THE SIXTH VISION OF HELL (continued 2)

By this time I had enough of hell, and began to wish myself out again; but as I was looking about for a retreat, I stumbled upon a long gallery before I was aware: and there I saw Lucifer himself, with all his nobility about him, male and female. (For let married men say their pleasure, there are she-devils too,) I should have been at a damned loss what to do, or how to behave myself among so many strange faces, if one of the ushers had not come to me, and told me, that, being a stranger, it was His Majesty’s pleasure I should enter and have free liberty of seeing what was there to be seen. We exchanged a couple or two of compliments, and then I began to look about me, but never did I see a palace so furnished, nor indeed comparable to it.

Our furniture at the best is but a choice collection of dead and dumb statues, or paintings, without life, sense, or motion; but there, all the pieces were animated, and no trash in the whole inventory; there was hardly anything to be seen, but emperors and princes, with some few (perhaps) of their choicest nobility and privados. The first bank was taken up by the Ottoman family; and after them sat the Roman emperors, in their order; and the Roman kings down to Tarquin the proud; beside highnesses and graces, lords spiritual and temporal innumerable. My lungs began now to call for a little fresh air, and I desired my guide to show me the way out again. “Yes, yes, with all my heart,” says he, “follow me then:” and so he carried me away by a back passage into Lucifer’s house of office, where there was I know not how many ton of Sir Reverence, and bales of flattering panegyrics, not to be numbered; all of them licensed, and entered according to order. I could not but smile at this provision of tail-timber, and my guide took notice of it, who was a good kind of a damned droll. But I called still to be gone, and at length he led me to a little hole like the vent of a vault, and I crept through it as nimbly as if the devil himself had given me a lift at the crupper; when, to my great wonder, I found myself in the park again, where I begun my story: not without an odd medley of passions, partly reflecting upon what others endured, and in part upon my own condition of ease and happiness, that had deserved, perhaps, the contrary as well as they. This thought put me upon a resolution of leading such a course of life, for the future, that I might not come to feel these torments in reality which I had now only seen in vision.

And I must here entreat the reader to follow my example, without making any further experiment; and likewise not to cast an ill construction upon a fair meaning. My design is to discredit and discountenance the works of darkness, without scandalising of persons; and since I speak only of damned, I’m sure no honest man alive will reckon this discourse a satire.

THE END OF THE SIXTH VISION