Henry More (1614-1687). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05

Henry More (1614-1687). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05 Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record Charles Wells Moulton, ed.  Library of Literary Criticism.  1901–05. Henry More (1614–1687) Henry More was born at Grantham in 1614. His parents were gentlefolk, of small estate and Calvinist principles. He went to Eton, and to Christ’s College, Cambridge. He took his degree in 1635, and became a Fellow of his College in 1639. He lived a life of study, refusing all preferment, even the Headship of Christ’s. His time was divided between Cambridge and Ragley, in Warwickshire, the home of his friend Lady Conway. Here he found a congenial circle of mystics and wonder-workers. He died in 1687. His writings, controversial and speculative, are very numerous. The most important of them will be found in his “Philosophical Works” (1662), “Divine Dialogues” (1668), “Theological Works” (1675). He published a Latin version of his “Opera Omnia” in 1679. He also wrote poems, which were edited by Dr. Grosart in 1878. There is no modern edition of his prose works. R. Ward’s “Life of Henry More” (1710), and the chapter on More in Principal Tulloch’s “Rational Theology,” vol. ii., are worth consulting.—Craik, Henry, 1893, ed., English Prose, vol. II, p. 553.    

1 Personal

  Walking abroad after his studies, his sallies towards Nature would be often inexpressibly ravishing, beyond what he could convey to others…. His very chamber-door was a hospital to the needy…. When the winds were ruffling about him, he made it his utmost endeavour to keep low and humble, that he might not be driven from that anchor…. He seemed to be full of introversions of light, joy, benignity, and devotion at once—as if his face had been overcast with a golden shower of love and purity…. There was such a life and spirit in him as loved the exercises of reason, wit, and divine speculation at once. He could study abroad with less weariness by far to himself than within doors.—Ward, Richard, 1710, Life of Henry More, pp. 54, 85, 89, 105, 120, 145.    

2   Dr. More, the most rational of our modern Platonists, abounds, however, with the most extravagant reveries, and was inflated with egotism and enthusiasm, as much as any of his mystic predecessors. He conceived that he communed with the Divinity itself! that he had been shot as a fiery dart into the world, and he hoped he had hit the mark. He carried his self-conceit to such extravagance, that he thought his urine smelt like violets, and his body in the spring season had a sweet odor; a perfection peculiar to himself. These visionaries indulge the most fanciful vanity.—Disraeli, Isaac, 1791–1824, Modern Platonism, Curiosities of Literature.    

3   Dr. More’s religion was calm and gentle. He looked out mildly upon the beautiful providence of God, and adored profoundly that wisdom which displayed itself everywhere. He lived the “divine life” with his fellow-men, laboring in their behalf with assiduous diligence, till his mortal course was ended. Few men have attained so great a degree of tranquillity as he. His faith cast out fear. His own character proved the words of the old sage; “It is the quiet and still mind that is wise and prudent.”—Parker, T., 1839, Dr. Henry More, The Christian Examiner, vol. 26, p. 15.    

4   As the Cambridge movement reached its highest, or at least its most elaborate, intellectual elevation in Cudworth, so it ripened into its finest personal and religious development in Henry More. Cudworth is much less interesting than his writings; More is far more interesting than any of his. He was a voluminous author. His writings fill several folio volumes; they are in verse as well as prose; they were much read and admired in their day; but they are now wellnigh forgotten. Some of them are hardly any longer readable. Yet More himself is at once the most typical and the most vital and interesting of all the Cambridge school. He is the most platonical of the Platonic sect, and at the same time the most genial, natural, and perfect man of them all. We get nearer to him than any of them, and can read more intimately his temper, character and manners—the lofty and serene beauty of his personality—one of the most exquisite and charming portraits which the whole history of religion and philosophy presents.—Tulloch, John, 1872, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, vol. II, p. 303.    

5   His portrait represents him in his later years as much such a man as we should have imagined: he wears his hair, which was light and long, over his shoulders, and a faint streak of moustache upon his upper lip; the face is grave but not displeasing; it has the broad arched forehead, strongly indented, that is characteristic of masculine intellect; very high and prominent cheekbones, big firm lips, and a massive chin; the check is healthy and not attenuated; the eyes clear and steady, the right eyelid being somewhat drooped, thus conveying a humorous look to the face; he wears the black gown, with girded cassock, and a great silk scarf—the amussis dignitatis—over his shoulders; the gown is tied at the neck by strings; and the broad white bands give a precise and quiet air to the whole.—Benson, Arthur Christopher, 1896, Essays, p. 62.    

6 General

  More was an open-hearted and sincere Christian philosopher, who studied to establish men in the great principles of religion against atheism, that was then beginning to gain ground, chiefly by reason of the hypocrisy of some, and the fantastical conceits of the more sincere enthusiasts.—Burnet, Gilbert, 1715–34, History of My Own Time.    

7   One of the most remarkable in the English language, is a writer of the last age, Dr. Henry More…. Though his style be now in some measure obsolete, and his speakers be marked with the academic stiffness of those times, yet the dialogue is animated by a variety of character, and a sprightliness of conversation, beyond what are commonly met with in writings of this kind.—Blair, Hugh, 1783, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Lecture xxxvii.    

8   As a poet he has woven together a singular texture of Gothic fancy and Greek philosophy, and made the Christiano-Platonic system of metaphysics a groundwork for the fables of the nursery. His versification, though he tells us that he was won to the Muses in his childhood by the melody of Spenser, is but a faint echo of the Spenserian tune. In fancy he is dark and lethargic. Yet his Psychozoia is not a common-place production: a certain solemnity and earnestness in his tone leaves an impression that he “believed the magic wonders which he sung.” His poetry is not, indeed, like a beautiful landscape on which the eye can repose, but may be compared to some curious grotto, whose gloomy labyrinths we might be curious to explore for the strange and mystic associations they excite.—Campbell, Thomas, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.    

9   Henry More, though by no means less eminent than Cudworth in his own age, ought not to be placed on the same level. More fell not only into the mystical notions of the later Platonists, but even of the Cabalistic writers. His metaphysical philosophy was borrowed in great measure from them; and though he was in correspondence with Descartes, and enchanted with the new views that opened upon him, yet we find that he was reckoned much less of a Cartesian afterwards, and even wrote against parts of the theory. The most peculiar tenet of More was the extension of spirit: acknowledging and even striving for the soul’s immateriality, he still could not conceive it to be unextended.—Hallam, Henry, 1837–39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iv, ch. iii, par. 14.    

10   In England it is not just to place Cudworth among the mystics: he is a Platonist of a firm and profound mind, who bends somewhat under the weight of his erudition, and with whom method is wanting; but H. More is decidedly mystic.—Cousin, Victor, 1841, Course of the History of Modern Philosophy, tr. Wight, Lecture xii.    

11   He is less philosopher or theologian than prophet and gnostic—with his mind brimful of divine ideas, in the delighted contemplation of which he lives, and moves, and writes. All his works are inspired by a desire to make known something that he himself has felt of the Divine. The invisible or celestial, so far from being hard for him to apprehend, is his familiar haunt. He has difficulty in letting himself down from the higher region of supernal realities to the things of earth. This celestial elevation is the most marked feature at once of his character and his mind. It is the key to his beautiful serenity and singular spiritual complacency—a complacency never offensive, yet raising him somewhat above common sympathy. It is the source of the dreamy imaginings and vague aerial conjectures which fill his books. These may seem to us now poor and unreal, and some of them absurd, but they were to him living and substantial. Nay, they were the life and substance of all his thought. He felt himself at home moving in the heavenly places, and discoursing of things which it hath not entered into the ordinary mind to conceive or utter. He was a spiritual realist.—Tulloch, John, 1872, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, vol. II, p. 406.    

12   In More we get for the most part rather bad verse, and doubtfully explained philosophy. Even Coleridge, strongly as More’s subject, and in part his method of treatment, appealed to him, has left some rather severe criticisms on the “Song of the Soul.” It is quite true that More has, as Southey says, “lines and passages of sublime beauty.” A man of his time, actuated by its noble thought, trained as we know More to have been in the severest school of Spenser, and thus habituated to the heavenly harmonies of that perfect poet, could hardly fail to produce such. But his muse is a chaotic not a cosmic one.—Saintsbury, George, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 379.    

13   He was a man of great and extensive learning, but in his writings are found deep tinctures of mysticism. After finishing some of his works, which had occasioned much fatigue, he would say: “Now for three months I will not think a wise thought nor speak a wise word.” He was subject to fits of ecstasy, during which he gave himself up to joy and happiness, which obtained for him the nickname of THE INTELLECTUAL EPICURE. His writings have no particular interest for the present generation, but were very popular in his day, as they established great principles of religion, and fixed men’s minds against the fantastical conceits of the time, which was fast running towards atheism.—Frey, Albert R., 1888, Sobriquets and Nicknames, p. 231.    

14   He writes excellent English, easy, leisurely, scholarly, with an abundance of learning, which is yet not ponderous, and occasionally gleams of humour. He is no pedant; good racy, homespun, coarse words diversify pleasantly his philosophic terminology. Yet in the selection of his language he has the nicety of the exact refined man of letters. Pedantry, indeed would have been impossible to him, for, in spite of his airy mysticisms, he is, like Plato himself, well in touch with earth. His love of nature, of outdoor life, is intense, and colours many a passage of his prose. His chief defect as a writer is a tendency to long-windedness in his periods: none the less he rarely fails to be lucid, often succeeds in being vivid, in the expression of his thought.—Chambers, Edmund K., 1893, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. II, p. 554.    

15   Like many others he began as a poet and ended as a prose writer…. The mere fact of the continued reproduction, in whole or in part, of More’s works is a proof that they were not neglected; and, considering how utterly the refined, dreamy, and poetical spirit of More was out of sympathy with the practical and prosaic mind of the eighteenth century, it is wonderful that his fame should have been so great as it was during that period. John Wesley, for instance, a man of an entirely different type of mind, strongly recommended More’s writings to his brother-clergy. William Law, though he called More “a Babylonish philosopher,” and is particularly severe upon the “Divine Dialogues,” was deeply impressed with the piety and general interest of his character; and the edition of 1708 was issued through the exertions, and partly at the expense, of a gentleman the description of whom points very distinctly to Dr. Bray, who, except in the matters of piety and goodness, seems to have had little in common with More.—Overton, John Henry, 1894, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXXVIII, pp. 421, 423.    

16   But More cannot be said to have been a Christian in the sense that Thomas-à-Kempis or Francis of Assisi were Christians; he did not hunger for the personal relation with Christ which is so profoundly essential to the true conception of the Christian ideal. He was a devout, a passionate Deist; he realised the indwelling of God’s spirit in the heart, and the divine excellence of the Son of Man. But it was as a pattern, and not as a friend, that he gazed upon Him; the light that he followed was the uncovenanted radiance. For it is necessary to bear in mind that More and the Cambridge Platonists taught that the Jewish knowledge of the mysteries of God had passed through some undiscovered channel into the hands of Pythagoras and Plato; and that the divinity of their teaching was directly traceable to their connection with Revelation. They looked upon Plato and Pythagoras as predestined vehicles of God’s spirit, appointed to prepare the heathen world for the reception of the true mysteries, though not admitted themselves to full participation in the same.—Benson, Arthur Christopher, 1896, Essays, p. 56.    

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