Ellis Wynne

“ The miser has his eye upon his land, for his own son; and the others, to a man, on the money, which he is to receive as her portion, because they are all his subjects, that is, his merchants, his tailors, his shoemakers, or his other tradesmen, who have arrayed him and maintained him in all this great splendour, without yet obtaining one farthing, nor any thing but fair words, and now and then, threats perhaps. Now observe how many masks, how many twists, Hypocrisy has given to the face of the truth? He is promising grandeur to his love, having already disposed of his land ”

“ If it were not that Hypocrisy can disguise the name and nature of every evil under the semblance of some good, and give a bad name to every goodness, no man at all would put forth his hand to do evil or would lust after it. Walk through the entire city of Destruction and ye will perceive her greatness in every quarter. Go to the street of Pride and ask for an arrogant man or for a penny-worth of affectation mixed through pride: ‘Woe is me,’ exclaims Hypocrisy, ‘there is no such thing here,’ no, nor for a devil, anything else in the whole street save proud demeanour. ”

“ What would you be worth, Asmodeus; or you, ye other master spirits of evil, without me who keep the window open for you, without any watch, so that you may go into man by his eyes, by his ears, by his mouth, and by every other orifice which he has, whensoever you please. I will go, and will roll to you all the inhabitants of Britain over the precipice in their sleep.”
Then arose Satan, the devil of Deceit, who sat next to Lucifer on his left hand, and after turning a frightful visage on the king,—“It is unnecessary for me,” he said, “to declare my deeds to you, O lost archangel! ”

“ In the centre above Lucifer’s head was a huge hand grasping an awful bolt. The princesses, after paying their courtesy, immediately returned to their duties on earth. No sooner had they departed than at the King’s bidding, a gigantic devil with cavernous jaws set up a roar, louder than the discharge of a hundred cannon, and as loud, were it possible, as the last trump, to proclaim the infernal Parliament, and behold, without delay, the court and hall are filled by the rabble of hell in every shape, each upon the form and image of that particular sin he was wont to urge upon men. ”

“ Then arose Apollyon. “I do not know,” said he, “any thing that will bring the Britons hither, more certainly than what brought yourselves—that is Pride: if she ever plant her pole within them and inflate them, there is no reason to fear that they will stoop to lift the cross, or go through the narrow gate. I will go,” said he, “with my daughter Pride, and will cause the Welsh, by gazing on the magnificence of the English, and the English, by imitating the frivolities of the French, to tumble into this place before they know where they are.”
Next arose Asmodeus, devil of Wantonness. ”

“ Could not I, who deceived Eve in Paradise, overcome Anne in Britain? If inborn craft and continuous experience for five thousand years profit aught, my advice is that you adorn your daughter Hypocrisy to deceive Britain and its queen: you have no other as serviceable as she; her sway extends more widely than that of all the rest of your daughters, and her subjects are more numerous. Was it not through her that I beguiled the first woman? And ever since she has remained on earth and waxed very great therein, so that by now the world is hardly anything but one mass of hypocrisy. ”

“ But I can tell you that she was a triple-faced giantess, having one very atrocious countenance turned towards the heavens, barking, snorting and vomiting accursed abomination against the celestial king; another countenance very fair towards the earth, to entice men to tarry in her shadow; and another, the most frightful countenance of all, turned towards Hell, to torment it to all eternity. She is larger than the entire earth, and is yet daily increasing, and a hundred times more frightful than the whole of Hell. She caused Hell to be made, and it is she who fills it with inhabitants. ”

“ Who would refuse to suffer the pangs of martyrdom for his faith for an hour or a day, or affliction for forty or sixty years, if he considered that his neighbours suffer here in an hour more than he could suffer on earth for ever. Tobacco is nothing without Money, or Money without Pride, and Pride is but a weakling without Wantonness, nor is Wantonness aught without Sloth, nor Sloth without Hypocrisy, nor Hypocrisy without Thoughtlessness. ”

“ 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;” ”

“ Then Belphegor, chief of sloth and idleness, stood up and spake thus: “I am the great prince of listlessness and sloth, who have great influence upon millions of all sorts and conditions of men; I am that stagnant pond where the spawn of every evil is bred, where the dregs of every corruption and baleful slime grows rank. What good wouldst thou be, Asmodai, or ye, chief damned evils, were I not? I, who keep the windows open and unguarded that ye may enter into the man when ye will, through his eyes, his ears and his mouth. ”

“ The terrible situations in which we find the Bard, as the drama unfolds, betoken not only a powerful imagination, but also an intensity of feeling which enabled him to realise the conceptions of such imagination. We follow the Bard and his heavenly guide through all their perils with breathless attention; the demons and the damned he so clothes with flesh and blood that our hatred or our sympathy is instantly stirred; his World is palpitating with life, his Hell, with its gloom and glare, is an awful, haunting dream. ”

“ She keeps people so stiff-necked, with their sight so intent on lofty things, that it is a pleasure to see them, by staring and reaching into the air, falling plump into the abysses of Hell. As for you, Asmodeus, we all remember your great services of yore; no one keeps his prisoners more firmly under the lock, and no one meets with less rebuke than yourself—the whole rebuke, indeed, consisting in a little laughing, at what is called wanton tricks. ”

“ Before I could ask aught, quoth the Angel: “This is the gulf that reaches to another great world.” “What, pray, is that world called?” I enquired. “’Tis called the bottomless pit or the Nethermost Hell, the home of the devils, whither they now have gone. And those vast, dreary wilds, parts of which thou hast traversed, are called the Region of Despair, ordained for the condemned until the Judgment Day; then it will become one with the utmost, bottomless Hell; then will one of us come and seal up the devils and the damned together, never more to open upon them, never to all eternity. ”

“ But worse than all, is the contest between the old misers and their own children, for dissipating their wealth and their money. ‘Our property,’ say the pigtails, ‘cost us much pain, whilst we were upon the earth, and is causing us immense suffering here for ever, yet ye have flung it all away at ducks and drakes.’ And the children, on the other hand, are cursing and tearing the old skin-flints, most furiously, charging their fathers with being the authors of their misery, by leaving them twenty times too much, to distract them with pride and dissipation ”

“ Ye peers of this profoundest gulf, princes of the hopeless gloom, if we have lost the place we erst possessed, when, clothed with brightness, we dwelt in those celestial, happy realms; yet, however great our fall, ’twas glorious, nought less than all did we hazard, nor is all lost—for, behold regions wide and deep extending to the utmost bounds of desolate Perdition still ’neath our sway. ’Tis true we reign while racked with raging torment, yet, for spirits of our majesty, ’tis better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ Before we had gone far, the Rogue and the Slanderer appeared, chained between forty devils, and whispering to one another. “Most noble Lucifer,” began the Rogue, “I am very sorry there is so much disturbance in your kingdom; but if I may be heard, I will teach you a better method. Under the pretence of holding a Parliament, you can cite all the damned into the burning Evildom, and then bid the devils hurl them headlong to bottomless perdition, and lock them up in its vortex, to trouble you no more.” “But the Common Meddler is still missing,” said Lucifer, frowning most darkly at the Rogue. ”

“ 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. ”