396 THE STONES OF VENICE

under the term ubrriV, which, in the Phædrus, is divided into various intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the image of a black, vicious, diseased, and furious horse, yoked by the side of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles) to the chariot of the Soul.¹ The system of Aristotle, as above stated,² is throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the laboriously developed mistake of temperance for the essence of the virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediæval systems is generally opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is Spenser’s Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we find the subordinate vice “Excesse,” as the introduction to Intemperance; a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal “Gluttony” in the first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St. Paul, “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;”³ but always delicately.

“Into her cup her scruzd with daintie breach

Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,

That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet.”⁴

The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser, for it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace.

§ 81. Fourth side. Humility; with a veil upon her head, carrying a lamb in her lap. Inscribed in the copy, “HUMILITAS HABITAT IN ME.”

This virtue is of course a peculiarly Christian one, hardly recognized in the Pagan systems, though carefully impressed

¹ [The references here are all to the Phædrus. See p. 244 (Stephanus), where “madness” is said to be “superior to a sane mind (swqrosnh), for the one is of human, the other of divine origin;” 238, where the various forms of excess (ubriV) are enumerated; and 253 for the description of the two horses of the soul.]

² [See § 51.]

³ [Ephesians v. 18.]

⁴ [Book ii. canto xii. 56.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]