As a foil to his _Masque of Queens_ (1609) Ben Jonson introduced
twelve loathly witches with Ate as their leader, and embellished
his description of their profane rites, with details culled from
James I.'s treatise on Demonology and from learned ancient
authorities.
In _The Pilgrim's Progress_, Despair, who "had as many lives as a
cat," his wife Diffidence at Doubting Castle, and Maul and
Slaygood are the ogres of popular story, whose acquaintance
Bunyan had made in chapbooks during his ungodly youth.
Hobgoblins, devils and fiends, "sturdy rogues" like the three
brothers Faintheart, Mistrust and Guilt, who set upon Littlefaith
in Dead Man's Lane, lend the excitement of terror to Christian's
journey to the Celestial City. The widespread belief in witches
and spirits to which Browne and Burton and many others bear
witness in the seventeenth century, lived on in the eighteenth
century, although the attitude of the "polite" in the age of
reason was ostensibly incredulous and superior. A scene in one of
the _Spectator_ essays illustrates pleasantly the state of
popular opinion. Addison, lodging with a good-natured widow in
London, returns home one day to find a group of girls sitting by
candlelight, telling one another ghost-stories. At his entry they
are abashed, but, on the widow's assuring them that it is only
the "gentleman," they resume, while Addison, pretending to be
absorbed in his book at the far end of the table, covertly
listens to their tales of
"ghosts that, pale as ashes, had stood at the feet of
the bed or walked over a churchyard by moonlight; and
others, who had been conjured into the Red Sea for
disturbing people's rest.
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