instrument--it cannot be a mere tube for conveying the words of
inspiration: such an intelligence will intermingle ideas of its own, or
otherwise modify what is given, and pollute what is sacred.

It is also on this principle that the whole practice and doctrine of
Sortilegy rest. Let us confine ourselves to that mode of sortilegy
which is conducted by throwing open privileged books at random, leaving
to chance the page and the particular line on which the oracular
functions are thrown. The books used have varied with the caprice or
the error of ages. Once the Hebrew Scriptures had the preference.
Probably they were laid aside, not because the reverence for their
authority decayed, but because it increased. In later times Virgil has
been the favorite. Considering the very limited range of ideas to which
Virgil was tied by his theme--a colonizing expedition in a barbarous
age, no worse book could have been selected: [Footnote: '_No worse
book could have been selected._'--The probable reason for making so
unhappy a choice seems to have been that Virgil, in the middle ages,
had the character of a necromancer, a diviner, &c. This we all know
from Dante. Now, the original reason for this strange translation of
character and functions we hold to have arisen from the circumstance of
his maternal grandfather having borne the name of _Magus_. People
in those ages held that a powerful enchanter, exorciser, &c., must have
a magician amongst his _cognati_; the power must run in the blood,
which on the maternal side could be undeniably ascertained. Under this
preconception, they took Magus not for a proper name, but for a
professional designation. Amongst many illustrations of the magical
character sustained by Virgil in the middle ages, we may mention that a
writer, about the year 1200, or the era of our Robin Hood, published by
Montfaucon, and cited by Gibbon in his last volume, says of Virgil,--
that '_Captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit, ivitque Neapopolim_.'] so