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Updated: June 10, 2025
When BOSSUET had to compose a funeral oration, he was accustomed to retire for several days to his study, to ruminate over the pages of Homer; and when asked the reason of this habit, he exclaimed, in these lines magnam mihi mentem, animumque Delius inspiret Vates. It is on the same principle of predisposing the mind, that many have first generated their feelings by the symphonies of music.
But let him write them in copying ink and have the copies kept in different places. The Vates Sacer Just as the kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation, so neither do one's own ideas, nor the good things one hears other people say; they fasten on us when we least want or expect them. It is enough if the kingdom of heaven be observed when it does come.
On the contrary, let us not grudge Mr Arnold a hero so congenial to himself, and so little repulsive to any of us. He could not have had a better subject; nor can Falkland ever hope for a vates better consecrated, by taste, temper, and ability, to sing his praises.
With respect to their distinction again: The Vates Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition; the Vates Poet on what the Germans call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love.
He had learnt what little he knew of the laws of Latin verse from a ragged book written by a Portuguese priest. Contrahit orator, variant in carmine vates.
Thus I only knew we were near the Island of Carpathos, one of the Sporades, by Captain Nemo reciting these lines from Virgil: "Est Carpathio Neptuni gurgite vates, Caeruleus Proteus," as he pointed to a spot on the planisphere. It was indeed the ancient abode of Proteus, the old shepherd of Neptune's flocks, now the Island of Scarpanto, situated between Rhodes and Crete.
This drawing was presented by Fabio, the son of Antonio, to Messer Giovanni Gaddi, with this epigram: Pinxit Virgilius Neptunum, pinxit Homerus, Dum maris undisoni per vada flectit equos. Mente quidem vates illum conspexit uterque, Vincius ast oculis; jureque vincit eos.
These good people never understand themselves, they go over their own heads, they speak in unknown tongues to those around them and the interpreter is the rarer and more important person. The vates sacer is the middleman of mind.
They durst not, for their lives; but closed all doors, and then, with bated breath, and all the mien of slaves well trodden down, hinted where information might be had. Thereupon the vates aforesaid Holdfast yclept went from scent to scent, till he dropped on a discontented grinder, with fish-like eyes, who had been in "many a night job."
A man once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in the "open secret," are one.
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