To this marvellous cure, which may in truth be attributed to the dismission of the plasters, we may add that a similar sanative and sympathetic power was conceived to subsist between the wounds and the instrument which inflicted them. Thus anointing the weapon with a salve, or stroking it in a peculiar manner, had an immediate effect on the wounded person. "They can remedie," says Scot, "anie stranger, and him that is absent, with that verie sword wherewith they are wounded. Yea, and that which is beyond all
admiration, if they stroke the sworde upwards with their fingers, the partie shall feele no paine: whereas if they drawe their finger downewards thereupon, the partie wounded shall feele intollerable paine."[377:A]
Independent of the superstitions which we have thus classed under distinct heads, there remain several to be noticed, not clearly referrible to any part of the above arrangement; but which cannot with propriety be omitted. These may, therefore, be collected under the term MISCELLANEOUS, which will be found to include many curious particulars, in no slight degree illustrative of the subject under consideration.
In the Tempest, towards the close of the fourth act, the poet represents Prospero and Ariel setting on spirits, in the shape of hounds, to hunt Stephano and Trinculo, while, at the same time, a noise of hunters is heard.[377:B] This species of diabolical or spectral chase was a popular article of belief, and is mentioned or alluded to in many of the numerous books which were written, during this period, on devils and spectres. Lavaterus, treating of the various modes in which spirits act, says, "heereunto belongeth those things which are reported touching the chasing or hunting of Divels, and also of the daunces of dead men, which are of sundrie sortes. I have heard of some which have avouched, that they have seene them[377:C];" and in a translation from the French of Peter de Loier's Treatise of Spectres, published in 1605, a chase of this kind is mentioned under the appellation of Arthur's Chace, "which many," observes this writer, "believe to be in France, and think that it is a kennel of black dogs, followed by unknown huntsmen, with an exceeding great sound of horns, as if it was a very hunting of some wild beast."[377:D]
Of a chase of this supernatural description, Boccacio, in the fourteenth century, made an admirable use in his terrific tale of Theodore and Honoria; a narrative which has received new charms and additional horrors from the masterly imitation of Dryden; and in our own days the same impressive superstition has been productive of a like effect in the spirited ballad of Burger.
The hell-hounds of Shakspeare appear to be sufficiently formidable; for, not merely commissioned to hunt their victims, they are ordered, likewise, as goblins, to
————————— "grind their joints
With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews
With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them,
Than pard, or cat o'mountain.