And scarce could he trail
His nerveless tail
As it furrowed the sand on the Red Seashore.
The day had been hot, and the way was long;
Hoof-sore, and weary, and faint, was he;
He lowered his sack,
And the heat of his back.
As he leaned on a palm-tree, blasted the tree.'
Demons and saints were the favourite themes of Tom Ingoldsby's laughter; he jeered alike the Romish miracle-monger and the anthropomorphic fiend. A volume might be written on the way in which the popular and vulgar idea of the devil has gradually arisen. It is clear from 'Paradise Lost,' that Milton favored the mediæval notion that the Pagan divinities were really fiends; and it can scarcely be doubted that the hirsute Pan gave the first sitting for that portrait of the devil which Coleridge completed, when he wrote
'His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,