however finer than that in praise of "Platonic " love, which must be described as cold and colourless.'' This is a very just criticism; but the reason for the superiority of Jonson's treatment of valor does not lie in the originality of the fundamental conception. For sources of this nature we must look to Aristotle's Ethics, just as in the case of love we found the wellspring of the poet's ideas in Plato's Symposium. The superior worth of Lovel's second discourse lies in the fact that we have there the universal truths concerning valor which were expounded by the philosopher, applied by Jonson to the particular case of his own time. There is consequently much more force, vigor, and reality where he has opportunity to give free rein to his propensity for satire. The speeches concerning love, on the other hand, were put into Lovel's mouth with no contemporary allusions, expressing with but little expansion the generalities of Plato.

The result, then, is very aptly described as 'cold and colourless.'

Before attempting to trace a debt to Aristotle on the subject of valor, I must state that, taking the matter as a whole, the Protagoras and the Laches of Plato might be considered as probable a source as the Nicomachean Ethics, since the points touched upon by Jonson are to be found in the discourses of both the Greek philosophers. But inasmuch as the poet follows Aristotle's method, by first defining true valor, and then disposing of the approximations of courage, and since some of the parallels approach the exactness of translations, there is no question that the Ethics was first in his mind when he wrote this portion of The New Inn. There is no reason, of course, for his not being familiar with the writings of both Aristotle and Plato. In the following pages, in addition to quoting the parallels from Aristotle, I have recorded in the foot-notes references to those dialogues of Plato which treat of the same subject.

Lovel begins with a definition of valor:

4

It is the greatest vertue, and the safety

'Of all mankinde, the obiect of it is danger.
A certaine meane 'twixt feare, and confidence:

No inconsiderate rashnesse, or vaine appetite
Of false encountring formidable things;

But a true science of distinguishing

What's good or euill. It springs out of reason,
And tends to perfect honesty, the scope

Is alwayes honour, and the publique good:

It is no valour for a priuate cause.1

These ideas are expressed in the third book of the Nicomachean Ethics as follows:

1 4. 4. 39-48.

2

2 Quotations are from Walter M. Hatch's The Moral Philosophy of Aristotle: Consisting of a Translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, &c. References are to the book and chapter of the Greek, and to the page in Hatch's translation.