Sophistry and Truth in "To His Coy Mistress"
Author(s): Clarence H. Miller
Source: College Literature, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring, 1975), pp. 97-104
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
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97
SOPHISTRYAND TRUTH IN
"TOHIS COY MISTRESS"
Clarence H. Miller
[The literary analysis which follows is most easily and rewardingly
read in reference to the version of MarvelVs poem reprinted here for
the readers convenience^
To his Coy Mistress*
Had webut World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges side
Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should if you please refuse
Till the Conversion of the lews.
My vegetable Love should grow
Vaster then Empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An Age at least to every part,
And the last Age should show your Heart.
For Lady you deserve this State;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast Eternity.
Thy Beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try
That long preserv'd Virginity:
And your quaint Honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my Lust.
The Grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hew
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
*From The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth, rev. Pierre Le
gouis and E. E. Duncan-Jones, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971), I,
pp. 27-28. By permission of the Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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98 COLLEGE LITERATURE
And while thy willing Soul transpires
At every pore with instant Fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our Time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt powr.
Let us roll all our Strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one Ball:
And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the Iron gates of Life.
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
I. THE SOPHISTICALFRAMEWORK
Apart from "A Definition
of Love," Andrew Marvell's "To his Coy
Mistress" has struck many readers as his most metaphysical or Donnean
poem. It shares the libertine naturalism of many of Donne's elegies and
some of his songs and sonnets, but its argumentative tone and its logical,
even structure seem more reminiscent of Donne.1
syllogistic, peculiarly
The syllogism in "To his Coy Mistress" seems to be clear:
If we had sufficient time, we could delay;
But we do not have time:
Therefore we cannot delay.
This syllogism seems perfectly valid and persuasive, but in fact it is not.
Barbara Herrnstein Smith argues, correctly I think, that the conclusion
of "To his Coy Mistress," though appropriate, "is not, strictly speaking,
logical." J. C. Maxwell counters her argument, insisting that "any explan
ation which seeks to account for the 'illogicality' of Marvell's poem must
also account for that of Homer's and Pope's" and that "it is not, then, a
question of validity versus invalidity, but of ordinary (including poetic)
usage versus formal logic."3 One thing seems clear: according to the
formal logic of Marvell's time the syllogism of "To his Coy Mistress" falls
under one of the recognized fallacies.4 If the lady had been familiar with
the traditional sophistical arguments, which were first discussed by Aris
totle in the last two books of his Organon (De sophisticis elenchis) and
which, usually in simplified textbook form, were drummed into the heads
of university freshmen during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
she would have replied to her urbane, mordant, and arden lover quite
simply, "Your argument, sir, depends on the fallacy of the consequent."
In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century logic books, the fallacy of the
consequent was uniformly treated as one of the seven Aristotelian fal
lacies "extra dictionem," that is, fallacies depending on false propositions
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SOPHISTRYAND TRUTH IN "TOHIS COY MISTRESS" 99
or predications or on propositions falsely related to each other. In his
logic text,5 Richard Crackanthorpe of Queen's College, Oxford, gives
a traditional example from Aristotle himself, repeated over and over
in the logic books of Marvell's time: from the proposition "if it has re
cently rained, the ground is wet" we cannot draw the consequence that
"if the ground is wet, it has recently rained."6 In his Dialectica (Ingol
stadt, 1562), Caspar Rhodolph briefly states another standard example
of the fallacy of the consequent: "he is not a man, therefore he is not an
animal."7 But we can get a better idea of how the fallacy applies to Mar
vell's poem if we consider how the same example is treated by Robert
Sanderson in his Logicae Artis Compendium (11th ed., Oxford, 1741 first
published 1618). When he comes to the fallacy of the consequent (p.
161), Sanderson refers the reader to an earlier part of his book (Book
III, chap. 9, p. Ill) on the hypothetical syllogism. There he explains how,
in the partly hypothetical syllogism, one may legitimately argue from
positing the antecedent to positing the consequent, thus:
If he is a man, he is an animal;
But he is a man;
Therefore he is an animal.
But he immediately notes that the converse is not true (that is, "he is
an animal, therefore he is a man"). The second point on the partly hypo
thetical syllogism touches directly on Marvell's mode of argument. Sander
son notes that one may legitimately argue from denying the consequent
to denying the antecedent, but not the converse. That is, one may argue:
If he is a man, he is an animal;
But heis not an animal;
Therefore he is not a man.
The converse, which constitutes the negative form of the fallacy of the
consequent, is not valid:
If he is a man, he is an animal;
But he is not a man;
Therefore he is not an animal.8
Perhaps the fallacy can be seen more clearly if it is exemplified in some
simple everyday event rather than in the relation between genus and
species. Thus:
If the sun is shining, we should go on a picnic;
But the sun is not shining;
Therefore we should not go on a picnic.
From the major premise, the only legitimate negative consequence that
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100 COLLEGE LITERATURE
may be drawn is that if we should not go on a picnic, the sun is not shin
ing. Within the limited hypothesis of the major premise, we may not con
clude that if the sun is not shining we should not go on a picnic; we might
have a splendid time on a cloudy, rainless day. In more modern technical
terms, given "if p, then q," we may conclude "if not q, then not p"; but
we may not conclude "if not p, then not q." All that can be concluded
from Marvell's major premise (if we had sufficient time, we could delay)
is that if we cannot delay, there is not sufficient time.
II.POETIC TRUTH
And yet Marvell's syllogism is fallacious only in the almost mathemat
ically rigid and abstract world of logic. A seventeenth-century reader,
I think, might have been better able to perceive the fallacy than we are,
but he, like us, would have felt that though the reasoning is false, the
conclusion is poignantly and powerfully true. Marvell's fallacious syllogism
looks back to a long line of carpe diem poems. It draws upon a tradition
which has persisted through many centuries and in many different cul
tural climates.9 Some of the world's greatest poets have expressed it in
some of their finest poems: Catullus, Horace, Tasso, Spenser, Ben Jonson,
and Robert Herrick, to mention only a few. The topos touches some deep
and sensititive nerve in the human spirit.
Why quibble, then, about the fallacious form in which such a truth
is expressed? Because the contrarieties within the structural syllogism
make it the perfect vehicle for the tonal modulations from witty to in
tense that constitute the special and unique power of Marvell's carpe
deim poem. The syllogism is sophistical but also true; the poem is witty
but also intensely serious. In the first third of the poem, the suitor per
forms a virtuoso prelude on the well known theme of amatory arith
metic.10 Suave and elegant, with urbane but inoffensive condescension
toward his lady and himself, he descants with hyperbolic bravura on
the dual themes of ample space ("World enough," ''Ganges," ilHumber,"
"Vaster then Empires") and time ("Time," "long Loves Day," "ten years
before the Flood," "the Conversion of the lews," "and more slow"). Both
elements are fused in the famous modulation to the second movement:
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast Eternity.n
The second movement is dissonant, mordant, acidulous, but never
violently grotesque. Like the position of the vocatives "Lady" in the first
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SOPHISTRYAND TRUTH IN "TOHIS COY MISTRESS" 101
part (lines 2, 19), the delicate poise of the ironical "I think" in the last
line of the second part shows the speaker still in control of his feelings
and of his intricate artistry. The measure of his control is suggested by
the exquisite epithet "ecchoing": "Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound/
My ecchoing Song: . . . ." Lovers' songs had echoed in many ways and
many places, as in Spenser's "The woods shall to me answer and my Eccho
ring" in "Epithalamion." The echo-song was even a sort of mini-genre in
itself, and vaults are one of the places where we would expect songs to
echo?but not, I think, in funeral vaults. The epithet "quaint" is poised
between the condescending acceptance of some harmless, distant oddity
and the jarring concrete associations that would match "Lust."12
In the third movement the poet casts aside the persona of graceful
ease and mordant wit. In a sense he deliberately loses control of his feel
ings and his language. He speaks from the heart (to go no lower), not the
head. Even more important than the insistent anaphora of "Now there
fore," "Now let us," and "and Now," is the illogical intensity of the im
agery in the third part. The fusion of pleasure and pain ("am'rous birds
of prey"), the resistance of the figures to rational explication are quite
unlike the controlled manipulation of hyperbole and paradox in the first
and second parts.
Let us roll all our Strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one Ball:
And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the Iron gates of Life.
Concerning Margoliouth's suggestion of pomander for "Ball" and "the well
known narrow reach of the Danube" for the "gates of Life," Pierre Le
gouis in his note rightly demurs:
I am not convinced. Nor do I accept any of the numerous irreconcilable interpretations
of those
images that have been offered since. As regards 'gates', true it is that the
word was used metaphorically for labia, e.g. by Lovelace (Davison), but there pre
ceded by the epithet 'rosy'; Iron' makes the double entendre less than likely. While
the conclusion of the poem clearly aims at sexual consummation I see no evidence
that the images are themselves sexual. And I cannot even make up my mind whether
the human couple and the 'Pleasures' stand, until these are 'torn', on the same or on
different sides of the 'gates', or 'grates' .... Lines 41-4 are missing in the Haward
MS. Were they too obscure even for contemporaries? Or are they an afterthought
of Marvell's? (p. 254)
The long history of unsuccessful attempts to "explain" these images
suggests what most readers must have felt: they are not the sort of images
that are susceptible of "explanation" or detailed explication. Much of
Shakespeare's most powerful imagery is of this sort. When the awakening
Lear says to Cordelia
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102 COLLEGE LITERATURE
I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead,
we may know of Ixion's wheel or editors may have made us familiar with
the torture of breaking upon a wheel and of burning that appeared (sep
arately) in some medieval visions of hell. But we look for no explanation
of how the fire can melt the lead of his tears. Donne's "A Valediction:
forbidding Mourning" provides examples of both kinds of imagery. The
line "Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate"13 needs no explication in con
ceptual terms. Much of the magic of the line consists in the regular pro
gression from low, open, back vowels to high, tight, front vowels. Much
of the power of lines 41-4 of "To his Coy Mistress" depends not so much
on vocal or consonantal sounds (though the fricative f-sound of "rough
strife" and "Life" does contribute to the feeling of force) as on marked,
skillful
rhythmic dislocations. On the other hand, when we read the con
cluding twelve lines of Donne's poem, almost an afterthought, about the
famous compass figure, we need to understand how it works in detail.14
We can and must understand Marvell's wit in the first two parts of "To
his Coy Mistress"; we must be able to "explain" them. But the imagery
of the third part has its power and intensity precisely because it strikes
deeper than rational explanations.
Even the syntax of "tear our Pleasures with rough strife,/ Thorough
the Iron gates of Life" fuses two idioms under the pressure of emotion:
to tear through something such as a wall or gates (OED "tear" lib) and
to tear something such as a ball from (or "up" or "down" or "out of" but
never "through") a fixed place (OED "tear" 5). Overtones of "tear" in the
sense "pull apart" (OED "tear" I 1 a) may also create some resonance.
The controlling elements of time and space, which are expansive in the
first part and contracted in the second ("near," "hurrying," "Vault,"
"private place") are subjected to an explosive pressure in the third section.
Time is compressed to the insistently repeated "now" and is devoured
instead of devouring.15 The "instant" of the phrase "instant Fires" means
not only "instantaneous" but also "urgent." Strength and sweetness are
compacted into a ball and pleasures are torn through the resisting space
of the gates.
The couplet of the poem combines
final intensity?compacting time
spatially by making the sun "run"?with a sort of wistful wit that reminds
us faintly, but sufficiently, of the witty speaker of the first two parts.
The impact of the poem depends, then, on a movement from witty sprez
zatura to an irrational but undeniable intensity. What better structural
form for such a poem than a sophistical syllogism that expresses a truth
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SOPHISTRYAND TRUTH IN "TOHIS COY MISTRESS" 103
felt on so many pulses that it has become a living literary topos, expressed
throughout many centuries by many great writers, though rarely with
the power of Marvell's sophistical truth-teller, his witty, cynical, desperate
lover?
NOTES
1 Though Donne is fond of tripartite divisions in his love poetry and though his frequent
use of connectives such as "therefore" or "then" gives his verse the appearance of logical
progression, none of his poems is actually constructed on the framework of a syllogism.
2 In a passage from Poetic Closure (1968), pp. 133-35, included by John Carey in his
Penguin Critical Anthology Andrew Marvell (1969), pp. 221-23.
3 "Marvell and Logic," Notes and Queries, CCXV (July, 1970), 256.
4 One could argue that Marvell's poem is not precisely parallel to Homer's (Iliad, XII,
310-28) or Pope's argument (The Rape of the Lock, V. 9-34) because neither Sarpendon
nor Clarissa displays the hyperbolic wit or mordant cynicism of Marvell's lover. We
are, of course, persuaded that Clarissa's conclusion is right, regardless of whether her
reasoning is strictly correct. But the same is not necessarily true of Sarpedon's argument:
if we could live forever, I would avoid a glorious death in battle; but we cannot live
forever; therefore I will not avoid a glorious death in battle. We may admire his hero
ism without agreeing with his conclusion and pointing out the fallacy of his logic. The
fact that we must die does not necessarily make it better to die gloriously in battle than
to live a long and peaceful life at home. Are we to believe that one half of Achilles'
choice, a long and peaceful life without glory, was contemptible, trivial, and easily re
jected? Even without the Odyssey we would know from the metaphors and descriptions
of peaceful activities in the Iliad that the conclusion of Sarpedon's false reasoning is
not necessarily to be accepted wholeheartedly as even "poetically" valid.
5 Libri . . . Unacum Appendice de Syllogismo
Logicae Quinque Sophistico (4th ed., Ox
ford, 1677, first published 1622). The firm place held by the sophistici elenchi in the
university curriculum, especially in England, may be judged by the fact that most English
Ramists and "Systematics" (for example, Clement Templer, George Downham, Nathan
iel Baxter, and?in English?Abraham Fraunce and Thomas Blundeville) felt compelled
to include a discussion, usually rather complete and traditional, of the Aristotelian fall
acies, even though Ramus himself had deliberately excluded them from his logic. See
Wilbur S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (New York: Russell &
Russell, 1961), pp. 227-28, 232, 288.
6 Fallacia Consequentis est, quando quis putat consequentias converti quae non con
vertuntur: Ut si quis ex hoc, Nuper ergo terra est madida, consequi,
pluebat, putet
Terra est madida, ergo nuper pluebat, decipitur: alia de causa terra madescere posset
quam pluvia (p. 355, sig. Zz2). [The fallacy of the consequent occurs when someone
thinks that consequents that cannot be converted are convertible. For example, if some
one should think that from the statement "it rained recently, therefore the ground is
wet" it follows that "the ground is wet, therefore it rained recently," he would be wrong.
Other things besides rain may cause the ground to be wet.]
7 struitur ex antecedente non recte
Quando fallacia consequentis? Quando infertur con
sequens in hunc modum. Virtus est, igitur Iustitia: homo non est, neque igitur animal
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104 COLLEGE LITERATURE
(sig. G7). When
[ do we construct the fallacy of the consequent? When a consequence
is wrongly inferred from an antecedent, in this way: there is such a thing as virtue,
therefore there is such a thing as justice; he is not a man, therefore he is not an animal.]
8 1. A positione Antecedentis ad positionem Consequents: ut si est homo, est animal;
sed est homo; ergo est animal, non e converso. 2. Ab eversione Consequents ad ever
sionem Antecedentis: ut, si est homo, est animal; sed non est animal; ergo non est homo,
non e converso (p. 111). [From positing the antecedent to positing the consequent:
for example, "if he is a man, he is an animal, but he is a man, therefore he is an animal,"
but not the converse. 2. From denying the consequent to denying the antecedent: for
example , "if he is a man, he is an animal, but he is not an animal, therefore he is not
a man," but not the converse.]
9 J. B. Leishman, The Art of Marvells Poetry (London: Hutchinson, 1966), pp. 72-77.
10 Leishman, pp. 73-74.
11 I quote from The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth, rev.
Pierre and E. E. Duncan-Jones 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), I 27-28.
Legouis
12 According to OED, "quaint" as a noun still had its obscene meaning as late as 1598.
The less reticent supplement, when it reaches "q," may well give later examples.
13 I quote from The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1965), pp. 62-64.
14 That critics have disagreed in their explanations is probably Donne's fault: the lines
are not as clear as they might be. Certainly it is not Donne's finest conceit.
15 A paradoxical reversal of Ovidian devouring time, "tempus edax rerum" (Metamor
phoses 15, 234). I owe this paragraph to the stimulating suggestions of my colleague,
Wolfgang Karrer.
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