VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 403

§ 89. Fourth side. Anger. A woman tearing her dress open at her breast. Inscription here undecipherable; but in the Renaissance copy it is “IRA CRUDELIS EST IN ME.”

Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol; but it is the weakest of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The “Wrath” of Spenser rides upon a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood.¹ Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any representation of the restrained Anger, which is infinitely the most terrible; both of them make him violent.

§ 90. Fifth side. Avarice. An old woman with a veil over her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvellous for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by famine; the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring and intense, yet without the slightest caricature. Inscribed in the Renaissance copy “AVARITIA IMPLETOR.”

Spenser’s Avarice (the vice) is much feebler than this; but the god Mammon and his kingdom have been described by him with his usual power. Note the position of the house of Richesse:

“Betwixt them both was but a little stride,

That did the House of Richesse from Hell-mouth divide.”²

It is curious that most moralists confuse avarice with covetousness, although they are vices totally different in their operation on the human heart and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of Judas and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil³ in the hardening of the heart; but “covetousness, which is idolatry,” the sin of Ahab, that is, the inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,-thus destroying peace of mind,-is probably productive of much more

¹ [Book i. canto iv. 33. For “Furor” see book ii. cantos iv. and v.]

² [For the description of Avarice, see book i. canto iv. 27-29; for the house of Richesse, book ii. canto vii. 24.]

³ [1. Timothy vi. 10; Colossians iii. 5; 1 Kings xxi. 2-16.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]