Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/27

Rh something of the rigour of their demands; the mutual necessity of an accord is visible, the king is persuaded of it. And to tell you the truth (which I take to be an argument above all the rest), Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose."

This expression from a secretary of the present time would be considered as merely ludicrous, or at most as an ostentatious display of scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted on this great occasion the Virgilian Lots, and to have given some credit to the answer of his oracle.