298 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



hold visible intercourse with man : — not the angels to 

 bless poor' erring mortals, but of demons imparting 

 power to witches and warlocks to injure, terrify and de- 

 stroy," — a sentence which we defy any witch or war- 

 lock, though he were Michael Scott himself, to parse 

 with the astutest demonic aid. On another page, he 

 says of Dr. Mather, that " he was one of the first divines 

 who discovered that very many strange events, which 

 were considered preternatural, had occurred in the 

 course of nature or by deceitful juggling ; that the 

 Devil could not speak English, nor prevail with Protes- 

 tants ; the smell of herbs alarms the Devil ; that medi- 

 cine drives out Satan ! " We do not wonder that Mr. 

 Offor put a mark of exclamation at the end of this sur- 

 prising sentence, but we do confess our astonishment 

 that the vermilion pencil of the proof-reader suffered it 

 to pass unchallenged. Leaving its bad English out of 

 the question, we find, on referring to Mather's text, that 

 he was never guilty of the absurdity of believing that 

 Satan was less eloquent in English than in any other 

 language ; that it was the British (Welsh) tongue which 

 a certain demon whose education had been neglected 

 (not the Devil) could not speak ; that Mather is not fool 

 enough to say that the Fiend cannot prevail with Prot- 

 estants, nor that the smell of herbs alarms him, nor 

 that medicine drives him out. Anything more help- 

 lessly inadequate than Mr. Offer's preliminary disser- 

 tation on Witchcraft we never read ; but we could 

 hardly expect much from an editor whose citations from 

 the book he is editing show that he had either not read 

 or not understood it. 



Mr. Offor is superbly Protestant and iconoclastic, — 

 not sparing, as we have seen, even Priscian's head 

 among the rest ; but, en revanche, Mr. Turnbull is ultra- 

 montane beyond the editors of the Oiviltd, Cattolica. 



