expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the
left extended, inscribed "PATIENTIA MANET MECUM."
She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems: a
masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the _PHYSICIAN_ in
the House of Holinesse. The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the hags
who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh; the other being
Impotence. In like manner, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," the opposite of
Patience is Passion; but Spenser's thought is farther carried. His two
hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of
Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the
smallest matters, according to the adage, "More haste, worse speed."