Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott].

  • Walter Scott
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    70/344 (page 68)
    Lastly, in considering the incalculable change which took place upon the advent of our Saviour and the announcement of his law, we may observe, that according to many wise and learned men, his mere appearance upon earth, without awaiting the fulfilment of his mission, operated as an act of banish- ment of such heathen deities as had hitherto been suffered to deliver oracles, and ape in some degree the attributes of the Deity. Milton has, in the Para- dise Lost, it may be upon conviction of its truth, embraced the theory which identifies the followers of Satan with the gods of the heathen ; and, in a tone of poetry almost unequalled, even in his own splendid writings, he thus describes, in one of his earlier pieces, the departure of these pretended dei- ies on the eve of the blessed Nativity. “ The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving, Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the sleep of Delphos leaving; No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell “ The lonely mountains o’er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale, Edged with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn, The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn “In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiat Power foregoes his wonted seat. “Peor and Baalim Forsake their temples dim, With that twice-batter’d god of Palestine ; And mooned Ashtaroth, Heaven's queen and mother both, Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine;