V1RGILIUS THE MAGICIAN. 15 



good man too of whom at his death Charles II. was heard to say 

 that " Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind in England," 

 it is curious, we say, to find him on a certain occasion seriously 

 referring to the Virgilian Lots, and, what is more, avowing his firm 

 belief in them ! During the Commonwealth, Cowley was in Paris, 

 where he acted as secretary to the Earl of St. Albans (then Lord 

 Jermyn), and had a good deal to do with the negotiations that 

 eventually led to the Restoration. In one of his letters, speaking 

 of the Scotch treaty then in agitation, he says seriously, observe, 

 and in an official document " The Scotch treaty is the only thing 

 now in which we are vitally concerned. I am one of the last 

 hopers, and yet cannot now abstain from believing that an agree- 

 ment will be made ; all people upon the place incline to that union. 

 The Scotch will moderate 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." 

 He had evidently consulted the Virgilian Lots, and a passage 

 presenting itself that could somehow be twisted so as to point to a 

 favourable issue to the Scotch business in hand, he accepts the 

 oracle, and in all seriousness announces his belief in it ! When we 

 find a man of refinement and culture and high moral character like 

 Cowley crediting such nonsense, can we much wonder at the 

 lengths to which fanaticism and superstition carried people in those 

 unhappy times? To understand why Virgil, of all the ancient 

 poets, Roman or Greek, was selected as the oracle in this mode of 

 divination, we must remember that the Mantuan bard had the 

 credit amongst his countrymen of having been a sorcerer or necro- 

 mancer and prophet as well as a poet, something like the British 

 Merlin, or our own Thomas the Rhymer and Michael Scott, only 

 more famous, perhaps. "Would the reader suppose, for example, 

 that the theory of volcanic action is all a myth, and that it is to 



