a curious relationship with political events which must have been known to the narrator in connection with the claims of Spain to the possession of Southern Italy.

VI

The Spanish romance of Virgil differed from all the other tales concerning him in that every characteristic of the historic, the traditional and even the legendary Virgil gave place to a clumsy lover with all the whimsical chivalry and ceremony proper to a compatriot of Quixote. To the author of this absurd tale Virgil wore the guise of a good hidalgo, who endured imprisonment patiently for the sake of his inamorata. His punishment came about in this way: Having conceived a violent passion for Isabella, a lady of the court, he offended the punctilious manners of the king whom he served by a too public display of his affection. For this indecorum he was arrested, tried and condemned on a charge of high treason. He remained in prison, before he was again remembered by the king, full seven years. On a Sunday when all the grandees were the guests of the king, the strangely defective royal memory was suddenly quickened at the dinner table!

"My lords," exclaimed the king, "and Virgil, where is he?" One of the noblemen, who had been Virgil's friend, ventured to reply: "Your majesty has him in prison."

"Come," said his majesty, "let us dine quickly, that we may visit him.”

"Not a mouthful will I eat until he is with us," exclaimed the queen. So to the prison they went, and when they came to Virgil's cell they asked him how he did, and he replied:

"Senors, I have nothing to do, save comb my hair and my beard. Here they grew and here they are like to become gray. To-day seven years have gone since your majesty had me arrested."

"Hush, Virgil," whispered the courtiers, alarmed at his boldness, "of ten years there yet remain three."

"But," continued the prisoner, submissively, "if your majesty wills it, here I shall remain all my life."

"Virgil," said the king, "in recompense of the miseries you have suffered, and as a reward for your patience, you shall this day eat at our table."

Virgil protested that he had no clothes fit to wear, but the king would take no refusal, Newly attired in robes suitable to his rank, the prisoner was led to the palace. The king opened his heart still more in the merriment and kindly feeling of the feast, and commanded that Virgil and the Donna Isabella should be married without delay. To cap the climax of absurdity, it is gravely stated that the ceremony was performed in the cathedral by his grace, the archbishop.

All these tales have this value: that they disclose clearly the national, or rather the racial tendencies out of which they sprang. These peculiarities might have been concealed in narratives more elaborate. Even the obstinate prejudice of the Teuton against the Roman finds a distinct expression in the poem of the anonymous German who declared in effect that the women of Rome were notoriously unfaithful. But it is not surprising that when curiosity was reawakened concerning the Virgil of history, it should have seemed impossible for these tales to have been attached even by the bonds of legend and superstition to the fame of the Mantuan, nor

that learned men should have looked among the many Virgils who were known in medieval literature for a personality better suited to such inventions than was that of the Augustan poet.

EIGHTH-VIRGIL, THE PROPHET

I

Virgil lived too long before the beginning of the controversy between paganism and Christianity to afford an opportunity for the immediate partisan use of his name and reputation. He could not be enrolled as an adherent of either party, because he never had the opportunity of choosing between them. But the post-classical and medieval world looked upon him as a poet of prophetic insight, who contained within himself all the potentialities of wisdom. He was called The Poet, as if no other existed; The Roman, as if the ideal of the commonwealth were embodied in him; The Perfect in Style, with whom no other writer could be compared; The Philosopher, who grasped the ideas of all things; The Wise One, whose comprehension seemed to other mortals unlimited; and, least agreeable title to a poet, he was called The Learned, as having mastered the lore of humanity. His writings became the Bible of a race. The mysteries of Roman priestcraft, the processes of divination, the science of the stars, were all found in his works. The powers of a magician, and, subsequently, the name were attributed to him. Christians,

learned as well as unlearned, accepting these opinions did not attempt to separate the Virgil of history from the Virgil of tradition. Such criticism would have been impossible. Mankind was, in fact, not capable of making a distinction between the real and the unreal. The heathen deities were as truly existent in the imagination of the early Christian convert as in that of his polytheistic neighbor. So the heathen oracles were studied as the utterances of a superhuman intelligence, more or less vicious, which pointed in spite of itself to the events of the New Dispensation. The whole area of profane literature was traversed in search of passages to be interpreted in harmony with the teachings of Scripture. As to Virgil, the reasoning was obvious that, gifted as he was with almost supernatural powers, and with a prophetic insight, he must have been cognizant of the stupendous changes about to be wrought in the world. The method by which in course of time he was made to do duty as a witness for Christianity was, in some aspects, little to the credit of Christian scholars; the only excuse for this was the prevalence of literary dishonesty among men of all creeds. Celsus had just grounds for reproaching the Christians with having corrupted the Sibylline books to suit their own views, and Origen could reply with equal truth that the pagans and Jews had already vitiated the original poems by their interpolations to such an extent that the "unadorned earnest words" heard by Heraclitus were no longer to be found in these writings. The popularity of these fictions led to the composition of spurious gospels, spurious Orphic hymns, spurious treatises attributed to men famous in ancient literature which affected for centuries the opinions even of the most learned. A particular point in the sibyllines, upon which Christians fixed their attention was the prediction

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