Читать книгу The Unpublished Legends of Virgil онлайн

9 страница из 60

These incidents, which I in many cases did not know, until after subsequent search in mythologies, were ancient, certainly could not have been invented by the very ignorant old women from whom they were gathered. And this brings me to the important consideration as to whether these stories are really authentic. A learned Italian professor very lately asked me how I could be sure that the common people did not palm off on me their own inventions as legends of Virgil. To which I replied that I would not be responsible for the antiquity or origin of a single tale. For, in the first place, any story of any sorcerer is often attributed to Virgil, so that in two or three instances which I have specially noted “a Virgil” means any magician. And very often I have myself told some story as a hint or suggestion, in order to give some idea as to what I wanted, or to revive the memory. But in all cases they have come back to me so changed, and with such strange fragments of classic lore of the most recondite kind added, that I had no scruple in giving them just for what they were worth, leaving it for critics to sift out the ancient from the modern, even as the eagles described by Sinbad the Sailor, brought back the legs of mutton with diamonds sticking to them. “You would not,” I said to the professor of classical lore, “reject newly-mined gold because it is encumbered with dross; and that there may be much dross in all which I have gathered I am sure; but there is gold in it all.”