Demonology and Devil-lore Part 38

Who loves not wine, woman, and song, He lives a fool his whole life long.

Besides being an aristocrat, he is a scholar, the most learned Master of Arts, educated in the great College of h.e.l.l, founded by Asa and Asael, as elsewhere related. He was fond of gaming; and so fashionable that Calmet believed his very name signifies fine dress.

Now, the moral reflections in the Book of Tobit, and its casual intimations concerning the position of the persons concerned, show that they were Jewish captives of the humblest working cla.s.s, whose religion is of a type now found chiefly among the more ignorant sectarians. Tobit's moral instructions to his son, 'In pride is destruction and much trouble, and in lewdness is decay and much want,'

'Drink not wine to make thee drunken,' and his careful instructions about finding wealth in the fear of G.o.d, are precisely such as would shape a devil in the image of Asmodeus. Tobit's moral truisms are made falsities by his puritanism: 'Prayer is good with fasting and alms and righteousness;' 'but give nothing to the wicked;' 'If thou serve G.o.d he will repay thee.'

'Cakes and ale' do not cease to exist because Tobits are virtuous; but unfortunately they may be raised from their subordinate to an insubordinate place by the transfer of religious restraints to the hands of Ignorance and Cant. Asmodeus, defined against Persian and Jewish asceticism and hypocrisy, had his attractions for men of the world. Through him the devil became perilously a.s.sociated with wit, gallantry, and the one creed of youth which is not at all consumptive--

Grey is all Theory, Green Life's golden-fruited tree!

Especially did Asmodeus represent the subordination of so-called 'religious' and tribal distinctions to secular considerations. As Samael had pet.i.tioned for an extension of the Abrahamic Covenant to all the world and failed to secure it from Jehovah, Asmodeus proposed to disregard the distinction. There is much in the Book of Tobit which looks as if it were written especially with the intention of persuading Jewish youth, tempted by Babylonians to marriage, that their lovers might prove to be succubi or incubi. Tobit implores his son to marry in his own tribe, and not take a 'strange woman.' Asmodeus was as cosmopolitan as the G.o.d of Love himself, and many of his uglier early characteristics were hidden out of sight by such later developments.

Gustave Dore has painted in his vivid way the 'Triumph of Christianity.' In it we see the angelic hosts with drawn swords overthrowing the forms adored of paganism--hurling them headlong into an abyss. So far as the battle and victory go, this is just the conception which an early christian would have had of what took place through the advent of Christ. It filled their souls with joy to behold by Faith's vision those draped angels casting down undraped G.o.ddesses; they would delight to imagine how the fall might break the bones of those beautiful limbs. For they never thought of these G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses as statues, but as real seductive devils; and when these christians had brought over the arts, they often pictured the black souls coming out of these fair idols as they fell.

Dore may have tried to make the angels as beautiful as the G.o.ddesses, but he has not succeeded. In this he has interpreted the heart behind every deformity which was ever added to a pagan deity. The horror of the monks was transparent homage. Why did they starve and scourge their bodies, and roll them in thorns? Because not even by defacing the beautiful images were they able to expel from their inward worship the lovely ideals they represented.

It is not difficult now to perceive that the old monks were consigning the pagan ideals to imaginary and themselves to actual h.e.l.ls, in full hope of thereby gaining permanent possession of the same beauty abjured on earth. The loveliness of the world was transient. They grew morbid about death; beneath the rosiest form they saw the skeleton. The heavenly angels they longed for were Venuses and Apollos, with no skeletons visible beneath their immortalised flesh. They never made sacrifices for a disembodied heaven. The force of self-crucifixion lay in the creed--'I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.'

The world could not generally be turned into a black procession at its own funeral. In proportion to the conquests of Christianity must be its progressive surrender to the unconquerable--to human nature. Aphrodite and Eros, over whose deep graves nunneries and monasteries had been built, were the first to revive, and the story, as Mr. Pater has told it, is like some romantic version of Ishtar's Descent into Hades and her resurrection. [147] While as yet the earth seemed frostbound, long before the Renaissance, the song of the turtle was heard in the ballad of Auca.s.sin and Nicolette. The christian knight will marry the beautiful Saracen, and to all priestly warnings that he will surely go to h.e.l.l, replies, 'What could I do in Paradise? I care only to go where I can be with Nicolette. Who go to Paradise? Old priests, holy cripples, dried-up monks, who pa.s.s their lives before altars. I much prefer h.e.l.l, where go the brave, the gay, and beautiful. There will be the players on harps, the cla.s.sic poets and singers; and there I shall not be parted from Nicolette!'

Along with pretty Saracen maidens, or memories of them, were brought back into Europe legends of Asmodeus. Aphrodite and Eros might disguise themselves in his less known and less anathematised name, so that he could manage to sing of his love for Sara, of Parsi for Jewess, under the names of christian Auca.s.sin and saracen Nicolette. In the Eastern Church he reappeared also. There are beautiful old pictures which show the smart cavalier, feather-in-cap, on the youth's left, while on his right stands 'grey Theory' in the form of a long-bearded friar. Such pictures, no doubt, taught for many a different lesson from that intended--namely, that the beat of the heart is on the left.

Where St. Benedict rolled himself in thorns for dreaming of his (deserted) 'Nicolette,' St. Francis planted roses; and the Latin Church had to recognise this evolution of seven centuries. They hid the thorns in the courts of convents, and sold the roses to the outside world as indulgences. But as Asmodeus had not respected the line between Jew and Gentile in Nineveh, so he pa.s.sed over that between priest, nun, and worldling in the West. In the days of Witchcraft the Church was scandalised by the rumour that the nuns of the Franciscan Convent of Louviers had largely taken to sorcery, and were attending the terrible 'Witches' Sabbaths.' The nun most prominent in this affair was one Madeleine Bavent. The priests announced that she had confessed that she was borne away to the orgies by the demon Asmodeus, and that he had induced her to profane the sacred host. It turned out that the nuns had engaged in intrigues with the priests who had charge of them--especially with Fathers David, Picard, and Boule--but Asmodeus was credited with the crime, and the nuns were punished for it. Madeleine was condemned to life-long penance, and Picard antic.i.p.ated the fire by a suicide, in which he was said to have been a.s.sisted by the devil.

Following the rabbinical tradition which represented him as continually pa.s.sing from the high infernal College of Asa and Asael to the earth to apply his arts of sorcery, Asmodeus gained a respectable position in European literature through the romance of Le Sage ('Le Diable Boiteux'), and his fame so gained did much to bring about in France that friendly feeling for the Devil which has long been a characteristic of French literature. A very large number of books, periodicals, and journals in France have gained popularity through the Devil's name. Asmodeus was, in fact, the Arch-bohemian. As such, he largely influenced the conception of Mephistopheles as rendered by Goethe--himself the Prince of Bohemians. The old horror of Asmodeus for bad smells is insulted in the name Mephistopheles, and this devil is many rolled into one; yet in many respects his kinship to Asmodeus is revealed. All the dried starveling Anthonys and Benedicts are, in a cultured way, present in the theologian and scholar Faust; all the sweet ladies that haunted their seclusion became realistic in Gretchen. She is the Nemesis of suppressed pa.s.sions.

One province of nature after another has been recovered from Asceticism. In this case Ishtar has had to regain her apparel and ornaments at successive portals that are centuries, and they are not all recovered yet. But we have gone far enough, even in puritanised England, to produce a 'madman' far-seeing enough to behold The Marriage of Heaven and h.e.l.l. The case of Asmodeus is stated well, albeit radically, by William Blake, in that proverb which was told him by the devils, whom he alone of midnight travellers was shrewd enough to consult: 'The pride of the peac.o.c.k is the glory of G.o.d; the l.u.s.t of the goat is the bounty of G.o.d; the wrath of the lion is the wisdom of G.o.d.' When that statement is improved, as it well may be, it will be when those who represent religion shall have learned that human like other nature is commanded by obedience.

In this connection may be mentioned a cla.s.s of legends indicating the Devil's sensitiveness with regard to his personal appearance. The anxiety of the priests and hermits to have him represented as hideous was said to have been warmly resented by Satan, one of the most striking being the legend of many versions concerning a Sacristan, who was also an artist, who ornamented an abbey with a devil so ugly that none could behold it without terror. It was believed he had by inspiration secured an exact portrait of the archfiend. The Devil appeared to the Sacristan, reproached him with having made him so ugly, and threatened to punish him grievously if he did not make him better looking. Although this menace was thrice repeated, the Sacristan refused to comply. The Devil then tempted him into an intrigue with a lady of the neighbourhood, and they eloped after robbing the abbey of its treasure. But they were caught, and the Sacristan imprisoned. The Devil then appears and offers to get him out of his trouble if he will only destroy the ugly likeness, and make another and handsomer. The Sacristan consented, and suddenly found himself in bed as if nothing had happened, while the Devil in his image lay in chains. The Devil when discovered vanished; the Sacristan got off on the theory that crimes and all had been satanic juggles. But the Sacristan took care to subst.i.tute a handsome devil for the ugly one. In another version the Sacristan remained faithful to his original portraiture of the Devil despite all menaces of the latter, who resolved to take a dire revenge. While the artist was completing his ornamentation of the abbey with an image of the Virgin, made as beautiful as the fiend near it was ugly, the Devil broke the ladder on which he was working, and a fatal fall was only prevented by the hand of the Madonna he had just made, which was outstretched to sustain him. The accompanying picture of this scene (Fig. 16) is from 'Queen Mary's Psalter' in the British Museum.

Vasari relates that when Spinello of Arezzo, in his famous fresco of the fall of the rebellious angels, had painted the hideous devil with seven faces about his body, the fiend appeared to him in the same form, and asked the artist where he had seen him in so frightful an aspect, and why he had treated him so ignominiously. When Spinello awoke in horror, he fell into a state of gloom, and soon after died.

The Persian poet Sadi has a remarkable pa.s.sage conceived in the spirit of these legends, but more kindly.

I saw the demon in a dream, But how unlike he seemed to be To all of horrible we dream, And all of fearful that we see.

His shape was like a cypress bough, His eyes like those that Houris wear, His face as beautiful as though The rays of Paradise were there.

I near him came, and spoke--'Art thou,'

I said, 'indeed the Evil One?

No angel has so bright a brow, Such yet no eye has looked upon.

Why should mankind make thee a jest, When thou canst show a face like this?

Fair as the moon in splendour drest, An eye of joy, a smile of bliss!

The painter draws thee vile to sight, Our baths thy frightful form display; They told me thou wert black as night, Behold, thou art as fair as day!'

The lovely vision's ire awoke, His voice was loud and proud his mien: 'Believe not, friend!' 'twas thus he spoke, 'That thou my likeness yet hast seen: The pencil that my portrait made Was guided by an envious foe; In Paradise I man betrayed, And he, from hatred, paints me so.'

Boehme relates that when Satan was asked the cause of G.o.d's enmity to him and his consequent downfall, he replied, 'I wished to be an artist.' There is in this quaint sentence a very true intimation of the allurements which, in ancient times, the arts of the Gentile possessed for the Jews and christian judaisers. Indeed, a similar feeling towards the sensuous attractions of the Catholic and Ritualistic Churches is not uncommon among the prosaic and puritanical sects whose younger members are often thus charmed away from them. Dr. Donne preached a sermon before Oliver Cromwell at Whitehall, in which he affirmed that the Muses were d.a.m.ned spirits of devils; and the discussion on the Drama which occurred at Sheffield Church Congress (1878), following Dr. Bickerst.i.th's opening discourse on 'the Devil and his wiles,'

shows that the Low Church wing cherishes much the same opinion as that of Dr. Donne. The dread of the theatre among some sects amounts to terror. The writer remembers the horror that spread through a large Wesleyan circle, with which he was connected, when a distinguished minister of that body, just returned from Europe, casually remarked that 'the theatre at Rome seemed to be poorly supported.' The fearful confession spread through the denomination, and it was understood that the observant traveller had 'made shipwreck of faith.' The Methodist instinct told true: the preacher became an accomplished Gentile.

Music made its way but slowly in the Church, and the suspicion of it still lingers among many sects. The Quakers took up the burthen of Epiphanius who wrote against the flute-players, 'After the pattern of the serpent's form has the flute been invented for the deceiving of mankind. Observe the figure that the player makes in blowing his flute. Does he not bend himself up and down to the right hand and to the left, like unto the serpent? These forms hath the Devil used to manifest his blasphemy against things heavenly, to destroy things upon earth, to encompa.s.s the world, capturing right and left such as lend an ear to his seductions.' The unregenerate birds that carol all day, be it Sabbath or Fast, have taught the composer that his best inspiration is from the Prince of the Air. Tartini wrote over a hundred sonatas and as many concertos, but he rightly valued above them all his 'Sonata del Diavolo.' Concerning this he wrote to the astronomer Lalande:--'One night, in the year 1713, I dreamed that I had made a compact with his Satanic Majesty, by which he was received into my service. Everything succeeded to the utmost of my desires, and my every wish was antic.i.p.ated by my new domestic. I thought that, in taking up my violin to practise, I jocosely asked him if he could play on this instrument. He answered that he believed he was able to pick out a tune; when, to my astonishment, he began a sonata, so strange, and yet so beautiful, and executed in so masterly a manner, that in the whole course of my life I had never heard anything so exquisite. So great was my amazement that I could scarcely breathe. Awakened by the violence of my feelings, I instantly seized my violin, in the hope of being able to catch some part of the ravishing melody which I had just heard, but all in vain. The piece which I composed according to my scattered recollections is, it is true, the best I ever produced. I have ent.i.tled it, 'Sonata del Diavolo;' but it is so far inferior to that which had made so forcible an impression on me, that I should have dashed my violin into a thousand pieces, and given up music for ever in despair, had it been possible to deprive myself of the enjoyments which I receive from it.'

The fire and originality of Tartini's great work is a fine example of that power which Timoleon called Automatia, and Goethe the Damonische,--'that which cannot be explained by reason or understanding; it is not in my nature, but I am subject to it.' 'It seems to play at will with all the elements of our being.'

The Puritans brought upon England and America that relapse into the ancient asceticism which was shown in the burning of great pictures by Cromwell's Parliament. It is shown still in the jealousy with which the puritanised mind in both countries views all that aims at the simple decoration of life, and whose ministry is to the sense of beauty. On that day of the week when England and New England hebraise, as Matthew Arnold says, it is observable that the sabbatarian fury is especially directed against everything which proposes to give simple pleasure or satisfy the popular craving for beauty. Sabbatarianism sees a great deal of hard work going on, but is not much troubled so long as it is ugly and dismal work. It utters no cry at the thousands of hands employed on Sunday railways, but is beside itself if one of the trains takes excursionists to the seaside, and is frantic at the thought of a comparatively few persons being employed on that day in Museums and Art Galleries. It is a survival of the old feeling that the Devil lurks about all beauty and pleasure.

A money-making age has measurably dispersed the superst.i.tions which once connected the Devil with all great fortunes. For a long time, and in many regions of the world, the Jews suffered grievously by being supposed to get their wealth by the Devil's help. Their wealth (largely the result of their not exchanging it for worldly enjoyments) so often proved their misfortune, that it was easy to ill.u.s.trate by their case the monkish theory that devil's gifts turn to ashes. Princes were indefatigable in relieving the Jews of such ashes, however. The Lords of Triar, who possessed the mines of Glucksbrunn, were believed to have been guided to them by a gold stag which often appeared to them--of course the Devil. It is related that when St. Wolfram went to convert the Frislanders, their king, Radbot, was prevented from submitting to baptism by a diabolical deception. The Devil appeared to him as an angel clothed in a garment woven of gold, on his head a jewelled diadem, and said, 'Bravest of men! what has led thee to depart from the Prince of thy G.o.ds? Do it not; be steadfast to thy religion and thou shalt dwell in a house of gold which I will give into thy possession to all eternity. Go to Wolfram to-morrow, ask him about those bright dwellings he promises thee. If he cannot show them, let both parties choose an amba.s.sador; I will be their leader and will show them the gold house I promise thee.' St. Wolfram being unable to show Radbot the bright dwellings of Paradise, one of his deacons was sent along with a representative of the king, and the Devil (disguised as a traveller) took them to the house of gold, which was of incredible size and splendour. The Deacon exclaimed, 'If this house be made by G.o.d it will stand for ever; if by the Devil, it must vanish speedily.' Whereupon he crossed himself; the house vanished, and the Deacon found himself with the Frislander in a swamp. It took them three days to extricate themselves and return to King Radbot, whom they found dead.

The ascetic principle which branded the arts, interests, pursuits, and pleasures of the world as belonging to the domain of Satan, involved the fatal extreme of including among the outlawed realms all secular learning. The scholar and man of science were also declared to be inspired by the 'pride of life.' But this part of our subject requires a separate chapter.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CURSE ON KNOWLEDGE.

A Bishop on intellect--The Bible on learning--The Serpent and Seth--A Hebrew Renaissance--Spells--Sh.e.l.ley at Oxford-- Book-burning--j.a.panese ink-devil--Book of Cypria.n.u.s--Devil's Bible--Red letters--Dread of Science--Roger Bacon--Luther's Devil--Lutherans and Science.

In Lucas van Leyden's picture of Satan tempting Christ (Fig. 6), the fiend is represented in the garb of a University man of the time. From his head falls a streamer which coils on the ground to a serpent. From that serpent to the sceptical scholar demanding a miracle the evolution is fully traceable. The Serpent, of old the 'seer,'

was in its Semitic adaptation a tempter to forbidden knowledge. This was the earliest priestly outcry against 'G.o.dless education.'

During the Shakespere tercentenary festival at Stratford-on-Avon, the Bishop of St. Andrews declared that there is not a word in the Bible warranting homage to Intellect, and such a boast beside the grave of the most intellectual of Englishmen is in itself a survival ill.u.s.trating the tremendous curse hurled by jealous Jehovah on man's first effort to obtain knowledge. That same Serpent of knowledge has pa.s.sed very far, and his curse has many times been repeated. In the Accadian poem of the fatal Seven, as we have seen, it is said, 'In watching was their office;' and the a.s.syrian version says, 'Unto heaven that which was not seen they raised.' On the Babylonian cylinders is inscribed the curse of the G.o.d of Intelligence (Hea) upon man--'Wisdom and knowledge hostilely may they injure him.' [148]

The same Serpent twined round the staff of aesculapius and whispered those secrets which made the G.o.ds jealous, so that Jove killed the learned Physician with a flash of lightning. Its teeth were sown when Cadmus imported the alphabet into Greece; and when these alphabetical dragon's-teeth had turned to type, the ancient curse was renewed in legends which connected Fust with the Devil.

The Hebrews are least among races responsible for the legend which has drifted into Genesis. Nor was the Bishop's boast about their Bible correct. The homage paid to Solomon was hardly on account of his moral character. 'He spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.' [149]

While the curse on man for eating the fruit of knowledge is never quoted in the Hebrew scriptures, there are many indications of their devotion to knowledge; and their prophets even heard Jehovah saying, 'My people are destroyed through lack of knowledge.' It is not wonderful, therefore, that we find among the Jews the gradual growth of a legend concerning Seth, which may be regarded as a reply to the curse on the Serpent.

The apotheosis of Seth in rabbinical and mussulman mythology represents a sort of Semitic Renaissance. As we have seen in a former chapter, the Egyptians and Greeks identified Set with Typhon, but at the same time that demon was a.s.sociated with science. He is astronomically located in Capricorn, the sphere of the hierophants in the Egyptian Mysteries, and the mansion of the guardians of science. Thus he would correspond with the Serpent, who, as adapted by the Hebrews in the myth of Eden, whispers to Eve of divine knowledge. But, as detached from Typho, Seth, while leaving behind the malignancy, carried away the reputation for learning usually ascribed to devils. Thus, while we have had to record so many instances of degraded deities, we may note in Seth a converted devil. In the mussulman and rabbinical traditions Seth is a voluminous author; he receives a library from heaven; he is the originator of astronomy and of many arts; and, as an instructor in cultivation, he restores many an acre which as Set he had blighted. In the apocryphal Genesis he is represented as having been caught up to heaven and shown the future destiny of mankind. Anastasius of Sinai says that when G.o.d created Adam after his own image, he breathed into him grace and illumination, and a ray of the Holy Spirit. But when he had sinned this glory left him. Then he became the father of Cain and Abel. But afterwards it is said Adam 'begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name 'Seth,' which is not said of Cain and Abel; and this means that Seth was begotten in the likeness of unfallen man in paradise--Seth meaning 'Resurrection.' And all those then living, when they saw how the face of Seth shone with divine light, and heard him speak with divine wisdom, said, He is G.o.d; therefore his sons were commonly called the sons of G.o.d. [150]

That this 'Resurrection' of departed glory and wisdom was really, as I have said, a Renaissance--a restoration of learning from the curse put upon it in the story of the Serpent--is indicated by its evolution in the Gnostic myth wherein Seth was made to avenge Satan. He took under his special care the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and planted it in his father's grave (Fig. 8). Rabbins carried their homage to Seth even to the extent of vindicating Saturn, the most notorious of planets, and say that Abraham and the Prophets were inspired by it. [151] The Dog (Jackal) was, in Egyptian symbols, emblem of the Scribe; Sirius was the Dog-star domiciled with Saturn; Seth was by them identified with Sirius, as the G.o.d of occult and infernal knowledge. He was near relative of the serpent Sesha, familiar of aesculapius, and so easily connected with the subtlest of the beasts in Eden which had crept in from the Iranian mythology.

This reaction was inst.i.tuted by scholars, who, in their necessarily timid way of fable, may be said to have recovered the Tree of Knowledge under guise of homage to Seth. It flourished, as we have seen (chap. xi.), to the extent of finally raising the Serpent to be a G.o.d, and lowering Jehovah who cursed him to a jealous devil!

But the terror with which Jehovah is said to have been inspired when he said, 'The man has become as one of us, to know good and evil,'

never failed to reappear among priesthoods when anything threatened to remove the means of learning from under their control. The causes of this are too many to be fully considered here; but the main cause unquestionably was the tendency of learning to release men from the sway of the priest. The primitive man of science would speedily discover how many things existed of which his priest was ignorant, and thus the germ of Scepticism would be planted. The man who possessed the Sacred Books, in whole or in part, might become master of the 'spells' supposed to be contained in its words and sentences, and might use them against the priests; or, at any rate, he might feel independent of the ordinary apparatus of salvation.

The anxiety of priests to keep fast hold of the keys of learning, so that no secular son of Adam should become 'as one of them,'

coupled with the wonderful powers they professed ability to exercise, powerfully stimulated the curiosity of intellectual men, and led them to seek after this forbidden fruit in subtle ways, which easily ill.u.s.trated the story of the Serpent. The poet Sh.e.l.ley, who was suspected at Oxford because of his fondness for chemistry, recognised his mythological ancestry, and used to speak of 'my cousin, the Serpent.' The joke was born of circ.u.mstances sufficiently scandalous in the last generation to make the Oxonian of to-day blush; but the like histories of earlier ages are so tragical that, when fully known by the common people, they will change certain familiar badges into brands of shame. While the cant goes on about the Church being the protector of learning through the dark ages, the fact is that, from the burning of valuable books at Ephesus by christian fanatics (Acts xix. 19) to the present day, the Church has destroyed tenfold more important works than it ever produced, and almost suffocated the intellectual life of a thousand years. Amid the unbroken persecution of the Jews by christian cruelty, which lasted from the early eleventh century for five hundred years, untold numbers of ma.n.u.scripts were destroyed, which might have now been giving the world full and clear knowledge concerning ages, for whose records archaeological scholars are painfully exploring the crumbled ruins of the East. Synagogues were believed to be temples of Satan; they were plundered and razed to the ground, and their precious archives strewed the streets of many cities. On the 17th of June 1244 twenty-four cartloads of these ancient MSS. were burned in Paris alone. "And all this by our holy 'protector of learning' through the Middle Ages!

The j.a.panese have pictures of a famous magician who conjured up a demon--vast, vague, and terrible--out of his inkstand. They call it latterly 'emblem of a licentious press,' but, no doubt, it was originally used to terrify the country generally concerning the press. That Devil has also haunted the ecclesiastical imagination in Europe. Nearly every book written without priestly command was a.s.sociated with the Devil, and there are several old books in Europe, laboriously and honestly written, which to this day are invested with popular superst.i.tions reporting the denunciations with which they were visited. For some centuries it has been believed in Denmark and neighbouring countries that a strange and formidable book exists, by means of which you can raise or lay the Devil. It is vulgarly known as the Book of Cypria.n.u.s. The owner of it can neither sell, bury, or burn it, and if he cannot get rid of it before his death, he becomes the prey of the fiend. The only way of getting rid of it is to find somebody who will accept it as a present, well knowing what it is. Cypria.n.u.s is said to have been a clever and virtuous young student, but he studied the black art in Norway, and came under the power of the Devil, who compelled him to use his unholy learning to evil ends. This grieved him sorely, and he wrote a book, in which he shows first, how evil shall be done, and then how to counteract it. The book is probably one which really exists or existed, and professed to teach the art of sorcery, and likewise the charms against it. It consists of three parts, severally called Cypria.n.u.s, Dr. Faust, and Jacob Ramel. The two latter are written in cypher. It teaches everything appertaining to 'signing,' conjuring, second sight, and all the charms alluded to in Deuteronomy xviii. 10-12. The person possessing Cypria.n.u.s' book is said never to be in need of money, and none can harm him. The only way of getting rid of it is to put it away in a secret place in a church along with a clerk's fee of four shillings.