Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/413

Rh among others of Jesus Christ having driven a legion of Devils into a herd of pigs, who were so discomfited with these new invaders that they all threw themselves over a precipice into the lake, and were drowned. These were a set of hypochondriacal and high-minded swine, very unlike any others of which we have authentic record; they disdained to live, if they must live in so intimate a society with Devils, as that which was imposed on them, and the pig-drivers were no doubt confounded by so heroical a resolution. What became of the Devils after the death of the pigs, whether they passed into the fish, and thence by digestion, through the stomach, into the brain of the Gadarene Icthyophagists; whether they returned to Hell, or remained on the Earth, the historian has left as subject for everlasting conjecture. I should be curious to know whether any half starved Jew picked up these pigs, and sold them at the market of Gadara, and what effect the bacon of a demoniac pig, who had killed himself, produced upon the consumers. The Devils requested Jesus Christ to send them into the pigs, and the Son of God shewed himself more inclined to do what was agreeable to the Devils than what was profitable to the owners of the pigs. He had, no doubt, say the Christians, some good reasons. Poor fellows! They were probably ruined by this operation. The Gadarenes evidently disapproved of this method of casting out Devils—they thought probably that Jesus shewed an unjust preference to these disagreeable beings; and they sent a deputation to request him to depart out of their country. I doubt whether the yeomen of the present day would have treated him with so much lenity.

Among the numerous theories concerning the condition