I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed in the days of received witchcraft; that I could not have slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt.  Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse.  Amidst the universal belief that these wretches were in league with the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their muttering, no simple Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled issuing, or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them—­as if they should subpoena Satan!—­Prospero in his boat, with his books and wand about him, suffers himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown island.  He might have raised a storm or two, we think, on the passage.  His acquiescence is in exact analogy to the non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers.—­What stops the Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces—­or who had made it a condition of his prey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious bait—­we have no guess.  We do not know the laws of that country.

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive about witches and witch-stories.  My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied me with good store.  But I shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this channel.  In my father’s book-closet, the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, occupied a distinguished station.  The pictures with which it abounds—­one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solomon’s temple, delineated with all the fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon the spot—­attracted my childish attention.  There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen.  We shall come to that hereafter.  Stackhouse is in two huge tomes—­and there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite straining, was as much as I could manage, from the situation which they occupied upon an upper shelf.  I have not met with the work from that time to this, but I remember it consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly set down, with the objection appended to each story, and the solution of the objection regularly tacked to that.  The objection was a summary of whatever difficulties had been opposed to the credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of ancient or modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost complimentary excess of candour.  The solution was brief, modest, and satisfactory.  The bane and antidote were, both before you.  To doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed to be an end for ever.  The dragon lay dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on.  But—­like as was rather feared than realised from that slain monster in Spenser—­from the womb of those crushed errors young dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish.  The habit of expecting objections to every passage, set me upon starting more objections, for the glory of finding a solution of my own for them.