“And truly this aurum potabile, or drinkable gold, is a marvellous thing, for it worketh wonders to sustain human life, removing all disorders, and ’tis said that it will revive the dead.”—Phil. Ulstadt: CÆlum Philosophorum, seu Liber de Secretis.

“And there be magic mirrors in which we may see the forms of our enemies, and the like, battalions for battle, and sieges, and all such things.”—Peter Goldschmid: The Witch and Wizard’s Advocate overthrown (1705).

There was once in an old temple in Rome a great man, a very learned Signore. His name was Virgilio, or Virgil. He was a magician, but very good in all things to all men; he had a kind heart, and was ever a friend to the poor.

Virgil was as brave and fearless as he was good. And he was a famous poet—his songs were sung all over Italy. Some say that he was the son of a fairy (fata), and that his father was a King of the magicians; others declared that his mother was the most beautiful woman in the whole world, and that her name was Elena (Helen), and his father was a spirit. And how it came about was thus:

When all the great lords and princes were in love with the beautiful Elena, she replied that she would marry no one, having a great dread of bearing children. She would not become a mother. And to avoid further wooing and pursuing she shut herself up in a tower, and believed herself to be in safety, because it was far without the walls of Rome. And the door to it was walled up, so that no one could enter it. But the god Jove (Giove) entered; he did so by changing himself into many small pieces of gilded paper (gold-leaf), which came down into the tower like a shower.

The beautiful Helen held in her hand a cup of wine, and many of the bits of gold-leaf fell into it.

“How pretty it looks!” said Helen. “It would be a pity to throw it away. The gold does not change the wine. If I drink the gold I shall enjoy good health and ever preserve my beauty.”

But hardly had Helen drunk the wine, before she felt a strange thrill in all her body, a marvellous rapture, a change of her whole being, followed by complete exhaustion. And in time she found herself with child, and cursed the moment when she drank the wine. And to her in this way was born Virgil, who had in his forehead a most beautiful star of gold. Three fairies aided at his birth; the Queen of the Fairies cradled him in a cradle made of roses. She made a fire of twigs of laurel; it crackled loudly. To the crackling of twigs of laurel he was born. His mother felt no pain. The three each gave him a blessing; the wind as it blew into the window wished him good fortune; the light of the stars, and the lamp and the fire, who are all spirits, gave him glory and song. He was born fair and strong and beautiful; all who saw him wondered.

Then it happened, when Virgil was fourteen years old, that one day in summer he went to an old solitary temple, all ruined and deserted, and therein he laid down to sleep. But ere he had closed his eyes he heard a sound as of a voice lamenting, and it said:

“Alas! I am a prisoner!
Will no one set me free?
If any man can do it,
Full happy shall he be.”

Then Virgil said:

“Tell me who thou art and where thou art.”

And the voice answered:

“I am a spirit,
Imprisoned in a vase
Under the stone
Which is beneath thy head.”

Then Virgil lifted the stone and found a vase, which was closed; and he opened it, and there came forth a beautiful spirit, who told him that there was also in the vase a book of magic and necromancy (magia e gramanzia).

“Therein wilt thou find all secrets
Which thou desirest to obtain,
To make what thou wilt into gold,
To make the dead speak,
To make them come before thee,
To go invisibly where thou wilt,
To become a great poet.
Thou wilt learn the lost secret
How to become great and beautiful;
Thou wilt rediscover the mystery
Of predicting what is to take place;
Yea, to win fortune in every game.”

By the vase was a magic wand, the most powerful ever known. And from that day Virgil, who had been as small as a dwarf, became a tall, stately, very handsome man.

This was his first great work: he made a mirror wherein one could see all that was going on in any country in the world, in any city, as well into any house as anywhere. Keeping the mirror hidden (beneath his cloak), he went to the Emperor. And because he was a very handsome man, well dressed, and also by the aid of the mirror, he was permitted to go into the hall where the Emperor sat. And, conversing with him, the Emperor was so pleased that he spoke more familiarly and confidentially than he was wont to do with his best friends; at which the courtiers who were present were angry with jealousy.

Turning to Virgil, the Emperor said:“I would give a thousand gold crowns to know just what the Turks are doing now, and if they mean to make war on me.”

Virgil replied:

“If your Highness will go into another room, I can show in secret what the Turks are now doing.”

“But how you can make me see what the Turks are doing is more than I can understand,” replied the Emperor. “However, let us go, if it be only to see what fancy thou hast in thy head.”

Then the Emperor rose, and giving his arm to Virgil, went to a room apart, where the magician showed and explained to him (per filo e per segna) all that the Turks were about. And the Emperor was amazed at seeing clearly what Virgil had promised to show. Then he gave to Virgil the thousand crowns with his own hand, and was ever from that day his friend. And so Virgil rose in the world.

In this tale there is as quaint and naÏve a mixture of traditions and ideas as one could desire. The fair Helen, in her tower of Troy, becomes Danae visited by Jupiter, and as the narrator had certainly seen Dantzic Golden Water, or some other cordial with gold-leaf in it, the story of the shower is changed into aureated wine. It is evident that the one who recast the legend endeavoured to make this incident intelligible. All the rest is mediÆval. “Gold,” says Helen, “will preserve my beauty.” Thus the aurum potabile of the alchemists was supposed to do the same as Paracelsus declared.

We all recognise a great idea when put into elaborate form by a skilled artist, but to perceive it as a diamond in the rough and recognise its value is apparently given to few. It is true that those few may themselves be neither poets nor geniuses—just as the Hottentot who can find or discern diamonds may be no lapidary or jeweller. What I would say is, that such ideas or motives abound in this Italian witch-lore to a strange extent.Thus, the making Virgil a son of Jupiter by a Helen-Danae is a flight of mythologic invention, far surpassing in boldness anything given in the Neapolitan legends of the poet. Thomas Carlyle and Vernon Lee have expressed with great skill great admiration of the idea that Faust begat with the fair Helen the Renaissance. It was indeed a magnificent conception, but in very truth this fathering of Virgil, the grand type of poetry and magic, and of all earthly wisdom, by Jupiter on Helen-Danae is far superior to it in every way. For Virgil to the legend-maker represented the Gothic or Middle Ages in all their beauty and exuberance, their varied learning and splendid adventure, far more perfectly than did the mere vulgar juggler and thaumaturgist Faust, as the latter appears in every legend until Goethe transfigured him. And, strangely enough, the Virgilian cyclus, as I have given it, is as much of the Renaissance as it is classic or mediÆval. The Medicis are in it to the life. In very truth it was Virgil, and not Faust, who was the typical magician par Éminence after Apollonius, some of whose legends he, in fact, inherited. And Virgil has come to us with a traditional character as marked and peculiar as any in Shakespeare—which Faust did not. He has passed through the ages not only as a magus and poet, but as a personality, and a very remarkable one.

There is another very curious, and, indeed, great idea lurking in these witch-Virgilian legends, especially set forth in this of the birth and continued in all. It is that there is in them a cryptic, latent heathenism, a sincere, lingering love of the old gods, and especially of the dii minores, of fate or fays, and fauns and fairies, of spirits of the air and of rivers and fountains, an adoration of Diana as the moon-queen of the witches, and a far greater familiarity with incantations than prayers, or more love of sorceries than sacraments. Whenever it can be done, even as a post-scriptum, we have a conjuration or spell, as if the tale had awakened in the mind of the narrator a feeling of piety towards “the old religion.” The romances of Mercury, and Janus, and Vesta, and Apollo, and Diana all inspire the narrator to pray to them in all sincerity, just as a Catholic, after telling a legend of a saint, naturally repeats a prayer to him or a novena. It is the last remains of classic faith.

Or we may say, as things fell out, that the Goethean-Helen-Faust-Renaissance poem represents things as they were, or as they came to pass, as if it were the acme, while the Virgilian tradition which I here impart indicates things as they might have happened, had the stream of evolution been allowed to run on in its natural course, just as Julian the apostate (or rather apostle of the gospel of letting things be) held that progress or culture and science might have advanced just as surely and rapidly on the old heathen lines as any other. According to Heine, this would have saved us all an immense amount of trouble in our school-studies, in learning Latin and mythology, had we kept on as we were.

I mean by this that these traditions of Virgil indicate, as no other book does, the condition of a naÏvely heathen mind, “suckled in a creed out-worn,” believing in the classic mythology half turned to fairies, much more sincerely, I fear, than many of my readers do in the Bible, and from this we may gather very curious reflection as to whether men may not have ideas of culture, honesty, and mercy in common, whatever their religion may be.

The marvels of the birth of Virgil of old, as told by Donatus, probably after the lost work of Suetonius, are that his mother Maia dreamed, se enixam laureum ramum, that she gave birth to a branch of laurel; that he did not cry when born, and that the pine-tree planted according to ancient custom on that occasion attained in a very short time to a great height, which thing often happens when plants grow near hot springs, as is the case on the Margariten Island, by Budapesth, where everything attains to full-size in one-third of the usual time. The custom of planting a pine-tree on the birth of a child, in the belief that its condition will always indicate its subject’s health and prosperity, is still common among the Passamaquoddy, and other Red Indians in America, I having had such a tree pointed out to me by an old grandfather.

In the Aryan or Hindu mythology Buddha, who subsequently becomes a great magus and healer of all ills, like Christ, “was born of the mother-tree Maya,” according to J. F. Hewitt (“L’Histoire et les Migrations de la Croix et du Su-astika,” Bruxelles, 1898). He was the son of Kapila Vastu, who was born holding in his hands a medicament, whence he became “the Child of Medicine,” or of healing. Buddha appears to be confused with his father.

Now Virgil is clearly stated to be born of Maya or Maia, who is a mythical tree; his life is involved in that of a mysterious tree, and in more than one legend he is unquestionably identical with Esculapius, the god of medicine.