The unwarrantable practice of inquiring into futurity prevailed very generally at and before the period which we write of; and most strange to say, at times the sacred volume of the Scriptures,[21] and at others the poems of Virgil and Homer, were consulted for oracular purposes. The sortes Prenestinæ, sortes Homerianæ, and sortes Virgilianæ, which were modes of inquiring into the secrets of futurity, are well known to the classic reader. A remarkable instance of the trial of this latter sortilege occurred to King Charles I. when at the city of Oxford, during the civil wars. Going one day to inspect the Boedlian Library, His Majesty was shown, along with other volumes, an early copy of Virgil, beautifully printed and exquisitely bound. Lord Falkland, to amuse the King, insisted upon His Majesty's trying his fortune by the sortes Virgilianæ; whereupon the King, opening the volume, hit upon the fourth Æneid, line 615, which much disconcerted him.
The passage is prophetic of the fortunes of Æneas, and, mutato nomine, it was applicable to the royal martyr.[22]
Lord Falkland, upon observing that the King was discomposed, resolved to try his own fortune in the same manner, hoping that perchance he might alight on some sentence that would bear no relation to his own, and thereby turn aside the thoughts of the King from any impression the lines might have occasioned. However, the subject of the passage upon which he unluckily stumbled was fully as unpropitious and as applicable as that upon which his sovereign had alighted. It was the lamentation of Evander for the untimely death of his son, in the 11th Æneid. It is well known that the eldest son of this nobleman, a young man of amiable character, had been previously slain in the first battle of Newburg.
It is recorded of the famous and excellent sculptor Giovanni Lorenzi Bernini, that upon his beholding a painting by Vandyke, which presents three portraits of King Charles I. on the same canvass—the one a front face, the other a half side, and the third a profile—the artist observed: "whoever the individual be whose likeness these three portraits represent, I am of opinion that the same will come to an untimely end."
This painting had been expressly taken and forwarded to Rome, in order that Bernini might, from the resemblance, sculpture a marble bust of the King, which accordingly he did; and King Charles, the greatest and best patron of the fine arts that England can boast of, was so much pleased with the performance, that he sent Bernini a ring of very great value; and said to the person who was deputed to bring it: "Andate a coronar quello mano, che ha fatto si bel lavorno." [23]
All attempts to inquire into and penetrate the secrets of futurity are highly to be condemned, as they are nothing less than tempting the Almighty; it is not for frail man to anticipate the ways of Providence, and discover these events that heaven always in its wisdom, and often in its mercy, withholds from mortal eyes. But it is indeed full time to close (as we apprehend we have trespassed too long on our reader's forbearance)
----"The day to superstition dear,