[280] "Essay on Poetry," by Sheffield, Marquis of Normanby, originally Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards Duke of Buckingham.
[281] The sortes Virgilianæ were a sort of augury, drawn by dipping at random into the volume, and applying the line to which chance directed the finger, as an answer to the doubt propounded. Cowley seems to have been a firm believer in this kind of sooth-saying. When at Paris, and secretary to Lord Jermin, he writes to Bennet his opinion concerning the probability of concluding a treaty with the Scottish nation; and adds, "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." There is a story, that Charles I. and Lord Faulkland tried this sort of divination at Oxford concerning the issue of the civil war, and that the former lighted upon this ominous response:
----Jacet ingens littore truncus,
Avulsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine truncus.
Lord Faulkland drew an answer equally prophetic of his fate.
These follies seem to have been founded upon the vulgar idea still current at Naples, that Virgil was a magician. Gervas of Tilbury was an early propagator of this scandal, which was current during the middle ages, so that Naudæus thinks it necessary to apologize for Virgil, among other great men accused of necromancy. These legends formed the contents of a popular romance.
PASTORALS.
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
HUGH,
LORD CLIFFORD,
BARON OF CHUDLEIGH.[282]
MY LORD,