Observe that subtle touch of truth in the "wearing" of the portesse, indicating the abuse of books by idle readers, so thoroughly characteristic of unwilling studentship from the schoolboy upwards.
SECTION LXXI. Seventh side. Vanity. She is smiling complacently as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with roses, and roses form her crown. Undecipherable.
There is some confusion in the expression of this vice, between pride in the personal appearance and lightness of purpose. The word Vanitas generally, I think, bears, in the mediaeval 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." 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,"—definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser, I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria, more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however, entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress."
SECTION LXXII. 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, 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 on which he rides, with that of corruption on his lips, and of discoloration or distortion in the whole mind:
"Malicious Envy rode
Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
Between his cankred teeth avenemous tode
That all the poison ran about his jaw.
And in a kirtle of discolourd say
He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies,
And in his bosome secretly there lay
An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes
In many folds, and mortali sting implyes."
He has developed the idea in more detail, and still more loathsomely, in the twelfth canto of the fifth book.
SECTION LXXIII. ELEVENTH CAPITAL. Its decoration is composed of eight birds, arranged as shown in Plate V. of the "Seven Lamps," which, however, was sketched from the Renaissance copy. These birds are all varied in form and action, but not so as to require special description.
SECTION LXXIV. TWELFTH CAPITAL. This has been very interesting, but is grievously defaced, four of its figures being entirely broken away, and the character of two others quite undecipherable. It is fortunate that it has been copied in the thirty-third capital of the Renaissance series, from which we are able to identify the lost figures.
First side. Misery. A man with a wan face, seemingly pleading with a child who has its hands crossed on its breast. There is a buckle at his own breast in the shape of a cloven heart. Inscribed "MISERIA."