ABSTRACT
In Donne, Henry More, and Tennyson the mystical sense may be called philosophical in that it reaches them by way of the intellect, and that they present their convictions in a philosophical form {calculated to appeal to the intellect as well as to the emotions. These writers, as a rule, though not always, are themselves markedly intellectual, and their primary concern therefore is with truth or wisdom. Thus Donne, William Law, Burke, Coleridge, and Carlyle are all predominantly intellectual, while Traherne, Emily Brontë, and Tennyson clothe their thoughts to some extent in the language of philosophy.}
The dominating characteristic of Donne is intellectuality; and this may partly account for the lack in him of some essentially mystical qualities, more especially reverence, and that ascension of thought so characteristic of Plato and Browning. But these shortcomings are more strongly felt in his poetry than in his prose. They are very well illustrated in that extraordinary poem ‘The Progress of the Soul’. The idea is a mystical one, derived from Pythagorean philosophy, and has great possibilities, which Donne entirely fails to utilise; for, instead of following the soul upwards on its way, he depicts it as merely jumping about from body to body, and we are conscious of an entire lack of any lift or grandeur of thought. This poem helps us to understand how it was that Donne, though so
poet.
