HENRY MORE'S ‘DEEP RETIREMENT’: NEW MATERIAL ON THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONIST

Abstract

SLTHOUGH interest in the writings of the Cambridge Platonists has grown, fundamental work remains to be done, especially it would seem on the earliest years of the group. In the case of Henry More too little attention has been paid to the rather difficult allegorical poems published as Psychodia Platonica in 1642, augmented with Democritus Platonissans in 1646 and finally expanded into Philosophicall Poems, 1647.' Any study of More, perhaps of the whole group, might begin with these poems, the first long publication of any of the Platonists. This article presents biographical material important to an understanding of the circumstances in which the poems were written and published. The outlines of More's early mystical experience have been long known. At the end of the 163os he subjected himself to a course of spiritual self-discipline for a period of between three and four years, after which he reached a state of calm and renewed faith. The 'Platonick' writers, Plotinus in particular, whom he could read in Greek, prompted him to this regeneration, since they frequently mentioned the prior necessity for any true wisdom of the purging away of the tumultuous distractions of the body. The little German devotional handbook, the Theologia Germanica, which makes rough use of Neoplatonic terminology, made the final Christian appeal to him to put himself to the test of this discipline. Psychozoia, his first long poem, begun early in 1640, allegorizes the soul Neoplatonically but within the framework of the Christian mysteries, then describes the pilgrimage of one such soul as More's back towards unification with God. It grew directly out of the achievement of calm assurance. The poem is a celebration, a monument to an experience which shaped the whole of More's life. The new biographical facts that I have found consist of the dates of More's election to a fellowship in Christ's College, of his ordination, and of his presentation to the rectory at Ingoldsby. When these dates are