didn't see how the consequence of
that would be my having any money. However, I said they were welcome to
whatever I had; and then I heard the voice of an Italian woman singing;
and I have never heard such divine singing before nor since;--the sounds
absolutely strong and real, and the melody altogether lovely. If I could
have written it! But I could not even remember it when I woke,--only how
beautiful it was.

214. Now these three dreams have, every one of them, been of much use to
me since; or so far as they have failed to be useful, it has been my own
fault, and not theirs; but the chief use of them at the time was to give
me courage and confidence in myself, both in bodily distress, of which I
had still not a little to bear; and worse, much mental anxiety about
matters supremely interesting to me, which were turning out ill. And
through all such trouble--which came upon me as I was recovering, as if
it meant to throw me back into the grave,--I held out and recovered,
repeating always to myself, or rather having always murmured in my ears,
at every new trial, one Latin line,

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito.

Now I had got this line out of the tablet in the engraving of Raphael's
vision, and had forgotten where it came from. And I thought I knew my
sixth book of Virgil so well, that I never looked at it again while I
was giving these lectures at Oxford, and it was only here at Assisi,
the other day, wanting to look more accurately at the first scene by the
lake Avernus, that I found I had been saved by the words of the Cumaean
Sibyl.

215. "Quam tua te Fortuna sinet," the completion of the sentence, has
yet more and continual teaching in it for me now; as it has for all men.
Her opening words, which have become hackneyed, and lost all present
power through vulgar use of them, contain yet one of the most immortal
truths ever yet spoken for mankind; and they will never lose their power
of help for noble persons. But observe, both in that lesson, "Facilis
descensus Averni," etc.; and in the still more precious, because
universal, one on which the strength of Rome was founded,--the burning
of the books,--the Sibyl speaks only as the voice of Nature, and of her
laws;--not as a divine helper, prevailing over death; but as a mortal
teacher warning us against it, and strengthening us for our mortal time;
but not for eternity. Of which lesson her own history is a part, and her
habitation by the Avernus lake