possession, or otherwise, I will not determine; 'tis a difficult
question.'[79]

[79] _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, by Democritus junior;
edited by Democritus minor. Part i. sect. 2. An equally
copious and curious display of learning. Few authors,
probably, have been more plagiarised.

The mediaevalists believed themselves surrounded everywhere by
spiritual beings; but unlike the ancients, they were convinced
not so much that they were the peculiar care of heaven as that
they were the miserable victims of hellish malice, ever seeking
their temporal as well as eternal destruction; a fact apparent in
the whole mediaeval literature and art.[80]

[80] Sismondi (_Literature of the South of Europe_) has
observed of the greatest epic of the Middle Age, that
'Dante, in common with many fathers of the Church, under the
supposition that paganism, in the persons of the infernal
gods, represented the fallen angels, has made no scruple to
adopt its fables.' Tasso, at a later period, introduces the
deities of heathendom. In the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ they
sit in council to frustrate the plans and destroy the forces
of the Christian leaders before Jerusalem (iv). Ismeno, a
powerful magician in the ranks of the Turks, brings up a
host of diabolic allies to guard the wood which supplied the
infidels with materials for carrying on the siege of the
city (xiii.). And the masterpieces of art of Guido or
Raffaelle, which excite at once admiration and despair in
their modern disciples, consecrated and immortalised the
vulgar superstition.

Glanvil's conjectures on the cause of the _comparative_ rarity of
demoniac and other spiritual apparitions in general may interest
the credulous or curious reader. ''Tis very probable,' reasons
the Doctor, 'that the state wherein they are will not easily
permit palpable intercourses between the bad genii and mankind:
since 'tis like enough their own laws and government do not allow
their frequent excursions into the world. Or it may with great
probability be supposed that 'tis a very hard and painful thing
for them to force their thin and _tenuious_ bodies into a visible
consistence, and such shapes as are necessary for their designs
in their correspondence with witches. For in this action their
bodies must needs be exceedingly compressed, which cannot well be
without a painful sense. And this is, perhaps, a reason why there
are so few apparitions, and why ap