The inclination to give to the demons (the middle ages always looked upon them as innumerable) monstrous forms, which easily ran into the grotesque, was natural, and the painter, indeed, prided himself on drawing them ugly; but he was no doubt influenced in so generally caricaturing them, by mixing up this idea with those furnished by the popular superstitions of the Teutonic race, who believed in multitudes of spirits, representatives of the ancient satyrs, who were of a playfully malicious description, and went about plaguing mankind in a very droll manner, and sometimes appeared to them in equally droll forms. They were the Pucks and Robin Goodfellows of later times; but the Christian missionaries to the west taught their converts to believe, and probably believed themselves, that all these imaginary beings were real demons, who wandered over the earth for people's ruin and destruction. Thus the grotesque imagination of the converted people was introduced into the Christian system of demonology. It is a part of the subject to which we shall return in our next chapter; but I will here introduce two examples of the Anglo-Saxon demons. To explain the first of these, it will be necessary to state that, according to the mediæval notions, Satan, the arch demon, who had fallen from heaven for his rebellion against the Almighty, was not a free agent who went about tempting mankind, but he was himself plunged in the abyss, where he was held in bonds, and tormented by the demons who peopled the infernal regions, and also issued thence to seek their prey upon God's newest creation, the earth. The history of Satan's fall, and the description of his position (No. 29), form the subject of the earlier part of the Anglo-Saxon poetry ascribed to Cædmon, and it is one of the illuminations to the manuscript of Cædmon (which is now preserved at Oxford), which has furnished us with our cut, representing Satan in his bonds. The fiend is here pictured bound to stakes, over what appears to be a gridiron, while one of the demons, rising out of a fiery furnace, and holding in his hand an instrument of punishment, seems to be exulting over him, and at the same time urging on the troop of grotesque imps who are swarming round and tormenting their victim. The next cut, No. 30, is also taken from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, preserved in the British Museum (MS. Cotton., Tiberius, C. vi.), which belongs to the earlier half of the eleventh century, and contains a copy of the psalter. It gives us the Anglo-Saxon notion of the demon under another form, equally characteristic, wearing only a girdle of flames, but in this case the especial singularity of the design consists in the eyes in the fiend's wings. [Illustration: _No. 30. Satan._] [Illustration: _No. 31. The Temptation._] [Illustration: _No. 32. David and the Lion._]