raft.[40]

His opinions on the subject, so far as can be judged by his few direct
statements and by implications, were quite as radical as those of his
predecessor.[41] As a matter of fact he was a man who read widely[42]
and had pondered deeply on the superstition, but his thought had been
colored by Scot.[43] His assault, however, was less direct and studied
than that of his master. Scot was a man of uncommonly serious
temperament, a plain, blunt-spoken, church-going Englishman who covered
the whole ground of superstition without turning one phrase less serious
than another. His pupil, if so Harsnett may be called, wrote earnestly,
even aggressively, but with a sarcastic and bitter humor that
entertained the reader and was much less likely to convince. The curl
never left his lips. If at times a smile appeared, it was but an
accented sneer. A writer with a feeling indeed for the delicate effects
of word combination, if his humor had been less chilled by hate, if his
wit had been of a lighter and more playful vein, he might have laughed
superstition out of England. When he described the dreadful power of
holy water and frankincense and the book of exorcisms "to scald, broyle
and sizzle the devil," or "the dreadful power of the crosse and
sacrament of the altar to torment the devill and to make him roare," or
"the astonishable power of nicknames, reliques and asses ears,"[44] he
revealed a faculty of fun-making just short of effective humor.

It would not be fair to leave Harsnett without a word on his place as a
writer. In point of literary distinction his prose style maintains a
high level. In the use of forceful epithet and vivid phrase he is
excelled by no Elizabethan prose writer. Because his writings deal so
largely with dry-as-dust reports of examinations, they have never
attained to that position in English literature which parts of them
merit.[45]

Harsnett's book was the last chapter in the story of Elizabethan
witchcraft and exorcism. It is hardly too much to say that it was the
first chapter in the literary exploitation of witchcraft. Out of the
_Declaration_ Shakespeare and Ben Jonson mined those ores which when
fused and refined by imagination and fancy were shaped into the shining
forms of art. Shakespearean scholars have pointed out the connection
between the dramatist and the exposer of exorcism. It has indeed been
suggested by one student of Shakespeare that the great playwright was
lending his aid