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.
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