The Dragon is the emblem of sin in general, and of the sin of
idolatry in particular ; and the dragon slain or vanquished by the power
of the cross, is the perpetually recurring myth, which, varied in a
thousand ways, we find running through all the old Christian legends :
not subject to misapprehension in the earliest times ; but, as the cloud
of ignorance darkened and deepened, the symbol was translated into a
fact. It has been suggested that the dragon, which is to us a phantasm
and an allegory, which in the middle ages was the visible shape of the
demon adversary of all truth and goodness, might hnve been, as regards
form, originally a fact : for wherever we have dragon legends, whether
the scene be laid in Asia, Africa, or Europe, the imputed circumstances
and the form are little varied. The dragons introduced into early
painting and sculpture so invariably represent a gigantic winged
crocodile, that it is presumed there must have been some common
origin for the type chosen as if by common consent; and that this
common type may have been some fossil remains of the Saurian species,
or even some far-off dim tradition of one of these tremendous reptiles
surviving in Heaven knows what vast desolate morass or inland lake,
and spreading horror and devastation along its shores. At Aix, a huge



INTRODUCTION. 27



fossilised head of one of the Sauri was for a long time preserved as the
head of the identical dragon subdued by SL Martha ; and SL Jerome
relates that he had himself beheld at Tyre the bones of the sea monster
to which Andromeda had been exposed — probably some fossil remains
which in the popular imagination were thus accounted for. Professor
Owen told me that the head of a dragon in one of the legendary pictures
he had seen in Italy closely resembled in form that of the Demotherium
Giganteum. These observations have reference only to the type
adopted when the old Scripture allegory took form and shape* The
dragon of Holy Writ is the same as the serpent, ue.y personified sin^ the
spiritual enemy of mankind.
