Snakes in Tradition. 59 



placed one sinful beast. The idea of this solitary iniquity 

 in Paradise is intolerable. 



Later on, Satan determines to pervert the snake, take 

 possession of its body, and bedevil its innocent animal 

 intelligence with something worse than human wickedness. 

 He makes up his mind to find 



" The serpent sleeping, in whose mazy folds 

 To hide him, and the dark intent he brought ; " 



and so descends in the form of a black mist to look for the 

 devoted creature : 



" Him fast-sleeping soon he found, 

 In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled, 

 His head the midst, well stor'd with subtle wiles ; 

 Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den, 

 Nor nocent yet, but on the grassy herb 

 Fearless, unfeared, he slept. In at his mouth 

 The Devil entered, and his brutal sense, 

 In heart or head, possessing, soon inspired 

 With act intelligential ; but his sleep 

 Disturbed not." 



Up to this point, therefore, the wretched serpent is the 

 passive victim of a most atrocious trespass. Henceforth it 

 is not its own self but " possessed," and no more to blame 

 than the bedevilled swine of Gadara, It has been made 

 the instrument of a designing villain ; which was its misfor- 

 tune, not its fault ; and in its second state it was not, to my 

 thinking, a bit more culpable than in its first. For it was 

 not responsible for itself, being under the direct control of 

 the Fiend " incarnate and imbruted " in its form. That the 

 Creator subsequently judged otherwise, and took away the 

 serpent's legs as a punishment for the part it had played in the 

 great tragedy, only shows the infirmity of human judgment, 

 and must be accepted in the same humility of mind as the 

 visiting of a man's sins upon the fourth generation of his 

 posterity, and quite apart from mortal theories of justice. 

 Milton, however, would remove the apparent hardship of the 



