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
contri