at seconding his master's efforts, and sometimes at imitating them,
occasion some very amusing scenes. Friar Bungay, the famous conjurer of
Edward the Fourth's time, appears as Bacon's assistant.

Virgil was treated in the same way. The age which turned Hercules into
a knight-errant, very consistently represented the poet and philosopher
as a magician. All through the Middle Ages the name of Virgil had been
connected with necromancy. "The authors," says Naudeus,[32] "who have
made mention of the magic of Virgil are so many that they cannot be
examined one after another, without loss of much time." On the title
page of the "Lyfe of Virgilius," we learn that: "This boke treateth of
the lyfe of Virgilius, and of his deth, and many mervayles that he dyd
in hys lyfe tyme by whychcrafte and nygramancye thorowgh the helpe of
the devyls of Hell." Some of the "mervayles" being: "Howe Virgilius
made a lampe that at all tymes brenned"; "howe Virgilius put out all
the fyer of Rome"; "howe Virgilius made in Rome a metall serpente." In
this story of Virgil occurs a curious instance of the appearance of the
same incident in very different works of fiction. The poet being
enamoured of a certain Roman lady, persuaded her to lower a basket from
her window, in which he should enter and be drawn up to her chamber.
The lady assented, but when the basket had ascended half way, she left
her lover to hang there, exposed the next morning to the ridicule of
the populace, for which treachery Virgil takes terrible revenge. This
story of the basket became very popular; it was introduced into a well
known French fabliau[33]; and Bulwer worked it, with slight changes,
into his novel of "Pelham," where Monsieur Margot experiences the same
sad reflections concerning the deceitfulness of woman, which had long
before passed through the mind of Virgil.

The devil himself, or more properly, one of the many devils who