Walking westward through the whole length of the Villa Reale, and
keeping with the crescent shore of the bay, you come, after a while,
to the Grot of Posilippo, which is not a grotto but a tunnel cut for
a carriage-way under the hill. It serves, however, the purpose of a
grotto, if a grotto has any, and is of great length and dimness, and
is all a-twinkle night and day with numberless lamps. Overlooking the
street which passes into it is the tomb of Virgil, and it is this
you have come to see. To reach it, you knock first at the door of a
blacksmith, who calls a species of custodian, and, when this
latter has opened a gate in a wall, you follow him up-stairs into a
market-garden.
In one corner, and standing in a leafy and grassy shelter somewhat
away from the vegetables, is the poet's tomb, which has a kind of
claim to genuineness by virtue of its improbable appearance. It looks
more like a bake-oven than even the Pompeian tombs; the masonry is
antique, and is at least in skillful imitation of the fine Roman work.
The interior is a small chamber with vaulted or wagon-roof ceiling,
under which a man may stand upright, and at the end next the street
is a little stone commemorating the place as Virgil's tomb, which was
placed there by the Queen of France in 1840, and said by the custodian
(a singularly dull ass) to be an exact copy of the original, whatever
the original may have been. This guide could tell us nothing more
about it, and was too stupidly honest to pretend to know more. The
laurel planted by Petrarch at the door of the tomb, and renewed
in later times by Casimir Delavigne, has been succeeded by a third
laurel. The present twig was so slender, and looked so friendless and
unprotected, that even enthusiasm for the memory of two poets could
not be brought to rob it of one of its few leaves; and we contented
ourselves with plucking some of the grass and weeds that grew
abundantly on the roof of the tomb.
There was a dusty quiet within the tomb, and a grassy quiet without,
that pleased exceedingly; but though the memories of the place were
so high and epic, it only suggested bucolic associations, and, sunken
into that nook of hill-side verdure, made me think of a spring-house
on some far-away Ohio farm; a thought that, perhaps, would not have
offended the poet, who loved and sang of humble country things, and,
drawing wearily to his rest here, no doubt turned and remembered
tenderly the rustic days before the excellent veterans of Augustus
came to exile him from his father's farm at Mantua, and banish him to
mere glory. But I believe most travellers have much nobler sensations
in Virgil's tomb, and there is a great deal of testimony borne to
their lofty sentiments on every scribbleable inch of its walls. Valery
reminded me that Boccaccio, standing near it of old, first felt his
fate decided for literature. Did he come there, I wonder, with poor
Fiammetta, and enter the tomb with her tender hand in his, before ever
he thought of that cruel absence she tells of? "O donne pietose!" I
hope so, and that this pilgrimage, half of love and half of letters,
took place, "nel tempo nel quale la rivestita terra più che tutto
l'altro anno si mostra bella."
If you ascend from the tomb and turn Naplesward from the crest of the
hill, you have the loveliest view in the world of the sea and of the
crescent beach, mightily jeweled at its further horn with the black
Castel dell' Ovo. Fishermen's children are playing all along the
foamy border of the sea, and boats are darting out into the surf. The
present humble muse is not above saying also that the linen which the
laundresses hang to dry upon lines along the beach takes the sun like
a dazzling flight of white birds, and gives a breezy life to the scene
which it could not spare.