the uppermost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him. The commentators seem to assume that it was by an evil smell that the fiend was driven away; and Bissell wonders that Tobias and his bride were not driven away likewise. But I doubt if this is the meaning. In oriental superstition it is the good and fragrant perfumes that drive away the evil spirits, with whose natures they are incompatible. Southey makes use of this idea in his Thalaba (vi. 22), speaking of such perfumes As Peris to their Sister bear, When from the summit of some lofty tree The sweetness of celestial flowers, From that impervious poison far away In support of this, Southey quotes a note of D'Herbelot on a similar detail of the Caherman Nameh. The Dives could not bear the perfumes, which rendered them gloomy and melancholy whenever they drew near the cage in which a Peri was suspended. A similar idea underlies the incidents of the Miracle Plays in which devils are driven off by rose petals cast by the hands of Faith, Hope, and Charity. So the fish's heart on the ashes of incense may have emitted a delicious perfume, from which the evil fiend shrank. In Milton's well known reference to this passage of Tobit there is a curious ambiguity, so that we cannot tell whether he understood a savoury perfume or the opposite. So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend Who came their bane, though with them better pleas'd That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound. Paradise Lost, iv. 166. Better pleas'd may mean that the other was the reverse of pleas'd; or, if the smell of the fish be a fragrant smell, then that the fragrance of Paradise surpassed it. 146 |