choirs upon the grass.  Old Homer sang, accompanying himself upon his rustic lyre.  His eyes were closed, but divine images shone upon his lips.  I saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the games of the young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an ancient laurel, I perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy Euripides, and the masculine Sappho.  I passed and recognised, as they sat on the bank of a fresh rivulet, the poet Horace, Varius, Gallus, and Lycoris.  A little apart, leaning against the trunk of a dark holm-oak, Virgil was gazing pensively at the grove.  Of lofty stature, though spare, he still preserved that swarthy complexion, that rustic air, that negligent bearing, and unpolished appearance which during his lifetime concealed his genius.  I saluted him piously and remained for a long time without speech.

At last when my halting voice could proceed out of my throat: 

“O thou, so dear to the Ausonian Muses, thou honour of the Latin name, Virgil,” cried I, “it is through thee I have known what beauty is, it is through thee I have known what the tables of the gods and the beds of the goddesses are like.  Suffer the praises of the humblest of thy adorers.”

“Arise, stranger,” answered the divine poet.  “I perceive that thou art a living being among the shades, and that thy body treads down the grass in this eternal evening.  Thou art not the first man who has descended before his death into these dwellings, although all intercourse between us and the living is difficult.  But cease from praise; I do not like eulogies and the confused sounds of glory have always offended my ears.  That is why I fled from Rome, where I was known to the idle and curious, and laboured in the solitude of my beloved Parthenope.  And then I am not so convinced that the men of thy generation understand my verses that should be gratified by thy praises.  Who art thou?”

“I am called Marbodius of the Kingdom of Alca.  I made my profession in the Abbey of Corrigan.  I read thy poems by day and I read them by night.  It is thee whom I have come to see in Hell; I was impatient to know what thy fate was.  On earth the learned often dispute about it.  Some hold it probable that, having lived under the power of demons, thou art now burning in inextinguishable flames; others, more cautious, pronounce no opinion, believing that all which is said concerning the dead is uncertain and full of lies; several, though not in truth the ablest, maintain that, because thou didst elevate the tone of the Sicilian Muses and foretell that a new progeny would descend from heaven, thou wert admitted, like the Emperor Trajan, to enjoy eternal blessedness in the Christian heaven.”

“Thou seest that such is not the case,” answered the shade, smiling.

“I meet thee in truth, O Virgil, among the heroes and sages in those Elysian Fields which thou thyself hast described.  Thus, contrary to what several on earth believe, no one has come to seek thee on the part of Him who reigns on high?”