Virgil of the French Drama (The). Jean Racine is so called by Sir Walter Scott (1639-1699).
Virgil’s Courtship. Godfrey Gobilyve told Graunde Amoure that Virgil, the poet, once made proposals to a lady of high rank in the Roman court, who resolved to punish him for his presumption. She told him that if he would appear on a given night before her window, he should be drawn up in a basket. Accordingly he kept his appointment, got into the basket, and, being drawn some twenty feet from the ground, was left there dangling till noon the next day, the laugh and butt of the court and city.--Stephen Hawes, The Passe-tyme of Plesure, xxix. (1515).
Virgil’s Gnat (the Culex, ascribed to Virgil). A shepherd, having fallen asleep in the open air, was on the point of becoming the prey of a serpent, when a gnat stung him on the eyelid. The shepherd crushed the gnat, but at the same time alarmed the serpent, which the shepherd saw and beat to death. Next night the gnat appeared to the shepherd in a dream, and reproached him for ingratitude, whereupon he raised a monument in honor of his deliverer. Spenser has a free translation of this story,[story,] which he calls Virgil’s Gnat (1580). (See Use of Pests.)
Virgile du Rabut (Le), “The Virgil of the Plane,” Adam Bellaut, the joiner-poet, who died, 1662. He was pensioned by Richelieu, patronized by the “Great Condé,” and praised by Pierre Corneille.
Virgil´ia is made by Shakespeare the wife of Coriolanus, and Volumnia his mother; but historically Volumnia was his wife, and Vetu´ria his mother.--Coriolanus (1610).
The old man’s merriment in Menenius; the lofty lady’s dignity in Volumnia; the bridal modesty in Virgilia; the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus; the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety.--Dr. Johnson, On Coriolanus.
Virgil´ius, Feargil, bishop of Saltzburg, an Irishman. He was denounced as a heretic for asserting the existence of antipodês (*-784). (See Heresy.)
⁂ Metz, in France, was so called in the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1).
Virgin Martyr (The), a tragedy by Philip Massinger (1622).
”