VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 383

Christian character, in which it may occasionally fail, while the essential group of the three theological and four cardinal virtues are represented as in direct attendance on the chariot of the Deity; and all the sins of Christians are in the seventeenth canto traced to the deficiency or aberration of Affection.

§ 62. The system of Spenser is unfinished, and exceedingly complicated, the same vices and virtues occurring under different forms in different places, in order to show their different relations to each other. I shall not therefore give any general sketch of it, but only refer to the particular personification of each virtue in order to compare it with that of the Ducal Palace.* The peculiar superiority of his system is in its exquisite setting forth of Chastity under the figure of Britomart; not monkish chastity, but that of the purest Love. In completeness of personification he is rarely equalled;¹ not even in Dante do I remember anything quite so great as the description of the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh:

“As pale and wan as ashes was his looke;

His body leane and meagre as a rake;

And skin all withered like a dryed rooke;

Thereto as cold and drery as a snake;

That seemed to tremble evermore, and quake;

All in a canvas thin he was bedight,

And girded with a belt of twisted brake;

Upon his head he wore an helmet light,

Made of a dead man’s scull.”

* The Faerie Queen, like Dante’s Paradise, is only half estimated, because few persons take the pains to think out its meaning. I have put a brief analysis of the first book in Appendix 2, Vol. III.; which may perhaps induce the reader to follow out the subject for himself. No time devoted to profane literature will be better rewarded than that spent earnestly on Spenser.²

¹ [The words “he is rarely equalled” are Ruskin’s correction in his copy for revision for “no one can approach him” in all editions hitherto. Ruskin refers to the passage below, § 100, as requiring this correction.]

² [Ruskin, it will be seen, had been studying Spenser to better purpose than in earlier days when he found the Faerie Queene “heavy”: see Vol. IV. p. 131 n.]

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