We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for
fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved
in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this visible
world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an
historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world
was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits
assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or
proportion--of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable
absurd--could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission
of any particular testimony?--That maidens pined away, wasting
inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire--that corn was
lodged, and cattle lamed--that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry
the oaks of the forest--or that spits and kettles only danced a
fearful-innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind
was stirring--were all equally probable where no law of agency was
understood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the
flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the
weak fantasy of indigent eld--has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood
_à priori_ to us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or
standard to estimate what rate those anile souls may fetch in the
devil's market. Nor, when the wicked are expressly symbolized by
a goat, was it to be wondered at so much, that _he_ should come
sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor.--That the intercourse
was opened at all between both worlds was perhaps the mistake--but
that once assumed, I see no reason for disbelieving one attested story
of this nature more than another on the score of absurdity. There
is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be
criticised.
I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed in the days of
received witchcraft; that I could not have slept in a village where
one of those reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder or more
obtuse. Amidst the universal belief that these wretches were in
league with the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their
muttering, no simple Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled
issuing, or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them--as if they
should subpoena Satan!--Prospero in his boat, with his books and wand
about him, suffers himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of his
enemies to an unknown island. He might have raised a storm or two, we
think, on the passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy to the
non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers.--What stops the
Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces--or who had made it a
condition of his prey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious
bait--we have no guess. We do not know the laws of that country.
From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about witches and
witch-stories. My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied me with good
store. But I shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity
originally into this channel. In my father's book-closet, the History
of the Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station. The
pictures with which it abounds--one of the ark, in particular,
and another of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity
of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon the
spot--attracted my childish attention. There was a picture, too, of
the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. We
shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes--and
there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magnitude, which, with
infinite straining, was as much as I could manage, from the situation
which they occupied upon an upper shelf. I have not met with the work
from that time to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament
stories, orderly set down, with the _objection_ appended to each
story, and the _solution_ of the objection regularly tacked to that.
The _objection_ was a summary of whatever difficulties had been
opposed to the credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of
ancient or modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost complimentary
excess of candour. The _solution_ was brief, modest, and satisfactory.
The bane and antidote were, both before you. To doubts so put, and so
quashed, there seemed to be an end for ever. The dragon lay dead, for
the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. But--like as was rather
feared than realised from that slain monster in Spenser--from the womb
of those crushed errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the
prowess of so tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The habit
of expecting objections to every passage, set me upon starting more
objections, for the glory of finding a solution of my own for them. I
became staggered and perplexed, a sceptic in long coats. The pretty
Bible stories which I had read, or heard read in church, lost their
purity and sincerity of impression, and were turned into so many
historic or chronologic theses to be defended against whatever
impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but--the next thing to
that--I was to be quite sure that some one or other would or had
disbelieved them. Next to making a child an infidel, is the letting
him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man's
weakness, but the child's strength. O, how ugly sound scriptural
doubts from the mouth of a babe and a suckling!--I should have lost
myself in these mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit
sustenance as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate piece of
ill-fortune, which about this time befel me. Turning over the picture
of the ark with too much haste, I unhappily made a breach in its
ingenious fabric--driving my inconsiderate fingers right through the
two larger quadrupeds--the elephant, and the camel--that stare (as
well they might) out of the two last windows next the steerage in
that unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth
locked up, and became an interdicted treasure. With the book, the
_objections_ and _solutions_ gradually cleared out of my head, and
have seldom returned since in any force to trouble me.--But there was
one impression which I had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no lock or
bar could shut out, and which was destined to try my childish nerves
rather more seriously.--That detestable picture!
I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The night-time solitude,
and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I endured in this nature
would justify the expression. I never laid my head on my pillow, I
suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life--so
far as memory serves in things so long ago--without an assurance,
which realized its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be
old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, that to his picture
of the Witch raising up Samuel--(O that old man covered with a
mantle!) I owe--not my midnight terrors, the hell of my infancy--but
the shape and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed up for
me a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow--a sure bed-fellow, when
my aunt or my maid was far from me. All day long, while the book was
permitted me, I dreamed waking over his delineation, and at night
(if I may use so bold an expression) awoke into sleep, and found
the vision true. I durst not, even in the day-light, once enter the
chamber where I slept, without my face turned to the window, aversely
from the bed where my witch-ridden pillow was.--Parents do not know
what they do when they leave tender babes alone to go to sleep in the
dark. The feeling about for a friendly arm--the hoping for a familiar
voice--when they wake screaming--and find none to soothe them--what a
terrible shaking it is to their poor nerves! The keeping them up till
midnight, through candle-light and the unwholesome hours, as they are
called,--would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of view, prove the
better caution.--That detestable picture, as I have said, gave the
fashion to my dreams--if dreams they were--for the scene of them was
invariably the room in which I lay. Had I never met with the picture,
the fears would have come self-pictured in some shape or other--