⁂ Of these, Stradivari was the best, and Nicholas Amati the next best.
The following are eminent, but not equal to the names given above:--Joseph Steiner (1620-1667); Matthias Klotz (1650-1696). (See Otto, On the Violin.)
Vipont (Sir Ralph de) a knight of St. John. He is one of the knights challengers.--Sir W. Scott, Ivanhoe (time, Richard I.).
Virgil, in the Gesta Romanorum, is represented as a mighty but benevolent enchanter, and this is the character that Italian romances give him.
Similarly, Sir Walter Scott is called “The Great Wizard of the North.”
Virgil, in Dantê, is the personification of human wisdom, Beatrice of the wisdom which comes of faith, and St. Bernard of spiritual wisdom. Virgil conducts Dantê through the Inferno and through Purgatory too, till the seven P’s (peccata “sins”) are obliterated from his brow, when Beatrice becomes his guide. St. Bernard is his guide through a part of Paradise. Virgil says to Dantê:
What reason here discovers, I have power
To show thee; that which lies beyond, expect
From Beatrice----faith not reason’s task.
Dantê, Purgatory, xviii. (1308).