Note 348:B — Chapter IX
Reading edition
See Beaumont and Fletcher apud Colman.
It would appear from the passage just quoted from Shakspeare, that he considered St. Withold as commanding this female incubus to alight from those she was riding and tormenting; but Fuseli and Darwin, in their delineations, appear to have mounted a male fiend, or incubus, on her back, who descending from his steed, sate on the breasts of those whom he had selected for his victims. The personifications of the painter and the modern poet are forcibly drawn and highly terrific:—
"So on his Nightmare through the evening fog Flits the squab Fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog; Seeks some love-wilder'd Maid with sleep oppress'd, Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast. —— Such as of late amid the murky sky Was mark'd by Fuseli's poetic eye; Whose daring tints, with Shakspeare's happiest grace, Gave to the airy phantom form and place— Back o'er her pillow sinks her blushing head, Her snow-white limbs hang helpless from the bed; While with quick sighs, and suffocative breath, Her interrupted heart-pulse swims in death. —— Then shrieks of captur'd towns, and widow's tears, Pale lovers stretch'd upon their blood-stain'd biers, The headlong precipice that thwarts her flight, The trackless desert, the cold starless night, And stern-eye'd Murderer with his knife behind, In dread succession agonize her mind. O'er her fair limbs convulsive tremors fleet, Start in her hands, and struggle in her feet; In vain to scream with quivering lips she tries, And strains in palsy'd lids her tremulous eyes: In vain she wills to run, fly, swim, walk, creep; The Will presides not in the bower of Sleep. —— On her fair bosom sits the Demon-Ape Erect, and balances his bloated shape; Rolls in their marble orbs his Gorgon-eyes, And drinks with leathern ears her tender cries."
Botanic Garden, 4to. edit. p. 101-103.