The Porter introduces the Pardoner to Lucifer, who previously sends him a safe conduct under his hand, stating,

that he may at libertie

Passe safe without any jeopardie,
Till that he be from us extinct,
And cleerly out of helle's precinct.
And, his pardons to keep in save guarde,

Me wil they lie in the PORTER's warde.1

Now in this old play both the porter of hell, and the porter's abiding place are mentioned; and it may be observed, that, as in Hearne's print the devil in this employment blows a horn, so a very ancient Saxon MS. at the British Museum, wherein Christ is depicted releasing the souls, also represents him addressing a fiend, whose office of porter of hell is clearly shown by the eyes on his wings, emblematical of Cerberus-like watchfulness, and by his warder's horn, which with other implements he lets fall in terror from his hands." Likewise the Golden Legend says, that "Anone as Jhesu cryst descended in to helle the nyghte began to were clere. And anone the porter black and horrible among them in scilence began to murmur.” Probably the notion of this post, and the alarm of its occupiers on Christ's appearance to deliver the souls, is coeval with the earliest belief of the subject; for in the creed read in the fourth century at the council of Ariminum, a city of Italy, Christ is 'declared to have descended into hell, and there to have disposed of all things, at whose sight the PORTERS of hell TREMBLED.'

Again: the prong in the devil's left hand of so 'singular make to Steevens's apprehension, that he engraves it in his note, is as frefrently put into the hands of devils by the old masters, as the iron comb or any other implement of torture. This might be exemplified by reference to several engravings, but it is sufficient to refer

1 Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. i, p. 112.

2 Cotton MS. Tiberius VI.

3 Golden Legend, Art, Here begynneth the resurrecyyon.

4 Socrates' Eccl. Hist. fol. 1663, p. 278.

to the volume of the great Show at Haerlem, wherein is a print representing Doot, Hell, and the Duivel, as walking in one of the processions, the Duivel holding a prong of exactly the same make(1). Steevens's character for erudition in other respects has perhaps not only induced belief in the general reader that his engraving of it is a curiosity; but has occasioned his misconception to be reprinted in subsequent editions of Shakspeare to the present time.

It is remarkable that Steevens, while trifling and erring in detecting the inaccuracy of Johnson concerning the figures in the print appears to have entertained no doubt as to the correctness of Johnson's statement that the word engraved aronzt, "is evidently the same with aroint;" and it is further remarkable that every sub

(1) "Const-thoonende Ivweel, by de loflijcke Stadt Haerlem, ten versoecke van Trou moet blijcken, in't licht gebracht, &c. Tot Zwol by Zacharias Heyns, Drucker des Landschapes van Over-ijssel, 1607," 4to.

Devils are not only represented with instruments of torture by painters, but are sometimes so described by writers. Querela, a Latin poem, "supposed to be written by S. Bernard from a nightly vision of his," contains such a description. William Crashaw, the author mentioned before (p. 133) who was father to Crashaw the poet, translated this poem under the title of "The Complaint or Dialogue betwixt the Soule and the Bodie of a damned man; each laying the fault upon the other." (London, 1616, 24mo.) These are stanzas from it. The author in vision.

After the Soule had sayd

these mournefull words, Behold, two Fiends,

more blacke then pitch or night,

Whose shapes with pen

to write, no wit affordes, Nor any hand of

painter pourtray right.

Sharpe steely prickes

they did in each hand beare, Sulphure and fire

flaming, they breath'd out; Tusked their teeth

like crooked mattockes were, And from their nostrils snakes crawl'd round about.

Their eares with running

sores hung flapping low,
Foule filthy hornes in their
blacke browes they wore,
Full of thicke poyson
which from them did flow,
Their nayles were like

the tushes of a bore.

These Fiends in chaines

fast bound this wretched soule, And with them hal'd her

howling into hell:
To whom on flockes

ran other diuels more,
And gnashing with their teeth
to dancing fell.

sequent editor of Shakspeare has also acquiesced in Johnson's opinion without taking pains to examine the ground he rests it upon. Had Steevens inquired what piece in "Hearne's collection;" this print really belonged to, he would have ascertained it to have been in Forduni Scotichronicon (1722, 5 vols. 8vo.) before p. 1403 of vol. v., and following the direction on the plate to the Preface,

They welcomed her with
greetings full of woe,
Some wrested her with cordes
senceless of dread,

Some snatcht and tore with hooks
drawne to and fro,

Some for her welcome

powr'd on scalding lead.

Diuels.
Svch horror wee do
on our seruants load,
Then as half wearied
the diuels cryed,
Now art thou worse

then was the crawling toade
Yet thousand-fold

worse torments thee abide.

The instrument held by the porter-fiend in Hearne's print is formed to use saw-ways, like 'hooks drawn to and fro.'

A minute and horrifying account of hell torments, extracted from a modern publication, is in The Miraculous Host tortured by the Jew.' But the binding of a sinner as an appendix to a devil is unique, I believe, as an infernal punishment. The representation is in a wood cut to a rare work entitled "Ber Schelmen zunst" (1506, 4to.) and I end this note with a sketch from it by way of tail-piece.

§. 14 in vol. i., he would not only have met with the account of the print, but have also seen that Hearne himself gives the real word, from the drawing in his MS.

Hearne commences the subject by saying, that, of all the calendars in his possession, that which Fleetwood, Bishop of Ely, presented to him, is deserving of the greatest admiration. He imagines it to be one of the magical and astrological ones mentioned by old writers; describes it to be full of pictures and prophecies; and supposes it was written in the reign of Edward III., and that it was the autograph or only copy. He is surprised that though it contains the names and portraits of all the saints held in great veneration throughout the whole year, yet that no mention occurs in it of St. Patrick. He inquires how this is, and conjectures that either St. Patrick was of no note with the English, or else that the author of this calendar, as well as others, considered the story of his purgatory a fiction. Then he notices some calendars that have it, probably, he says, out of compliment to the Irish ; and he observes that, if it be urged that there was no occasion for the author of this calendar to say any thing of purgatory because he was not treating concerning hell, that can be proved to be erroueous, because he diligently depicts the fall of man and his liberation from the infernal regions; "which diligence," says Hearne, who evidently tattles thus to have an opportunity of giving engravings to his readers from drawings that the worthy old man was himself amused with; "which diligence moreover, upon this subject you will find to be sufficiently ridiculous from the pictures themselves, which I subjoin in the Appendix to the work; in the first of which you will read Adam moritur et transit ad infernum pro uno pomo; and in the second Jhesus Christus resurgens à mortuis, together with these words in our vernacular tongue, out, out, arongt, uttered by one of the dæmons already very much alarmed, and blowing a horn."(1)

(1)Hearne's words in his preface are: "Quam tamen in hâc re diligentiam ridiculam satis esse è picturis ibsis colliges, quas in Appendice operis subnectam ; in quarum primâ legitur, Adam moritur et transit ad infernum pro uno pomo; in secunda, Thesus Christus resurgens à mortuis spoliat infernum, una cuni hisce

From this we see that the presumed "arongt," is on Hearne's own testimony, "arougt." Independent of this indubitable confirmation, there are other reasons for believing arougt to be the correct word, and consequently that the only authority for aroint is the twofold mention of it by Shakspeare.

It is well known to every reader of old MSS. that from carelessness the copyists frequently formed n and u alike; and in aronzt, as it is spelled in Hearne's print, the letter before the (1) may have been so undeterminate in the MS. word, that Burghers, the engraver of the plate, being unacquainted with the orthography of the archaism, and preferring decision to correctness, wrote n when he shonld have written U, and thus converted the word aronzt into aronzt. Or, Burghers' transcript of n may really approach the original nearer than I have conjectured; for as Hearne's honest accuracy is not to be outrivalled, it cannot be supposed that he would allow an engraving from a drawing in the Fleetwood Calendar, which he so highly commends, to be very wide of exactness.(2) Though the inscriptions were secondary to his principal object, that of representing the scene, yet considerable faithfulness in the whole is to be presumed; and, if Burghers' engraving be a tolerably fair fac simile of both, it must be obvious to every one who examines the print, that however rude in design the drawing appears, the MS. inscriptions upon it were quite as coarse. For, in that at the top of the plate, u and ʼn are so similar that the letters they are intended for are rather to be inferred from their connexion with other letters, than to be perceived from their difference of form. For example; it would

verbis (lingua nostra vernacula) ab uno Dæmonum (jam admodum pertubatorum) cornu inflante, out, out, arougt, pronunciatis."-Scotichronicon, vol. i. Præf. P. 1.

(1) is the Saxon g, and sometimes gh, in MSS.

(2)Ritson, sparing as he was of praise, yet, while fish-wifing Warton could afford to say of Hearne, that "few if any can boast of such a sacied regard to truth, and of such unimpeached integrity: he has never been detected in a wilful falsehood; nor been ever charged with the slightest misrepresentation of the minutest fact.-Obs. on Hist. of Eng. Poetry, p. 36.