i ELIZABETHAN PERIOD 41 



" the image and figure of the animal are well known, 

 many have written on it, we among the rest, in a 

 particular fashion ; but as it displeased the vulgar, and 

 failed to please the wise, for its sinister meaning, the 

 work was suppressed." Whether this refers to the 

 whole Cabala^ or to the last part of it, is not known. 



The " Enthusiasms of the Noble " (De gf heroici 

 furori\ 1585,* dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, consists 

 of sonnets, with prose illustrations, after the model of 

 Dante's Vita Nuova. Its theme is that of the 

 Ph<edrus and Symposium, the rising of the love for 

 spiritual beauty out of that for sensible beauty, reaching 

 its height in the divine furor an ecstatic unity with 

 the divine life, in which all the miseries and misfortunes 

 of the merely earthly life disappear. Many of the 

 sonnets are of extreme beauty, although Brunnhofer 

 goes too far when he speaks of them as surpassing 

 Petrarca's, except in smoothness of form, and as 

 equalling Shakespeare's. 



VIII 



It may not be amiss to give from these works some The women 

 illustrations of life in England as Bruno found it. 



England, as in the days of Erasmus, was renowned 

 on the continent for its beautiful women, and Bruno's 

 passionate and enthusiastic nature could not but feel 

 the attraction of " the fair and gracious nymphs of 

 England." In the Cena he appeals to the muses of 

 England, " gracious and gentle, soft and tender, young, 

 fair and delicate, blond-haired, white of chin, pink of 

 cheek, of enticing lips, eyes divine, breasts of ivory, 



1 Also Parigi. Translated in " The Heroic Enthusiasts," an Ethical Poem, by L. 

 Williams, London, 1887. (The Argument or Summary, and the Apology of Bruno, 

 are omitted.) 



