To follow the fortunes of Helen through the middle ages would demand
much space and considerable research. The poets who read Dares
Phrygius believed, with the scholar of Dr. Faustus, that "Helen of
Greece was the admirablest lady that ever lived." When English
poetry first found the secret of perfect music, her sweetest numbers
were offered by Marlowe at the shrine of Helen. The speech of
Faustus is almost too hackneyed to be quoted, and altogether too
beautiful to be omitted:-


Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium!
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul! see where it flies;
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again;
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in those lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
* * *
Oh thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.


The loves of Faustus and Helen are readily allegorized into the
passion of the Renaissance for classical beauty, the passion to which
all that is not beauty seemed very dross. This is the idea of the
second part of "Faust," in which Helen once more became, as she
prophesied in the Iliad, a song in the mouths of later men. Almost
her latest apparition in English poetry, is in the "Hellenics" of
Landor. The sweetness of the character of Helen; the tragedy of the