VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 405

purpose. The word Vanitas generally, I think, bears, in the mediæval period, the sense given it in Scripture. “Let not him that is deceived trust in Vanity, for Vanity shall be his recompense.” “Vanity of Vanities.” “The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”¹ It is difficult to find this sin,-which, after Pride, is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal, of all, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm “to waft a feather or to drown a fly,”²-definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser, I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phædria, more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book.³ The idea is, however, entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the Pilgrim’s Progress.

§ 93. Eighth side. Envy. One of the noblest pieces of expression in the series. She is pointing malignantly with her finger; a serpent is wreathed about her head like a cap, another forms the girdle of her waist, and a dragon rests in her lap.

Giotto has, however, represented her,⁴ with still greater subtlety, as having her fingers terminating in claws, and raising her right hand with an expression partly of impotent regret, partly of involuntary grasping; a serpent, issuing from her mouth, is about to bite her between the eyes; she has long membranous ears, horns on her head, and flames consuming her body. The Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of Giotto, because the idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not suggested by the size of the ear: in other respects it is even finer, joining the idea of fury, in the wolf

¹ [Job xv. 31; Ecclesiastes i. 2; Psalms xciv. 11; 1 Corinthians iii. 20.]

² [Young’s Night Thoughts, i. 154. Ruskin quotes the passage in a letter to his father (May 2, 1852):-

“There is not any passage which I oftener repeat to myself of profane literature than that of Young-

‘A soul immortal raptured or alarmed

At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,

Resembles ocean into tempest wrought

To waft a feather or to drown a fly.’”]

³ [Canto vi.]

⁴ [In the Arena Chapel. The fresco is engraved as frontispiece to Fors Clavigera, Letter 6, where some further reference is made to it.]

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