Page:All the Year Round - Series 1 - Volume 9.djvu/234

226 [May 2, 1863.) ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by and Queries, in his excellent collection of Ancient English Fictions.

The necromantic Virgil of the dark ages was supposed by our ancestors to be the same person with the great poet. This tradition may simply have resulted from the tendency of the popular mind in uninstructed times to attribute Satanic dealings to all men of unusual intellect. Virgil, indeed, is not the only Latin poet who has been converted into a sorcerer by vulgar ignorance and superstition; for the good-natured, easy-hearted man of the world, Horace, is still revered in the neighbourhood of Palestrina as a powerful and benevolent wizard. In the case of Virgil, however, the belief is thought to have been occasioned by the mystical character of the Sixth Book of the Æneid, where the Sibyl conducts Æneas to the infernal regions; by the magical incantation described in the Eighth Pastoral; and by the fact of Virgil's grandfather having borne the name of Maius, which was confounded with the word Magus, a magician. It is certain that in the neighbourhood of Naples, where he was buried, he has been long regarded as an enchanter—a reputation which Beckford found in full swing when he visited the spot in 1780; and that the learned folly of the Sortes Virgilianæ prevailed all over the civilised world for ages. The same species of divination was practised by the learned with the productions of the Mantuan poet, as has been in vogue amongst the illiterate with the Bible. As far back as the twelfth century, the necromantic legends connected with the name of Virgil had acquired a deep and extended root; and early in the following century they were collected in the Otia Imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury, who had visited Naples, and seen some of the marvellous works which Virgil was said to have contrived. Other writers followed in the same wake; and from their several productions we learn a great deal about the Augustan poet which he would have been utterly astonished to learn himself. According to these chroniclers (as we find set forth by Mr. Thoms in his Preface to the old romance), Virgilius placed on a certain gate of Naples two immense images of stone, one of which was handsome and merry, the other sad and mis-shaped; and whoever came in by the side of the former prospered in all his affairs, while those who entered by the latter were sure to be unfortunate. He set up on a high mountain near the same city a brazen statue, having in its mouth a trumpet, which sounded so loud when the north wind blew that the flames and smoke issuing from the neighbouring forges of Vulcan were driven back over the sea. He made a public fire, at which any one might freely warm himself (a rather doubtful benefit at Naples, one would think); and near the fire he stationed a brazen archer with his arrow drawn out, and underneath it this inscription: "If any one strike me, I will shoot off my arrow;" which one day really took place, a certain man having struck the archer; whereupon, away went the arrow, and the foolish experimentalist at the point of it, straight into the heart of the fire, which was extinguished at once and for ever. Among his other contrivances, Virgilius caused the safety of the city of Naples to depend upon what seems a very frail and treacherous security—viz. an egg; for he not only made the foundation of eggs, but he suspended a magical egg on the top of a high tower, ordaining that when the egg stirred the town should shake, and when it broke the town should sink. It is curious to find a trace of this superstition in the statutes of the Order du Saint Esprit, instituted in 1352, according to which a chapter of the knights was to be held every year at "the Castle of the Enchanted Egg," near the grotto of Virgil.

The romance of Virgilius presents most of these popular legends in the form of a connected narrative. The title-page sets forth that "this boke treateth of the Lyfe of Virgilius, and of his Deth, and many marvayles that he dyd in his lyfetyme by whychcrafte and nygramancye, thorowgh the helpe of the Devyls of Hell;" so that we start with a very comprehensive idea of the poet's infernal abilities and achievements. We ought to observe, by the way, that no mention is anywhere made of the literary productions of the hero. The Æneid and the Georgics might never have been composed, for anything we are told about them by the old romance-writer; yet there can be no doubt that the ideal magician was originally associated with the real poet. It is very difficult, however, to trace the connexion. Virgil the poet was of humble origin; Virgil the enchanter is described as a relative of the family of Remus, brother of the founder of Rome, and is said in the old story-book to have been born not long after the epoch of the wolf-suckled twins. He was a native, not of Mantua, but of Raynes, wherever that may be; and he acquired his remarkable powers in a way of which ancient biographers make no mention. When he was a boy, he was walking about with his schoolfellows, one holiday, amongst the hills. Perceiving a great hole in the side of one of those uplands, he ventured in, and penetrated so far that he was in total darkness. He went still further, and saw a little glimmering light, which encouraged him to proceed. Presently, he heard a voice calling, "Virgilius, Virgilius!" But he could see no one. He cried out, "Who calleth me?" And the voice said, "Virgilius, see you not that little board lying beside you there, marked with a word?" Virgilius answered that he saw the board plainly; and then the voice said, "Remove it, and let me out." But the boy was gifted with a discretion beyond his years, and he asked, "Who art thou that talkest to me thus?" "I am a devil," answered the voice, "conjured out of the body of a certain man, and banished here until the day of judgment, un-