390 THE STONES OF VENICE

bold countenance, who says to him who has the writer’s ink-horn by his side, “Set down my name,” is the best personification of the Venetian “Constantia” of which I am aware in literature. It would be well for us all to consider whether we have yet given the order to the man with the ink-horn, “Set down my name.”

§ 71. Third side. Discord; holding up her finger, but needing the inscription above to assure us of her meaning, “DISCORDIA SUM, DISCORDANS.” In the Renaissance copy¹ she is a meek and nun-like person with a veil.

She is the Atë of Spenser; “mother of debate,” thus described in the fourth book:²

“Her face most fowle and filthy was to see,

With squinted eyes contrarie wayes intended;

And loathly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee,

That nought but gall and venim comprehended,

And wicked wordes that God and man offended:

Her lying tongue was in two parts divided,

And both the parts did speake, and both contended;

And as her tongue, so was her hart discided,

That never thought one thing, but doubly stil was guided.”

Note the fine old meaning of “discided,” cut in two; it is a great pity we have lost this powerful expression. We might keep “determined” for the other sense of the word.

§ 72. Fourth side. Patience. A female figure, very expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the left extended, inscribed “PATIENTIA MANET MECUM.”

She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems, a masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the Physician in the House of Holinesse.³ The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the hags who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh;⁴ the other being Impotence. In like manner, in the Pilgrim’s Progress⁵ the

¹ [Capital No. 28.]

² [Canto i. 27.]

³ [Book i. canto x. 23. Compare Ruskin’s analysis in The Cestus of Aglaia (ch. iii.) of Chaucer’s “Dame Pacience”; and see the report of his Oxford lecture on “Patience,” given in E. T. Cook’s Studies in Ruskin, Appendix iii., and reprinted in a later volume of this edition.]

⁴ [Book ii. canto xi. 23.]

⁵ [Page 27 in the “Golden Treasury” edition.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]