So, too, in "2 Henry IV." (i. 2), the Chief-justice says:
"You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel."
We may quote a further reference in "Julius Cæsar" (iii. 2), where Antony says:
"For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel."
"In the Roman world," says Mr. Tylor, in his "Primitive Culture" (1873, vol. ii. p. 202), "each man had his 'genius natalis,' associated with him from birth to death, influencing his action and his fate, standing represented by its proper image, as a _lar_ among the household gods and at weddings and joyous times, and especially on the anniversary of the birthday when genius and man began their united career, worship was paid with song and dance to the divine image, adorned with garlands, and propitiated with incense and libations of wine. The demon or genius was, as it were, the man's companion soul, a second spiritual Ego. The Egyptian astrologer warned Antonius to keep far from the young Octavius, 'For thy demon,' said he, 'is in fear of his.'"
The allusion by Lady Macbeth (i. 5), in the following passage, is to the spirits of Revenge:
"Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty!"
In Nash's "Pierce Pennilesse" we find a description of these spirits and of their office. "The second kind of devils which he most employeth are those northern _Martii_, called the _Spirits of Revenge_, and the authors of massacres and seed-men of mischief; for they have commission to incense men to rapine, sacrilege, theft, murder, wrath, fury, and all manner of cruelties; and they command certain of the southern spirits to wait upon them, as also great Arioch, that is termed the Spirit of Revenge." In another passage we are further told how "the spirits of the aire will mixe themselves with thunder and lightning, and so infect the clime where they raise any tempest, that suddenly great mortalitie shall ensue of the inhabitants." "Aerial spirits or devils," according to Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," "are such as keep quarter most part in the aire, cause many tempests, thunder and lightnings, tear oakes, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts," etc. Thus, in "King John" (iii. 2), the Bastard remarks: