The Satanic in Literature.
By Samuel S. Cox.
It is an anachronism to date the connection of "Old Knick" with literature from the establishment of the Magazine, which is thus playfully personified by its familiar readers. Long before the brothers Clark rescued "Old Knick" from his bad fame, and gave him credit and character, there were intimate relations existing between the genius of type and the genius of "Knick."
Our votive offering upon the shrine where so many flowers, so much fruitage, and such grateful incense has been so often offered before, and malgré the terrors of the name, offered by such good and genial souls, shall be an examination into this relationship between the aforesaid genii. Before we have finished our analysis, it will be found that "Old Knick" has had more to do with human literature than we are apt to imagine, and that without him much of its mirth and more of its tragedy would be wanting.
If we are to believe the authentic records of the past, we shall find him, in the earliest times, inaugurating the typographical art. "He is in league with the devil," said the learned Sorbonne at Paris, of Dr. Faust, who had, under pretence of copying the Bible, sold the first printed edition to the Parisians at sixty crowns a volume; while those "slow coaches," the clerks, sold manuscript copies at five hundred! And the astonished professors, not dreaming of printing, and not considering the inconsistency of the devil becoming a pioneer colporteur, examined the quickly-produced copies, all minutely alike, and declared, "Surely the devil is in this marvellous matter!" And when Faust lowered his price, and multiplied his volumes, and as his red
