VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 399

compass.¹ But forethought or anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural capacities, one man becomes more prudent than another, is never enough considered or symbolized.

The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom.

§ 85. Eighth side. Hope. A figure full of devotional expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand which is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy this hand does not appear.

Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all others, it seems to me the testing virtue,-that by the possession of which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not; for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual hope of, or longing for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto² is represented as winged, rising in the air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser was the first to introduce our marine Virtue, leaning on an anchor, a symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors are not for men, but for ships; and, in the second, anchorage is the characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,-the first time as the Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid:

“She always smyld, and in her hand did hold

An holy-water-sprinckle, dipt in deowe.”³

¹ [One of the frescoes in the Arena Chapel. Lord Lindsay (ii. 197) suggests that the second face is that of Socrates.]

² [In the Arena Chapel. The fresco is engraved as the frontispiece to Fors Clavigera, Letter 5: see the further remarks there made on the virtue of Hope. Compare what is said of Hope in a description of a picture by Veronese, in Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 20; and see the account of Hope in The Bible of Amiens, ch. iv.]

³ [The first picture of Hope is in book i. canto x. 14:

“Upon her arme a silver anchor lay,

Whereon she leaned ever, as befell.”

The second picture, in the Masque of Cupid, is in book iii. canto xii. 13.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]