and a cup. Inscription, illegible here, and on the Renaissance copy
nearly so, "TEMPERANTIA SUM" (INOM' L'S)? Only left. In this somewhat
vulgar and most frequent conception of this virtue (afterwards
continually repeated, as by Sir Joshua in his window at New-College)
temperance is confused with mere abstinence, the opposite of Gula, or
gluttony; whereas the Greek Temperance, a truly cardinal virtue, is the
moderator of _all_ the passions, and so represented by Giotto, who
has placed a bridle upon her lips, and a sword in her hand, the hilt of
which she is binding to the scabbard. In his system, she is opposed
among the vices, not by Gula or Gluttony, but by Ira, Anger. So also the
Temperance of Spenser, or Sir Guyon, but with mingling of much
sternness:
"A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete,
That from his head no place appeared to his feete,
His carriage was full comely and upright;
His countenance demure and temperate;
But yett so sterne and terrible in sight,
That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate."
The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sophrosunae] involves the idea
of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as
inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He
opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which
is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania,] or inspiration; but he
most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term
[Greek: ubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various
intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the
image of a black, vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side
of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a
crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles)
to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is
throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the
laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the
virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally
opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is
Spenser's Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we
find the subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance;
a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous
forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the
first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St.
Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;" but always delicately,
"Into her cup she scruzd with daintie breach
Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach,
That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet."
The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser,
for it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and
philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace.