That the stage devil should have been so commonplace an individual, when there were devils innumerable where-from an admirable selection of demons might be “constantly on hand,” made it the more inexcusable on the part of those gentlemen invested with the power of administering to, and in some measure forming, public taste. What a catalogue of devils may be found in the Fathers! Let us particularise a few from the thousand of demons with which the benevolent imaginations of our ancestors have peopled the air, the earth, and the flood. Poor humanity stands aghast at the fearful odds of spiritual influences arrayed against it; for it is the fixed opinion of Paracelsus, that “the air is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible devils”; whilst another philosopher declares that there is “not so much as an hairbreadth empty in earth or in water, above or under the earth!” Cornelius Agrippa has carefully classified devils, making them of nine orders. The first are the false Gods adored at Delphos and elsewhere in various idols, having for their captain Beelzebub; the second rank is of “liars and equivocators,” as Apollo—poor Apollo!—“and the like”; the third are “vessels of anger, inventors of all mischief,” and their prince is Belial; the fourth are malicious, revengeful devils, their chief being Asmodeus; the fifth are cozeners, such as belong to magicians and witches, their prince is Satan; the sixth are those aerial devils that corrupt the air, and cause plagues, thunder, fire, and tempests—Meresin is their prince; the seventh is a destroyer, captain of the fairies; the eighth is an accusing or calumniating devil; and the ninth are all these in several kinds, their commander being Mammon. Of all these infernal creatures Cornelius Agrippa writes, with the confidence and seeming accuracy of a man favoured with their most intimate acquaintance.