| “All in sable sorrowfully clad, Downe hanging his dull head with heavy chere: ........ A pair of pincers in his hand he had, With which he pinched people to the heart.” |
He has farther amplified the idea under another figure in the fifth canto of the fourth book:
| “His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade, That neither day nor night from working spared; But to small purpose yron wedges made: Those be unquiet thoughts that carefull minds invade. Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent, Ne better had he, ne for better cared; With blistered hands among the cinders brent.” |
It is to be noticed, however, that in the Renaissance copy this figure is stated to be, not Miseria, but “Misericordia.” The contraction is a very moderate one, Misericordia being in old MS. written always as “Mia.” If this reading be right, the figure is placed here rather as the companion, than the opposite, of Cheerfulness; unless, indeed, it is intended to unite the idea of Mercy and Compassion with that of Sacred Sorrow.
§ XCVI. Second side. Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open lips, as singing. Inscribed “alacritas.”
We have already met with this virtue among those especially set by Spenser to attend on Womanhood. It is inscribed in the Renaissance copy, “ALACHRITAS CHANIT MECUM.” Note the gutturals of the rich and fully developed Venetian dialect now affecting the Latin, which is free from them in the earlier capitals.
§ XCVII. Third side. Destroyed; but, from the copy, we find it has been Stultitia, Folly; and it is there represented simply as a man riding, a sculpture worth the consideration of the English residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and bells, or cap crested with a cock’s head, whence the word “coxcomb.”
§ XCVIII. Fourth side. Destroyed, all but a book, which identifies it with the “Celestial Chastity” of the Renaissance copy; there represented as a woman pointing to a book (connecting the convent life with the pursuit of literature?).