Such is the poet's case for himself. But no matter how eloquently he
presents his case, his quarrel with his three enemies remains almost as
bitter as before, and he is obliged to pay some attention to their
individual charges.

The poet's quarrel with the philistine, in particular, is far from
settled. The more lyrical the poet becomes regarding the unity of the
good and the beautiful, the more skeptical becomes the plain man. What
is this about the irresistible charm of virtue? Virtue has possessed the
plain man's joyless fidelity for years, and he has never discovered any
charm in her. The poet possesses a peculiar power of insight which
reveals in goodness hidden beauties to which ordinary humanity is blind?
Let him prove it, then, by being as good in the same way as ordinary
folk are. If the poet professes to be able to achieve righteousness
without effort, the only way to prove it is to conform his conduct to
that of men who achieve righteousness with groaning of spirit. It is too
easy for the poet to justify any and every aberration with the
announcement, "My sixth sense for virtue, which you do not possess, has
revealed to me the propriety of such conduct." Thus reasons the
philistine.

The beauty-blind philistine doubtless has some cause for bewilderment,
but the poet takes no pains to placate him. The more genuine is one's
impulse toward goodness, the more inevitably, the poet says, will it
bring one into conflict with an artificial code of morals. Shelley
indicated this at length in _The Defense of Poetry_, and in both
_Rosalind and Helen_ and _The Revolt of Islam_ he showed his bards
offending the world by their original conceptions of purity. Likewise of
the poet-hero in _Prince Athanase_ Shelley tells us,