Chapter Saragossa to Satyr of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Sartor Resartus, “The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrôckh,” in three books, by Thomas Carlyle (1833- 34).

The title is not original, but the book is a philosophical romance, or pretended review of an hypothetical German work on dress, which gives scope to the author for remarks on all sorts of things. The words Sartor Resartus mean The Tailor tailored, or Teufelsdrôckh patched by Carlyle.

Sassenach, a Saxon, an Englishman. (Welsh, seasonig adj. and saesoniad noun.)

I would, if I thought I’d be able to catch some of the Sassenachs in London.—Very Far West Indeed.

Satan, according to the Talmud, was once an archangel; but was cast out of heaven with one-third of the celestial host for refusing to do reverence to Adam.

In mediæval mythology, Satan holds the fifth rank of the nine demoniacal orders.

Johan Wier, in his De Præstigiis Dæmonum (1564), makes Beelzebub the sovereign of hell, and Satan leader of the opposition.

In legendary lore, Satan is drawn with horns and a tail, saucer eyes, and claws; but Milton makes him a proud, selfish, ambitious chief, of gigantic size, beautiful, daring, and commanding. Satan declares his opinion that “’tis better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

(Defoe has written a Political History of the Devil, 1726.)

Satan, according to Milton, monarch of hell. His chief lords are Beëlzebub, Moloch, Chemos, Thammuz, Dagon, Rimmon, and Belial. His standard-bearer is Azaz’el.

He [Satan], above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower. His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness; nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured…but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek—cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse.
   —Milton: Paradise Lost, i. 589, etc. (1665).

The word Satan means “enemy;” hence Milton says—

To whom the arch-enemy,
…in heaven called paradise.
   —Paradise Lost, i. 81 (1665).

(Robert Montgomery, in 1830, published a poem called Satan, a long soliloquy of five or six thousand lines of blank verse, which obtained for its author the sobriquet of “Satan Montgomery.”)

Satan is made to talk about geography, politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatres, lord Byron, and even Martin’s pictures.

Satanic School (The), a class of writers in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, who showed a scorn for all moral rules, and the generally received dogmas of the Christian religion. The most eminent English writers of this school were Bulwer (afterwards lord Lytton), Byron, Moore, and P. B. Shelley. Of French writers: Paul de Kock, Rousseau, George Sand, and Victor Hugo.

Immoral writers…men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who (forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct) have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating revelation which they try in vain to disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves by infecting them with a moral virus that eats into their soul. The school which they have set up may properly by called “The Satanic School.”—

Southey: Vision of Judgment (preface, 1822).