The Virgilian lots

One old way of divining was to open the works of Virgil at random and read the lines under the thumb as a prophecy. Welwood said Charles I and Lord Falkland tried it in the Bodleian library and each found an ominous passage. Aubrey told the story differently, placing it in December 1648 when the king was a prisoner: in Paris Abraham Cowley, who always carried a Virgil, suggested the Virgilian lots to the sorrowful Prince of Wales in place of cards, and the prince pricked a pin into the fourth book of the Aeneid. Dr Johnson suspected Cowley of trusting the oracle himself.