“‘Know ye not, then,’ said Satan, filled with scorn,
‘Know ye not me? Ye knew me once no mate
For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar!
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown,
The lowest of your throng.’”
(IV. 827–831.)

Zephon, however, points out that Satan should not think that he may still be known, as he was in heaven, by the brightness of his form; for his glory departed when he rebelled, and now resembles his sin and place of doom.

“Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same,
Or undiminished brightness, to be known
As when thou stood’st in Heaven upright and pure.
That glory then, when thou no more wast good,
Departed from thee; and thou resemblest now
Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul.”
(IV. 835–840.)

At this thought Satan stands abashed. Lover of the beautiful as he is, he now experiences the pang of its loss in his own life.

“So spake the Cherub; and his grave rebuke,
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible. Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely—saw, and pined
His loss; but chiefly to find here observed
His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed
Undaunted.”
(IV. 844–851.)

In Milton, then, whether his mind dwells on chastity or on the consciousness of sin’s effect on the soul, it is to the vision of a world of moral beauty that at last it mounts.

The relation of these ideals of holiness, temperance, and chastity to the Christian doctrine of grace, which finds a place in the works of these English poets, can now be clearly seen. The ideals of conduct are essentially moral ideals, and in the attainment of them the soul lives its fullest life. “The being who possesses good always, everywhere, and in all things,” says Socrates in the “Philebus” (60), “has the most perfect sufficiency.” According to Plato the soul may realize perfect sufficiency of itself, it is self-sufficient; but Christian theology taught the necessity of a heavenly grace for man to work out his own salvation. The two ideals are thus distinct; and though the English poets incorporate both in their work, the line of cleavage is distinctly visible, and the doctrine of grace plays no more than a formal part in their exposition of the soul’s growth. In the “Faerie Queene” and in “Comus” Platonic idealism triumphs over Christian theology.

In Spenser the adventures of Arthur, in whom heavenly grace is commonly recognized, have no moral significance in the progress of the Knight aided by him toward the realization of virtue. Arthur frees the Red Cross Knight from Orgoglio and Duessa, but the Red Cross Knight is, morally speaking, the same man after he is freed as before; the adventure of Arthur answers to no change significant in the moral order of his life as this is revealed in holiness. The realization of holiness as an intimate experience of the soul is achieved only after the Knight’s training on the Mount of Heavenly Contemplation, which follows all his preceding discipline in the Christian graces; for this has left him a “man of earth.” In the legend of temperance the efficacy of grace is no more vital, and what is more, it is an intrusion upon the moral order; it makes the soul untrue to itself and all that we know of her. The logic of Guyon’s inner life did not require that Arthur should come to his rescue after he had shown his ability to remain temperate under strong emotion and in the presence of wantonness and covetousness. His swoon at the end of the seventh canto has no more meaning than mere bodily fatigue after toil; morally, Guyon should have been only the stronger for his past victories over his passions. Arthur’s entrance at the eighth canto, consequently, is not required: Spenser is only paralleling in his second book Arthur’s advent in the eighth canto of his first.

Similarly in “Comus.” When the younger brother inquires what that power which The Lady possesses to keep herself unspotted in the presence of lust may be, if it is not the strength of heaven, his elder companion replies:

“I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength,
Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed her own.
’Tis chastity, my brother, chastity.”
(ll. 418–420.)

So The Lady herself witnesses, when in the great crisis of her life she appeals to faith, hope, and chastity; if need were, she is confident that heaven would send an angel to her defence.

“O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings,
And thou unblemished form of Chastity!
I see ye visibly, and now believe
That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honour unassailed.”
(ll. 212–220.)

And the Guardian Spirit, in whose parting words is found the moral of the poem, explains the same idea of the self-sufficiency of the virtuous soul.

“Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free.
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or, if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.”
(ll. 1018–1023.)

The theological doctrine of grace, although maintained as a part of an intellectual scheme of thought, did not enter into the inward life of Spenser’s and Milton’s work. So sensitive were they to the power of beauty that nothing could come between it and the soul. To Milton beauty wore an invincible grace, before which all must give way. Satan recognized this when he was confronted by the angel, Zephon.

“So spake the Cherub; and his grave rebuke,
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible.”
(IV. 844–846.)

Nothing was more natural, then, than that such a mind feeding upon Plato’s thought and learning its great lesson of wisdom, that it alone is truly fair, should conceive virtue panoplied in all the might of beauty. He thus could teach in his “Comus” “the sun-clad power of chastity”:

“She that has that is clad in complete steel,
And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen,
May trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds,
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer,
Will dare to soil her virgin purity.”
(ll. 421–427.)

In Spenser beauty is not thus militant. When the Red Cross Knight, eager to enter the Cave of Error (I. i. 12), says to Una, confident in his power,

“Virtue gives her selfe light, through darkenesse for to wade,”

Una cautions him to stay his step while there yet is time. (I. i. 13.) But it is just as true in Spenser as in Milton, that beauty is an unerring guide in life. Spenser responded to it because he felt most deeply the power of the soul’s affinity for it. Throughout his work the influence of beauty upon man is constantly present. Even though at times he seems to be drawn to it by the subtlety of its appeal to the sense alone, he makes it very evident that true beauty can be found in the soul only in its habits of virtuous life. Thus the witch Duessa, when stripped of her alluring beauty, is revolting in her hideousness (I. ii. 40; II. i. 22), and Acrasia’s beauty only poisons the souls of her lovers. (II. i. 54.) Beauty that is nothing but a mere witchery of the sense disappears into thin air when confronted by virtue in her beauty. This is the lesson taught in the vanishing of the false Florimell when the true is placed beside her. (V. iii. 25.) The power of this affinity of the soul for beauty, mysterious as it is real, which Spenser’s work reveals, is conveyed in a question from Sidney’s “Arcadia,” where the spirit of the “Phædrus” is all present. “Did ever mans eye looke thorough love upon the majesty of vertue, shining through beauty, but that he became (as it well became him) a captive?”[5]