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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
To offer one more interpretation of the meaning of Spenser's cryptic “House of Alma” may appear like the gratuitous opening of an old wound. I do so only in the fond belief that my proposed therapy will produce a lasting cure, since it satisfies the twin requirements of entire self-consistency and consistency with the Aristotelian ethics which dominate both the canto and book of which this stanza is a part.
1 “In canto ii Spenser works out the mean in regard to Aristotelian Temperance in the strict or particular sense. . . . The truth is that the whole book is a study of the mean.”—William Fenn De Moss, The Influence of Aristotle's “Politics” and “Ethics” on Spenser [Dissertation, Chicago, 1920], pp. 29–30.
2 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, in his Works, A Variorum Edition, ed. by Edwin Greenlaw, Charles Grosvenor Osgood, Frederick Morgan Padelford (Baltimore, 1933), ii (Appendix xi), 472–485. All further citations of previous interpretations of this stanza are drawn from this appendix.
3 Cf. Dante, Convivio, i. 7. 53–58: “. . . particular nature is obedient to universal nature when it gives a man 32 teeth neither more nor less.”—Trans, by P. H. Wicksteed (London, 1924, “Temple Classics”).
4 Faerie Queene, ii. ix. 26.
5 Cf. my Medieval Number Symbolism, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature Number 132 (New York, 1938), pp. 165, 173, 179, 200.—So Digby: “By these Figures, I conceive that he means the mind and body of Man; the first being by him compared to a Circle, and the latter to a Triangle. For as a Circle of all Figures is the most perfect, and includeth the greatest space, and is every way full and without angles . . . so mans soul is the noblest and most beautifull Creature that God hath created.”
6 Cf. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, ed. and trans, by Edward MacCurdy (New York, 1938), i, 219–226.
7 Aristotle, De caelo, ii, 4—trans, by J. L. Stocks, in his Works, ed. by W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1922), ii, 286b–287a.
8 Digby: “And as the feminine Sex is imperfect and receives perfection from the masculine: so doth the Body from the Soul, which to it is in lieu of a male.”—Upton, Dowden and Morley agree.
9 Cf. my Medieval Number Symbolism, p. 39 el passim.
10 Censorinus, De die natali liber, Cap. 14.
11 Op. cit., iv, 2.
12 Description of Britaine, i, 9; Chronicles, i (pp. 49–51 in London, 1807 ed.).
13 Op. cit., iv, 12.
14 The “trinall triplicities” of the Hymne of Heavenly Love, line 64. Cf. my Medieval Number Symbolism, pp. 105, 138, 143, 144.
15 Ibid., pp. 84, 154, 171.
16 So Digby, Upton and Dowden. Drayton's Idea, composed of 63 sonnets, is similarly suggestive of a harmonic union of body and soul (7×9 = 63). In Endimion and Phoebe Drayton employs the number 9 as a symbol of spiritual things (ll. 871–894, esp. 927–928: “Prefiguring thus by the number nyne, The soule, like to the Angels is divine”). Of the number 7 he has little to say, being most specific when he consigns the number to the Man in the Moone. There he refers to the fact that the heptad is a combination of male and female (ll. 279–285), and he must certainly have been aware of the critical 7 which, as Censorinus said, was the number of the body. It is not, therefore, improbable that he intended his 63 sonnets to imply the sublimation of the material part of man, being 7, toward “Thys, pure Idea, vertues right Idea,” which is 9.
17 Cf. William Wynn Westcott, Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues (London, 1890), p. 39; and Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus, iii.
18 9×3 = 27. Add the integers: 2+7 = 9. 9×8 = 72; 7+2 = 9. Cf. my Medieval Number Symbolism, p. 123.
19 Cf. Drayton, Endimion and Phoebe, line 900; John Colet, Super Opera Dionysii, Celestial Hierarchy, viii, Lupton ed. (London, 1869), p. 25.
20 Boethius, De institutione arithmetica, ii, 10–12.—The probability that this is the correct interpretation of the line is increased by the fact that these two squares, 9 and 16, are the traditional figures employed for illustration of the use of the gnomon (the L-shaped section) in the formation of squares. Cf. George Johnston Allman, Greek Geometry from Thaïes to Euclid (London, 1889), pp. 30–32; Nicomachus of Gerasa, Introduction to Arithmetic, trans, by Martin Luther D'Ooge (New York, 1926), p. 197. The first English Euclid (London, 1570) uses these two squares as illustrations throughout the definitions of Book X (fols. 228–232).
21 The Elements of Geometrie of the most Auncient Philosopher Euclide of Megara / Faithfully (now first) translated into the Englishe toung by H. Billingsley (London, 1570), Bk. x, Theorem 10, Prop. 15 (fol. 233); Op. Theorem 3, Prop. 5 (fol. 235): “Magnitudes commensurable, have such proportion the one to the other, as number hath to number.”
22 Faerie Queene, ii. i. 58; ii. 2.
23 Except for my insertion of letters, numbers, and the dotted radius line, this is precisely the figure in the 1570 Euclid, Bk. x, Theorem 4, Prop. 6 (fol. 229); also Bk. iv, Theorem 8, Problem 5, Prop. 13 D. (op. fol. 164).
24 Henry More, Psychozia, ii, 14.
25 Conclusiones, Sec. mathematicam Pythagorae, 8.
26 W. L. Renwick, Edmund Spenser (London, 1925), p. 173.
27 The Neo-Platonic use of mathematics to express this harmony of matter and spirit was by no means confined to Spenser. Drayton's Idea closely approximates Spenser's usage (cf. note 15) and Maurice Scève's Délie is apparently intended to preserve in its formal organization the image of this harmony. Each stanza is made up of ten lines, witnessing the unity of the decad which includes all things. The rhyme scheme of each stanza is ababbccdcd. Here the male, perfect, heavenly principle is 3 (Trinity) which is twice represented by 3 rhymes (bbb, ccc). The female, imperfect, earthly principle, 2, is also twice represented by 2 rhymes (aa, dd). Both principles are harmoniously intertwined in the number 4 (both sets of rhymes appearing twice) which, like the decad, is complete (by invocation of the tetraktys: 1+2+3+4= 10. Cf. Medieval Number Symbolism, p. 42). This scheme is repeated in the arrangement of the stanzas. The introduction of 8 stanzas is the cube of 2. The remaining 441 stanzas are in groups of 9, the square of 3. Thus the earthly 2 is raised to a heavenly power, 3; and the heavenly 3 is modified by an earthly exponent, 2. Of the 9's, there are 441 or 212 stanzas. Twenty-one is the Triangular form of 6 (M. N. S., p. 37) whereby the earthly perfection of 6 (M. N. S., p. 86) is given divine form (again the 3 in the triangle), and the divine form (triangle) is modified by an earthly power (2). The 21 is, in turn, made up of 7 and 3 whose sum is the decad. Here the 7 is the human element; the 3 represents the divine (M. N. S., p. 84).
28 All square numbers are symbolic of Justice (a conception possibly surviving in the slang phrase, “a square deal”). The number 16, being the square of the basic square, 4, may have been regarded as especially so.
29 Cf. The Private Diary of John Dee, ed. by James Orchard Halliwell, “The Camden Society,” (London, 1842), passim.
30 Op. cit., a.iiij.
31 “Thus, can the Mathematicall mind, deale Speculatively in his own Arte: and by good meanes, Mount above the cloudes and sterres: and thirdly, he can, by order, Descend, to frame Natural thinges, to wonderfull uses: and when he list, retire home into his owne Centre: and there prepare more Meanes, to Ascend or Descend by: and, all, to the glory of God, and our honest delectation in earth.”—op. fol. c.iiij.
32 Ibid., fol. iiij.
33 Ibid., fols, iij-iiij.
34 Cf. C. E. M. Joad, Guide to the Philosophy of Morals and Politics (New York [1937]), p. 98.
35 Op. cit., op. fol. a.ij.