I have spoken of the seventeenth century as going out in an atmosphere of justice and humanity. But an ancient superstition dies hard, and the eighteenth century, when it dawned upon the earth, found the belief in witchcraft still widely extended in England. Even men of education could not wholly surrender their adhesion to it. We read with surprise Addison's opinion in _The Spectator_, 'that the arguments press equally on both sides,' and see him balancing himself between the two aspects of the subject in a curious state of mental indecision. 'When I hear the relations that are made from all parts of the world,' he says, 'I cannot forbear thinking that there is such an intercourse and commerce with evil spirits, as that which we express by the name of witchcraft. But when I consider,' he adds, 'that the ignorant and credulous parts of the world abound most in these relations, and that the persons among us who are supposed to engage in such an infernal commerce are people of a weak understanding and crazed imagination, and at the same time reflect upon the many impostures and delusions of this nature that have been detected in all ages, I endeavour to suspend my belief till I hear more certain accounts than any which have yet come to my knowledge.' And then he comes to a halting and unsatisfactory conclusion, which will seem almost grotesque to the reader of the preceding pages, with their details of _succubi_ and _incubi_, imps and familiars, black cats, pole-cats, goats, and the like: 'In short, when I consider the question, whether there are such persons in the world as we call witches, my mind is divided between two opposite opinions, or, rather (to speak my thoughts freely), I believe in general that there is, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft, but, at the same time, can give no credit to any particular instance of it.'
Addison goes on to draw the picture of a witch of the period, 'Moll White,' who lived in the neighbourhood of Sir Roger de Coverley, 'a wrinkled hag, with age grown double.' This old woman had the reputation of a witch all over the country; her lips were observed to be always in motion, and there was not a switch about her house which her neighbours did not believe had carried her several hundreds of miles. 'If she chanced to stumble, they always found sticks or straws that lay in the figure of a cross before her. If she made any mistake at church, and cried Amen in a wrong place, they never failed to conclude that she was saying her prayers backwards. There was not a maid in the parish that would take a pin of her, though she should offer a bag of money with it.... If the dairy-maid does not make her butter to come so soon as she would have it, Moll White is at the bottom of the churn. If a horse sweats in the stable, Moll White has been upon his back. If a hare makes an unexpected escape from the hounds, the huntsman curses Moll White....