II. LATRATOR ANUBIS 229

God: in sterner than more literal truth, the captivity of the spirit of man, whether to earth or to its creatures.

And St. Theodore’s victory is making the earth his pedestal, instead of his adversary; he is the power of gentle and rational life, reigning over the wild creatures and senseless forces of the world. The Latrator Anubis-most senseless and cruel of the guardians of hell-becoming, by human mercy, the faithfullest of creature-friends to man.

27. Do you think all this work useless in your Venetian guide? There is not a picture,-not a legend,-scarcely a column or an ornament, in the art of Venice or of Italy, which, by this piece of work, well done, will not become more precious to you. Have you ever, for instance, noticed how the baying of Cerberus is stopped, in the sixth canto of Dante?-

“Il duca mio

Prese la terra; et con piene le pugna

La gitto dentro alle bramose canne.”¹

(To the three, therefore plural.) It is one of the innumerable subtleties which mark Dante’s perfect knowledge-inconceivable except as a form of inspiration-of the inner meaning of every myth, whether of classic or Christian theology, known in his day.

28. Of the relation of the dog, horse, and eagle to the chivalry of Europe, you will find, if you care to read, more noted, in relation to part of the legend of St. Theodore, in the Fors of March, this year;² the rest of his legend, with what is notablest in his “Mariegola,” I will tell you when we come to examine Carpaccio’s canonized birds and beasts;³ of which, to refresh you after this piece of hard ecclesiastical reading (for I can’t tell you about the bases of the pillars to-day-we must get into another humour to see these), you may see, within five minutes’ walk,

¹ [Inferno, vi. 25-27: “my guide ... took of the earth, and with his fists well filled, he threw it into those rapacious gullets” (Longfellow). For “the three” gullets, see ibid., line 14, “contre gole.”]

² [Letter 75, which (says Ruskin there, § 7) his Venetian readers must peruse in connexion with St. Mark’s Rest.]

³ [This, however, was not done.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]