The imagination which makes beauty out of evil, and that which
accumulates from it the utmost intensity of terror, are well exemplified
in Milton and Bunyan. Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothed
in lustrous language as in princely silks that overhang his chain-mail
of ample learning and argument, was as intense as the unlettered belief
of Bunyan; and perhaps he shared the prevalent opinions about
witchcraft; yet when he touches upon the superstitious element, the
material used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic quality
which Milton has distilled from the common belief, and then poured into
this _image_ of the common belief, that I am not sure he cared for
any other quality in it.

"Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd
In secret, riding through the air she comes,
Lured by the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon
Ellipses at their charms."

_Paradise Lost_, II. 662.

Again, in Comus:--

"Some say, no evil thing that walks by night,
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time,
No goblin, or swart faery of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity."

How near these passages come to Shakespere, where he touches the same