they were out of their road; but notwithstanding all they could say, go
they did, and we behind them, to a black flood of great magnitude, and
through it they went, and we across it, my companion holding the
celestial water continually to my nostrils, to strengthen me against the
stench of the river, and against the time when I should see some of the
inhabitants of the place, for hitherto I had not beheld so much as one
devil, though I had heard the voices of many. "Pray, my lord," said I,
"what is the name of this putrid river?" "The river of the Fiend," said
he, "in which all his subjects are bathed, in order that they may be
rendered fit for the country. For this accursed water changes their
countenance, and washes away from them every relic of goodness, every
semblance of hope and of comfort." And, indeed, on gazing upon the host
after it had come through, I could distinguish no difference in deformity
between the devils and the damned. Some of the latter would fain have
sculked at the bottom of the river, and have lain there to all eternity,
in a state of strangulation, lest they should get a worse bed father on;
but here the proverb was verified, that "he must needs run whom the Devil
drives," for with the devils behind, the damned were compelled to go
forward unto the beach, to their eternal damnation; where I at the first
glance saw more pains and torments than the heart of man can imagine or
the tongue relate; a single one of which was sufficient to make the hair
stand erect, the blood to freeze, the flesh to melt, the bones to drop
from their places--yea, the spirit to faint. What is empaling or sawing
men alive, tearing off the flesh piecemeal with iron pincers, or broiling
the flesh with candles, collop fashion, or squeezing heads flat in a
vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were upon earth,
compared with one of these? Mere pastime! Here were a hundred thousand
shoutings, hoarse sighs, and strong groans; yonder a boisterous wailing
and horrible outcry answering them, and the howling of a dog is sweet,
delicious music, when compared with these sounds. When we had proceeded
a little way onward from the accursed beach, towards the wild place of
Damnation, I perceived, by their own light, innumerable men and women
here and there; and devils without number and without rest, incessantly
employing their strength in tormenting. Yes, there they were, devils and
damned, the devils roaring with their own torments, and making the damned
roar, by means of the torments which they inflicted upon them. I paid
particular observation to the corner which was nearest me. There I
beheld the devils with pitch-forks, tossing the damned up into the air,
that they might fall headlong on poisoned hatchels or barbed pikes, there
to wriggle their bowels out. After a time the wretches would crawl in
multitudes, one upon another, to the top of one of the burning crags,
there to be broiled like mutton; from there they would be snatched afar,
to the top of one of the mountains of eternal frost and snow, where they
would be allowed to shiver for a time; thence they would be precipitated
into a loathsome pool of boiling brimstone, to wallow there in
conflagration, smoke, and the suffocation of horrible stench; from the
pool they would be driven to the marsh of Hell that they might embrace
and be embraced by its reptiles many times worse than serpents and
vipers; after allowing them half an hour's dalliance with these
creatures, the devils would seize a bundle of rods of steel, fiery hot
from the furnace, and would scourge them till their howlings, caused by
the horrible inexpressible pain which they endured, would fill the vast
abode of darkness, and when the fiends deemed that they had scourged them
enough, they would take hot irons and sear their bloody wounds.
There was here no fainting, nor swooning to evade a moment of suffering,
but a continual strength to suffer and to feel, though you would have
imagined after one horrible cry, that it would be utterly impossible
there should be strength remaining to give another cry so frightfully
loud; the damned never lowered their key, and the devils kept replying,
"behold your welcome for ever and ever." And it almost seemed that the
sauciness and bitterness of the devils, in jeering and mocking their
victims, were worse to bear than the pain itself. What was worst of all,
their conscience was at present utterly aroused, and was tearing them
worse than a thousand of the infernal lions. We proceeded farther and
farther downward, and the farther we proceeded, the more horrible was the
work which was going on; the first place we came to in our progress was a
frightful prison, in which were many human beings under the scourge of
the devils, shrieking most shockingly. "What place is this?" said I.
"That," said the angel, "is the couch of those who cry 'woe is me that I
did not--!' Hark to them for a moment!" "Woe is me that I did not
purify myself in time from every kind of sin!" says one. "Woe is me that
I did not believe and repent before coming here!" says the other.
Next to the cell of too late repentance, and of debate after judgment had
been passed, was the prison of the procrastinators, who would be every
time promising amendment, without ever fulfilling their promise. "When
this business is over," says one, "I will turn over another leaf." "When
this obstacle is removed, I will become a new man yet," says the other.
But when the obstacle is removed, they are not a bit the nearer to
reformation, for some other obstacle is always found to prevent them from
moving towards the gate of Righteousness, and if they do sometimes move a
little, they are sure to turn back. Next to this was the prison of vain
confidence, full of those who, on being commanded to abstain from their
luxuriousness, drunkenness, or avarice, would say, "God is merciful, and
better than his word, and will not damn his creature for ever for so
small a matter." But here they were yelping forth blasphemy, and asking
where is that mercy, which was boasted to be immeasurable. "Peace, hell-
dogs," at length said a great lobster of a devil who was hearing them,
"peace! would you have mercy without doing any thing to obtain it? Would
you have the Truth render his word false, for the sake of obtaining the
company of such filthy dross as you? Too much mercy has been shown to
you already. You were given a Saviour, a comforter, and the apostles,
with books, sermons, and good examples, and will you never cease to
deafen us with bawling about mercy, where mercy has never been?" On
going out from this fiery gulf, I could hear one puffing and shouting
terribly, "I knew no better, nothing was ever expended in teaching me my
duty, and I could never find time to read or pray, because I was obliged
to earn bread for myself and my poor family." "Aye," said a little
crooked devil who stood by, "and did you never find time to tell pleasant
stories?--no leisure for self vaunting during long winter evenings when I
was in the chimney corner? Now, why did you not devote some of that time
to learning to read and pray? Who on Sundays used to come with me to the
tavern, instead of going with the parson to church? Who devoted many a
Sunday afternoon to vain prating about worldly things, or to sleep,
instead of meditation and prayer? And have ye merely acted according to
your knowledge and your opportunities? Peace, sirrah, with your lying
nonsense!" "O thou blood of a mad dog!" said the lost man, "it is not
long since you were whispering something very different into my ear, if
you had said that the other day, I should scarcely have come here." "O,"
said the devil, "we do not mind telling you the bitter truth here, since
we need not fear that you will go back to tell tales."
Below this cell I saw a kind of vast pit, and in it what looked like an
infinite quantity of loathsome ordure, burning with a green flame, and on
drawing near, I was aware, from the horrid howling that proceeded from
it, that it was composed of men piled one upon another, the horrible
flames crackling meanwhile through them. "This hollow," said the angel,
"is the couch of those who say after committing some great sin, 'pooh! I
am not the first, I have plenty of companions;' and thus you see, they
_do_ get plenty of companions, to verify their words and to increase
their agony." Opposite to this horrible place was a large cellar, where
I could see men twisted, as tow is twisted, or hemp is spun. "Pray,"
said I "who are these?" "Panegyrists," said he, "and out of sheer
mockery to them, the devils are trying whether it is possible to twist
them as flexibly as they twisted their own discourse." A little way
below that cell, I could but just descry a sort of prison-pool, very
dark, and in it things which had been men, having faces like the heads of
wolf-dogs, and up to their jaws in bog, barking blasphemy and lies most
furiously, as long as they could get their sting above the mud. At this
moment a troop of devils happening to pass by, some of these creatures
contrived to bite in the heels, ten or twelve of the devils who had
brought them thither. "Woe and destruction to you hell-dogs!" said one
of the devils who had been bit, "you shall pay for this;" and forthwith
commenced beating the bog, till the wretches were drowned in the stinking
abysses. "Who," he then added, "have deserved hell better than you, who
have been hunting up and devising gossip, and buzzing lies about from
house to house, in order that you might laugh, after having set a whole
country at loggerheads. What more could one of ourselves have done?"
"That," said the angel, "is the bed of the tale-bearers, the slanderers,
and the whisperers, and of all other envious curs, who are continually
wounding people behind their backs with their hands or their tongues."
From here we passed to a vast dungeon, by far the filthiest that I had
seen yet, and the most replete with toads, adders, and stench. "This,"
said my guide, "is the place of the men who expect to get to heaven
because they have no ill intentions, that is, for being neither good nor
bad." Next to this pool of ill savour, I beheld a place where a vast
crowd were sitting, and without any thing visible to torment them,
groaning more piteously than any that I had hitherto heard in Hell.
"Mercy upon us," said I, "what causes these people to complain more than
the rest, when they have neither torture nor devil near them?" "O," said
the angel, "the less torment they have without, the more they have
within. These are refractory heretics, atheists, antichristians, worldly-
wise ones, abjurers of the faith, persecutors of the church, and an
infinity of such like wretches, who are abandoned entirely to the
punishment of conscience, more tormenting than flame or devil, which
domineers over them ceaselessly and without restraint. 'I will never
permit myself any more,' says she, 'to be drowned in ale, nor to be
blinded by bribes, nor deafened by music and company, nor lulled nor
confounded by careless listlessness; for now I _will_ be listened to, and
never shall the clack of the hated truth cease in your ears.' Longing is
ever raging within the wretch for the happiness which he has lost; memory
is ever reproaching him by saying how easy it was to be obtained, and the
understanding showing him the magnitude of his loss, and the certainty
that nothing is now to be obtained, but indescribable gnawing for ever
and ever. So with these three instruments--namely longing, memory, and
understanding--conscience is tearing the lost one, in a manner far worse
than all the devils in Hell could tear him with their claws."
On coming out of this wonderful nook I heard a confused talking, and
after every word such a ghastly laughter, as if five hundred devils were
casting their horns with laughing. On approaching to see the cause of
such a rarity as laughter in Hell, I discovered that it was only got up
to incense two honorable gentlemen, newly arrived, who were insisting on
being shown respect suitable to their gentility. One of them was a round
bodied squire, having with him a big roll of parchment--namely his map of
pedigree--out of which he recited from which of the fifty tribes of North
Wales he was sprung, and how many justices of the peace, and how many
sheriffs his house had produced. "Come, come," said one of the devils,
"we know the merits of the greater part of your ancestry. If you had
been like your father or your great grandfather, we should not have
ventured to come in contact with you; but you are only the heir of the
pit of darkness, you dirty hell-dog! You are scarcely worthy of a
night's lodging," added he, "and yet we'll grant you some nook, wherein
to await the dawn;" and with that word the goblin with his pitchfork,
gave him more than thirty tosses in the fiery air, until he at length
cast him into an abyss out of sight. "That may do," said the other, "for
a squire of half blood, but I hope you will behave better to a knight,
who has had the honor of serving the king in person, and can name twelve
earls and fifty baronets belonging to his ancient house." "If your
ancestors and your ancient house be all that you can bring in your
defence, you may go the same road as he," said one of the devils,
"because we can scarcely remember one ancient house, of which some
oppressor, murderer, or strong thief did not lay the foundation, and
which he did not transmit to people as froward as himself, or to lazy
drones, or drunken swine, to maintain whose extravagant magnificence, the
vassals and the tenantry must be squeezed to death, whilst every handsome
colt or pretty cow in the neighbourhood must be parted with for the
pleasure of the mistress, and every lass or married woman, may consider
herself fortunate, if she escape the pleasure of the master; the
freeholders, meanwhile, being either obliged to follow him like fawning
hounds, rob themselves for his benefit, and sell their patrimonies at his
pleasure, or be subject to frowns and hatred, and be dragged into every
disagreeable and vexatious employment during their lives.
"O these little great country folks," continued the devil, "how genteely
they swear in order to obtain credit with their mistresses, or with the
shop-keepers; and when they have decked themselves out, O how insolently
they look upon many of the middling officers of the church and state, and
how much worse on the common people! as if they were a species of
reptiles in comparison with themselves. Woe is me! is not all blood of
the same color? Did you not come all into the world by the same way?"
"But, nevertheless, with your permission," said the knight, "there are
some who are of much purer birth than others." "Destruction take you!"
said the goblin, "there is not one carcass of you all better than the
rest; you are all polluted with radical sin from Adam. But, sir," said
he, "if your blood be better than other blood, less scum will exude from
you when boiling; however, in order to be sure of its quality, it will be
as well to search you with fire as well as water." Thereupon a devil in
the shape of a chariot of fire received him, and the other in mockery
lifted him into it, and away he was hurried like lightning. After a
short time the angel caused me to look, and I could see the wretched
knight suffering a terrible steeping in a frightful boiling furnace, in
company with Cain, Nimrod, Esau, Tarquin, Nero, Caligula, and the others
who were the founders of genealogies, and were the first to set up arms
of nobility.
A little farther on, my guide caused me to look through the hollow of a
rock, and there I beheld a number of coquettes briskly at work, doing and
repeating all their former follies upon earth. Some were twisting their
mouths, some were pulling their front locks with irons, some were
painting themselves, some patching their faces with sooty ointments, to
make the yellow look more fair; some quite mad at seeing their visages,
after all their pains in coloring and variegating, more hideous than
those of the very devils, were endeavouring to break the mirrors, or were
tearing off with their nails and their teeth the whole artificial
blush--the ointments, skin, and flesh coming off all together. The cries
which they uttered occasionally were most dismal. "The curse of curses,"
would one say, "on my father, for making me marry when a girl, an old
sapless stump, whose work in raising desires which he could not gratify
has driven me hither." "A thousand curses on my parents," would another
say, "for sending me to a cloister to learn chastity; they would not have
done worse in sending me to a roundhead to learn generosity, or to a
quaker to learn manners, than to a papist to learn honor." "Destruction,"
said another, "seize my mother for her avaricious pride in preventing my
obtaining a husband when I wanted one, and thus obliging me to purloin
the thing I might have honorably come by." "Hell, and double Hell to the
lustful wretch of a gentleman, who first began tempting me," would the
third say; "if he had not, betwixt fair and foul, broken the hedge, I had
not become a cell open to every body, nor had I come to this cell of
devils!" And then they fell to tearing themselves again.
I was glad to quit such a pack of female dogs. But before I had passed
on many steps, I was surprised to see another shoal of imprisoned
wenches, twice more detestable than they. Some had been changed into
toads, some into dragons, some into serpents who were swimming and
hissing, glavering and butting in a fetid, stagnant pool, much larger
than Llyn Tegid. {84} "In the name of wonder," said I, "what sort of
creatures may these be?" "There are here," said he, "four sorts of
wenches, all notoriously bad. First, there are procuresses, with some of
the principal lasses of their respective bevies about them. Second,
gossiping ladies with a swarm of their news-bearing hags. Third,
bouncing madams, and a pack of sneaking curs on both sides of them, for
no man, but for downright fear of them, would ever go nigh them. Fourth,
scolds, become a hundred times more horrible than vipers, with their
poisonous stings going creak, creak to all eternity."
"I had imagined that Lucifer had been a king of too much courtesy, to put
a gentlewoman of my rank with such little petty she-devils as these,"
said one, something like a winged serpent, only that she was much more
fierce. "O that he would send here, seven hundred of the worst devils in
Hell in exchange for thee, thou poisonous hell-spawn!" said another ugly
viper. "O! many thanks to you," said a gigantic devil who overheard
them, "we set too much value on our place and merits, to condescend to
become mates of yours; and though we are willing to admit that you are
fully as competent to torment people as the best of us, we would,
nevertheless, not yield up our duties to you." "And yet," said the angel
softly, "Lucifer has another reason for keeping such a particular watch
over these; he knows well, that if they should break out, they would turn
all Hell topsy-turvy." From here we went, still going downward, to a
place where I beheld a frightful den, in which was a horrible clamour,
the like of which I had never heard, for swearing, cursing, blaspheming,
snarling, groaning, and crying. "Who is here?" said I. "This," said he,
"is the den of the thieves. Here is a swarm of game-keepers, lawyers,
stewards, and the old Judas in the midst of them; they have been
excessively annoyed at seeing the tailors and weavers above them, in a
more comfortable chamber." Almost before I could turn myself, there came
a horse of a devil, bearing a physician and an apothecary, whom he cast
down amongst the pedlars and the duffers, for selling bad, rotten ware;
but they beginning to fume at being placed in such low company, one of
the devils said, "stay, stay! you _do_ deserve a different place," and
cast them down amongst the conquerors and the murderers. There was a
multitude shut up here, for playing with false dice and concealing cards;
but before I could observe much, I heard, close by the door, a terrible
rush and rustle, with a hie! hie! get on! ho! yo! hip! I turned to see
what it was; but perceiving nothing but horned goblins, I enquired of my
guide whether there were cuckolds amongst the devils? "No," said he,
"they are in a particular cell. These are drovers who would fain escape
to the place of the Sabbath-breakers, and are driven hither against their
will." At that word, I looked, and perceived their polls full of the
horns of sheep and cattle, and those who drove them, casting them down
beneath the feet of the bloodiest robbers. "Crouch there," said one;
"though you feared so much of old the thieves on London road, you were
yourselves the very worst species of highwaymen, living upon the road and
plundering, yes, and murdering poor families. O how many poor creatures
did you not keep, with their hungry mouths open, in vain expectation of
the money for the sale of the beasts, which they had intrusted to you;
and you in the mean time in Ireland, or in the King's Bench laughing at
them, or upon the road in the midst of your wine and harlots."
On quitting this den of furious heat, I got a sight of a lair, exceeding
all the rest I had seen in Hell, but one, in frightful stinking
filthiness, where was a herd of accursed drunken swine, disgorging and
swallowing, swallowing and disgorging, continually and without rest, the
most loathsome snivel. The next pit was the couch of gluttony, where
Dives and his companions were upon their bellies, eating dirt and fire
alternately, without any liquid ever. A cave or two lower there was an
exceedingly spacious kitchen, in which some were in a state of roasting
and boiling, others frying and burning in an oven half heated. "Behold
the place of the merciless and the unfeeling," said the angel. I then
turned a little to the left hand, where there was a cell more light than
any one which I had yet seen in Hell, and enquired what place it was?
"The abode of the infernal dragons," replied the angel, "who are hissing
and snarling, rushing and preying upon one another every minute." I
approached; and oh! the look which cannot be described was upon them, the
whole light was but the living fire in their eyes. "These are the seed
of Adam," said my guide, "morose wretches, and furious savage men; but,
yonder," said he, "are some of the old seed of the great dragon Lucifer;"
and verily, I could perceive not a whit more amiability in the one sort
than in the other. In the next cellar were the misers, in a state of
horrible agony with their hearts cleaving to coffers of burning treasure,
the rust whereof was ceaselessly cankering them, because those hearts had
been ceaselessly bent upon getting money--O the consuming torment, worse
than frenzy, that was now going on within them, with care and repentance.
Below this there was a hanging ledge, where there were some apothecaries
ground to dust, and stuffed into earthen pots amongst album grecum, dung
of geese and swine, and many an old stinking ointment.
We were now journeying forward, continually descending, along the
wilderness of Destruction, through innumerable torments, eternal and not
to be described--from cell to cell, from cellar to cellar, and the last
always surpassing the others in horror and ghastliness; at last we
arrived at a vast porch, more cheerless than any thing we had seen
before. It was a very spacious porch, and the pathway through it, which
was frightfully steep, led to a kind of dusky nook of incredible ugliness
and horror, and there the palace was. At the upper end of the accursed
court, among thousands of horrible objects, I could, by means of the
radiance of my heavenly companion, perceive amidst the dreary darkness
two feet of enormous magnitude, reaching to the roof of the whole
infernal firmament. I enquired of my conductor what this horrible thing
might be? "Patience," said he, "you shall obtain a more ample view of
this monster as you return; but move forward now to see the royal
palace."