Читать книгу The Unpublished Legends of Virgil онлайн

7 страница из 60

The Neapolitan stories of Virgil were spread far and wide, into almost every language in Europe; but they had their day, and now rank with black-letter literature, being republished still, but for scholars only. I had read most of them in my youth, and when the work of Senator Comparetti appeared, I was struck by the singular fact that there is next to nothing in all the vast amount of Virgilianæ which he quotes, which appears to have been gathered of late among the people at large. A great number of classic and mediæval names and characters are very familiar to the most ignorant Italians. How came it to pass that nothing is known of Virgil, who appears in the “Divina Commedia” as the guide, philosopher, and friend of Dante, whose works are read by all.

Inspired with this idea, I went to work and soon found that, as I had conjectured, there were still extant among the people a really great number of what may be called post-Virgilian legends, which possibly owe their existence, or popularity, to the Virgil of Dante. A very few of them are like certain of the old Neapolitan tales, but even these have been greatly changed in details. As might have been expected of Northern Italian narratives, they partake more of the nature of the novella or short romance, than of the nursery-tale or the mere anecdote, as given by the earlier writers. That is to say, there was, after Dante, among the people a kind of renaissance in the fame of Virgil as a magician. It is by a curious coincidence that, as Senator Comparetti admits, all the earlier legends of the bard were gathered and published by foreigners; so have these of later time been collected by one not to the country born.