Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 1 of 2] / Including the Biography of the Poet; criticisms on his genius and writings; a new chronology of his plays; a disquisition on the on the object of his sonnets; and a history of the manners, customs, and amusements, superstitions, poetry, and elegant literature of his age

by Nathan Drake

[347:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 472-474.

[348:A] Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 87.

[348:B] See Beaumont and Fletcher apud Colman.

It would appear from the passage just quoted from Shakspeare, that he considered St. Withold as commanding this female incubus to alight from those she was riding and tormenting; but Fuseli and Darwin, in their delineations, appear to have mounted a male fiend, or incubus, on her back, who descending from his steed, sate on the breasts of those whom he had selected for his victims. The personifications of the painter and the modern poet are forcibly drawn and highly terrific:—

"So on his Nightmare through the evening fog

Flits the squab Fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog;

Seeks some love-wilder'd Maid with sleep oppress'd,

Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.

—— Such as of late amid the murky sky

Was mark'd by Fuseli's poetic eye;