VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 391

opposite of Patience is Passion; but Spenser’s thought is farther carried. His two hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the smallest matters, according to the adage, “More haste, worse speed.”

§ 73. Fifth side. Despair. A female figure thrusting a dagger into her throat, and tearing her long hair, which flows down among the leaves of the capital below her knees. One of the finest figures of the series; inscribed “DESPERACIO MÔS (mortis?) CRUDELIS.” In the Renaissance copy she is totally devoid of expression, and appears, instead of tearing her hair, to be dividing it into long curls on each side.

This vice is the proper opposite of Hope. By Giotto she is represented as a woman hanging herself, a fiend coming for her soul.¹ Spenser’s vision of Despair is well known, it being indeed currently reported that this part of the Faerie Queen was the first which drew to it the attention of Sir Philip Sidney.²

§ 74. Sixth side. Obedience: with her arms folded; meek, but rude and commonplace, looking at a little dog standing on its hind legs and begging, with a collar round its neck. Inscribed “OBEDIENTI * *;” the rest of the sentence is much defaced, but looks like AONOBO.

I suppose the note of contraction above the final A has disappeared, and that the inscription was “Obedientiam domino exhibeo.”³

This virtue is, of course, a principal one in the monkish systems; represented by Giotto at Assisi as “an angel robed in black, placing the finger of his left hand on his

¹ [Giotto’s “Despair” is in the Arena Chapel. See Giotto and his Works in Padua in a later volume of this edition.]

² [The description of Despair is in book i. canto ix. 36. Sidney died in 1586, and the Faerie Queene was not published till 1590, but parts of it are known to have been in existence and shown to the poet’s friends in 1579-1580. Mr. Grosart, however, considers as “semi-legendary” “the anecdote that the Cave of Despair was submitted to Sir Philip Sidney-to his ecstasy” (see The Complete Works of Edmund Spenser, edited by the Rev. A. B. Grosart, 1882-1884, vol. i. p. 154.]

³ [Or, perhaps, “Obedientiam honoram exhibeo.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]