478 Schevill — Studies in Cervantes. 



the latter fact can be foi-nd tlie bond whicb joins the Yirgil of the 

 Renaissance to the Latin poet of antiquity, and so preserves the 

 continuity of his remarkable prestige. Dante's appreciation of his 

 Latin master was to become thenceforward the standard opinion of 

 him;^ and, consequently, after the dreary ages of scholasticism and 

 ephemeral church doctrine, Virgil and his poems survived as an 

 abiding literary inlluence, destined to endure through any move- 

 ment or change in religion and philosophy. By means of the fourth 

 eclogue, and notably the sixth book of the Aeneid, which had not only 

 contributed to expounding obscure theological doctrine, but had 

 inspired the most comprehensive expression of medisevalism, the 

 Divina Commedia, Virgil had survived the Middle Ages ; by means 

 of the fourth book of the xieneid, through which he could claim the 

 distinction of romancer as well as poet, he took root in the whole 

 body of Kenaissance literature, and left an indelible trace in the 

 history of fiction. For the much admired delineation of Dido's pas- 

 sion has always made her tragedy appear modern from the stand- 

 point of any age," and its contents began to furnish romantic mate- 

 act 7, p. 88; Pedro Manuel de Urrea, Penitencia de amor (1514), p. 55 

 of reprint in the "Bibliotheca hispanica" edited by Foulche-Delbosc, 1902; 

 Menendez y Pelayo, "Antologia de poetas Uricos castellanos," Tratado de los 

 romances viejos, Vol. XII (Madrid, 190G), p. 486: "mando el Rey prender 

 Virgilius, etc." where Virgil is merely a kind of mediaeval knight in love; 

 cf. also "Antologia etc.," Vol. VIII, p. 226; Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, 

 Eistoria del gran Tamorlan (Sevilla, 1582), p. 2; Lope de Vega, Mas pueden 

 celos que amor. Vol. II of "Comedias Escogidas" (Rivadeneyra) , p. 186, 

 col. 1; Dunlop-Liebrecht, Geschichte der Prosadichtungcn, etc. (Berlin, 

 1851), p. 185 ff.; F. Liebrecht, Ziir VolJcskunde (Heilbroim, 1879), pp. 86, 

 88; Reinhold Kiihler, Kleinerc Schriften, etc. (Weimar, 1898-1900), Vol. I, 

 pp. 140, 417, 585, Vol. II, p. 575; there is much unpublished material in the 

 Mertziana of the royal library in Munich, in a box "Antike Sagen" No. 2, 

 under "Virgilius," collected by the late poet and scholar Wilhelm Hertz; 

 Menendez y Pelayo, Origenes de la novela, p. cxix ff. Boccaccio was also 

 acquainted with the magic power of Virgil ; cf. M. Landau, G. Boccaccio, 

 sein Lehen und seine Werke (Stuttgart, 1877), p. , 235. In Timoneda's 

 Patrahuelo, the fourth tale belongs to the history of Virgil, the magician; 

 the sors Homeriques et Virgilianes, Rabelais, "Pantagruel," book III, 

 chapters 10, 12 are interesting in this connection. 



^ Inferno I, 79 ff. 



^ Cf. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Litndi, II, sixi^me edition, p 123; R. 

 Hein/.e, Virgils Epische Technik (Leipzig, 1903), chapter 3, on the art 

 displayed in the drawing of Dido's character: "das Bewusstsein, dass sie 



