And Satan had taken it much amiss,
They should fasten such a piece on a friend of his—
Though he knew that his works were somewhat sad,
He never had found them quite so bad:
For this was "the book" which, of yore, Job, sorely smitten,
Said, "Oh that mine enemy, mine enemy had written"!
27.
Then he found sixty scribblers in separate cells,[1]
And marvelled what they were doing,
For they looked like little fiends in their own little hells,
Damnation for others brewing—240
Though their paper seemed to shrink, from the heat of their ink,
They were only coolly reviewing!
And as one of them wrote down the pronoun "We,"
"That Plural"—says Satan—"means him and me,
With the Editor added to make up the three
Of an Athanasian Trinity,
And render the believers in our 'Articles' sensible,
How many must combine to form one Incomprehensible"!
[Stanzas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, first published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 471-474: stanzas 6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19-27, now published for the first time from an autograph MS. in the possession of the Earl of Ilchester.]
- ↑ [Millbank Penitentiary, which was built in the form of a pentagon, was finally taken in hand in the spring of 1813. Solitary confinement in the "cells" was, at first, reserved as a punishment for misconduct.—Memorials of Millbank, by Arthur Griffiths, 1875, i. 57.]
