“And he said unto the two beasts, Come ye and put your trust under the shadow of my wings, and we will destroy the man whose name is as ebony and his Book.
“And the two beasts gave ear unto him, and they came over to him, and bowed down before him with their faces to the earth....
“Then was the man whose name is as ebony ‘sore dismayed,’ and appealed to the great magician who dwelleth by the old fastness hard by the river Jordan which is by the Border (to Walter Scott), and the magician opened his mouth and said, Lo! my heart wisheth thy good, and let the thing prosper which is in thy hands to do it.
“But thou seest that my hands are full of working, and my labour is great. For, lo! I have to feed all the people of my land, and none knoweth whence his food cometh, but each man openeth his mouth and my hand filleth it with pleasant things. (This is more than a shrewd guess of the authorship of the Waverley Novels.)
“Moreover, thine adversary also is of my familiars (Constable, his publisher).
“Yet be thou silent, peradventure will I help thee some little.”
Chapter II. shows us Blackwood gazing despondently from his inner chamber, when a veiled figure appears, who
“Gave unto the man in plain apparel a tablet containing the names of those upon whom he should call; and when he called they came, and whomsoever he asked he came....
“And the first which came was after the likeness of the beautiful leopard, from the valley of the palm-trees, whose going forth was comely as the greyhound, and his eyes like the lightning of fiery flame (Professor Wilson, author of the ‘Isle of Palms.’)...
“There came also from a far country, the scorpion which delighteth to sting the faces of men, that he might sting sorely the countenance of the man which is crafty, and of the two beasts (Lockhart).