Omniana/Volume 1/Cauda Diaboli
8. Cauda Diaboli.
All painters represent the devil with a tail and in one of the prints to the Dutch translation of Bunyan's Holy War, it may be seen in what manner his breeches maker accommodates it. Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixissent,.. might be said on this occasion by the author of that stanza in the Devil's Thoughts, which describes this convenient tail-hole. But though poets and painters agree that he wears a tail, and that it is in that place where tails are more appropriate than in the situation where the barber places them; and though many sinners, and still more saints who have seen him, have noticed this appendage, it is not so generally known how he came by it. It grew at his fall, as an outward and visible token that he had lost the rank of an angel, and was fallen to the level of a brute.