nally fail, while the essential group of the three
theological and four cardinal virtues are represented as in direct
attendance on the chariot of the Deity; and all the sins of Christians
are in the seventeenth canto traced to the deficiency or aberration of
Affection.

Sec. LXII. The system of Spenser is unfinished, and exceedingly
complicated, the same vices and virtues occurring under different forms
in different places, in order to show their different relations to each
other. I shall not therefore give any general sketch of it, but only
refer to the particular personification of each virtue in order to
compare it with that of the Ducal Palace.[151] The peculiar superiority
of his system is in its exquisite setting forth of Chastity under the
figure of Britomart; not monkish chastity, but that of the purest Love.
In completeness of personification no one can approach him; not even in
Dante do I remember anything quite so great as the description of the
Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh:

"As pale and wan as ashes was his looke;
His body lean and meagre as a rake;
And skin all withered like a dryed rooke;
Thereto as cold and drery as a snake;
That seemed to tremble evermore, and quake:
_All in a canvas thin he was bedight,
And girded with a belt of twisted brake_:
Upon his head he wore an helmet light,
Made of a dead man's skull."

He rides upon a tiger, and in his hand is a bow, bent;

"And many arrows under his right side,
Headed with flint, and fethers bloody dide."

The horror and the truth of this are beyond everything that I know, out
of the pages of Inspiration. Note the heading of the arrows with flint,
because sharper and more subtle in the edge than steel, and because
steel might consume away with rust, but flint not; and consider in the
whole description how the wasting away of body and soul together, and
the _coldness_ of the heart, which unholy fire has consumed into ashes,
and the loss of all power, and the kindling of all terrible impatience,
and the implanting of thorny and inextricable griefs, are set forth by
the various images, the belt of brake, the tiger steed, and the _light_
helmet, girding the head with death.

Sec. LXIII. Perhaps the most interesting series of the Virtues expressed
in Italian art are those above mentioned of Simon Memmi in the Spanish
chapel at Florence, of Ambrogio di Lorenzo in the Palazzo Publico of
Pisa, of Orcagna in Or San Miche