THE ROOT
TO A FRIEND WHO SENT ME A BOX OF VIOLETS
OF THREE CHILDREN CHOOSING A CHAPLET OF VERSE
EPILOGUE: TO A MOTHER, ON SEEING HER SMILE REPEATED
IN HER DAUGHTER'S EYES




THE VIGIL OF VENUS


The _Pervigilium Veneris_--of unknown authorship, but clearly belonging
to the late literature of the Roman Empire--has survived in two MSS.,
both preserved at Paris in the _Bibliothèque Nationale_.

Of these two MSS. the better written may be assigned (at earliest) to
the close of the seventh century; the other (again at earliest) to the
close of the ninth. Both are corrupt; the work of two illiterate
copyists who--strange to say--were both smatterers enough to betray
their little knowledge by converting _Pervigilium_ into _Per Virgilium_
(_scilicet_, "by Virgil"): thus helping us to follow the process of
thought by which the Middle Ages turned Virgil into a wizard. Here and
there the texts become quite silly, separately or in consent; and just
where they agree in the most surprising way--_i.e._ in the arrangement
of the lines--the conjectural emendator is invited to do his worst by a
note at the head of the older Codex, "Sunt vero versus xxii"--"There are
rightly twenty-two lines."

This has started much ingenious guess-work. But no really convincing