41. Spenser has clothed with horror this conception of the appearance of a fiend, just as he has enshrined in beauty the belief in the guardian angel. It is worthy of remark that he describes the devil as dwelling beneath the altar of an idol in a heathen temple. Prince Arthur strikes the image thrice with his sword-- "And the third time, out of an hidden shade, There forth issewed from under th' altar's smoake A dreadfull feend with fowle deformèd looke, That stretched itselfe as it had long lyen still; And her long taile and fethers strongly shooke, That all the temple did with terrour fill; Yet him nought terrifide that fearèd nothing ill. "An huge great beast it was, when it in length Was stretchèd forth, that nigh filled all the place, And seemed to be of infinite great strength; Horrible, hideous, and of hellish race, Borne of the brooding of Echidna base, Or other like infernall Furies kinde, For of a maide she had the outward face To hide the horrour which did lurke behinde The better to beguile whom she so fond did finde. "Thereto the body of a dog she had, Full of fell ravin and fierce greedinesse; A lion's clawes, with power and rigour clad To rende and teare whatso she can oppresse; A dragon's taile, whose sting without redresse Full deadly wounds whereso it is empight, And eagle's wings for scope and speedinesse That nothing may escape her reaching might, Whereto she ever list to make her hardy flight." 42. The dramatists of the period make frequent references to this belief, but nearly always by way of ridicule. It is hardly to be expected that they would share in the grosser opinions held by the common people in those times--common, whether king or clown. In "The Virgin Martyr," Harpax is made to say-- "I'll tell you what now of the devil; He's no such horrid creature, cloven-footed, Black, saucer-eyed, his nostrils breathing fire, As these lying Christians make him."[1] But his opinion was, perhaps, a prejudiced one. In Ben Jonson's "The Devil is an Ass," when Fitzdottrell, doubting Pug's statement as to his infernal character, says, "I looked on your feet afore; you cannot cozen me; your shoes are not cloven, sir, you are whole hoofed;" Pug, with great presence of mind, replies, "Sir, that's a popular error deceives many." So too Othello, when he is questioning whether Iago is a devil or not, says-- "I look down to his feet, but that's a fable."[2] And when Edgar is trying to persuade the blind Gloucester that he has in reality cast himself over the cliff, he describes the being from whom he is supposed to have just parted, thus:-- "As I stood here below, methought his eyes Were two full moons: he had a thousand noses; Horns whelked and wavèd like the enridgèd sea: It was some fiend."[3]