Hail, horrors; hail,
Infernal world; and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own palace, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be-all but less than He

newed existence when he apostrophizes the a theologian! Of a verity, this Devil can midnight of their fate: talk Scripture. His daring is equal to his bitterness. We see him first at the threshold of Heaven, parleying with the Divinity; nay, sneering at the Heaven which he had lost for ever. And did not the genius of France actually climb the skies, and enter with uncovered head into the presence of the One? And, on its lip, was there not a smile of sarcasm, and a blasphemy in its heart? Faust opens with a grand chant, like the music of the spheres, in which the angels and archangels take part. The rhythm is suddenly jarred by the voice of Mephistopheles, who addresses the Lord :

Whom thunder hath made greater? Here, at least,
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for His envy-will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, even in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

"As thou, O Lord! once more art kind enough To interest thyself in our affairs,

This is the ultimatum of Pride. We find the same motive principle in the subsequent history of Satan. That which is his own strength he makes the weakness of man; he tempts through pride, and our great progenitor falls. It is evident, then, that Milton believed pride to be the root of all evil; and the moral of his grand epic is plain, viz., that as we lost Heaven by pride, we can regain it only by humility. Such is the purpose of his immortal labor. Very differently from him does Göethe reason on the nature of evil. The poet is influenced by the spirit of his time, and fashions his faith by the thoughts of the day. The great Teuton lived in an age of organized skepticism, when faith was banished from the souls of men. The Encyclopædists had commenced the revolution, and issued their declaration of rights. France was skeptical, and France was then the pioneer of Europe. The spirit of Voltaire was the spirit of his time, and the poet was resolved to grapple with its creed, and throw it. Faust, therefore, represents the intellect of civilized man, beset and haunted by skepticism or evil, which is called Mephistopheles. The poem, which has often been condemned as irreligious by ignorant canters, is either the most fearful sarcasm on all human creeds, or it is the grandest argument for faith and against the for skepticism of the last century ever known to the world. To us, it means the latter. We know not whether our opinion is shared by the critics generally, and, sooth to say, we care not; but we can spell out of the Mephistopheles of Goethe nothing but the belief that infidelity is the real evil of the world. What is Mephistopheles but a Voltaire supernaturally gifted with power? Is he not an accomplished skeptic? And what

And ask, How goes it with you there below?
And as indulgently at other times

Thou tookest not my visits in ill part,

Thou seest me here once more among thy house-
hold,

Though I should scandalize this company.
You will excuse me if I do not talk

In the high style which we call fashionable;
My pathos would certainly make you laugh, too,
Had you not long since given over laughing.
Nothing know I to say of suns and worlds;
I observe only how men plague themselves.
The little god o' th' world keeps the same stamp
As wonderful as on creation's day.

A little better would he live, hadst thou
Not given him a glimpse of Heaven's light,
Which he calls reason, and employs it only
To live more beastily than any beast.

With reverence to your Lordship be it spoken,
He's like one of those long-legged grasshoppers,
Who flits and jumps about, and sings for ever
The same old song i' th' grass. There let him lie,
Burying his nose in every heap of dung." *

this; one to tremble before and hate. The
A truly flippant and impertinent Devil
Satan of Milton is a saint compared to him.
If Burns had read the sayings and doings of
Mephistopheles, he would never have said, in
his "Address to the Deil "-

"Old Nickie ben,

Ye still may ha'e a chance;" Mephistopheles is damned to the lowest

*We quote from Shelley's translation of the first scene of "Faust." Pity that he did not finish fied for the task. There have been many attempts the work! He was the man of his day best qualiat translation of the great drama. Hayward's, Blackie's, Sir Egerton Brydges', for instance; there is only one, however, which deserves the namethe translation by John Anster, L.L.D., published all events poetical, an assertion which cannot be some twenty years ago, which, if not literal, is at made of any other version we are acquainted with.

pit, because he is a sneerer. Milton's Devil I was subjected haunted me day and night. is too proud to be flippant. Napoleon rarely In the former, the torture of meditation was indulged in mere verbiage, like Voltaire. excessive; in the latter, supreme. When Great ambition, which cannot exist without the grim darkness overspread the earth, great pride, is always self-concentrated, col- then, with the very horror of thought, I lected, above mere smartness; terrible in its shook-shook as the quivering plumes upon silence. But Goethe has represented evil by the hearse. When nature could endure making its personification an Encyclopædist. wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle Byron too has grappled with the nature that I consented to sleep; for I shuddered of evil. A Lucifer, in his hands, means in- to reflect that, upon awaking, I might find tellect. His Devil is not the demon of pride, myself the tenant of a grave. And when, like Milton's, nor the demon of skepticism, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to like Goethe's; but, if we may be permitted rush at once into the world of phantasms, the phrase, the demon of metaphysical an- above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing alysis. He is a logician, a reasoner, a wings, hovered predominant the one sepulbold theorizer. He represents pure reason, chral idea."* This is an accurate picture unsupported by faith. We do not assert of a strong intellect, harassed by doubt. that the poet intended that it should be so; Mrs. Browning is the author of a noble. but as Cain, in the drama, personifies a met-poem, called "The Drama of Exile." While aphysical and analytic intellect, Lucifer very evidently is its attendant shadow, which we may call daring Doubt. Byron does not make the primal murderer a commonplace villain; he is none of his capricious Corsairs or lack-a-daisical Laras; but a strong, gloomy man, of the John Forster school, pursued by his own thoughts to destruction, like Actæon by his hounds. Evil, according to Byron's creed, is not in the universe, but in ourselves. It follows us as closely and naturally as our shadow. It is not mean pride or mockery; it means an impossibility of faith. And what Hell so fitting a residence for a fallen, seared spirit, as a mind which sees a skeleton beneath every form-which says, with Tennyson's "lean and gay-toothed man,”

"Every face, however full, Padded round with flesh and fat,

Is but modelled on a skull ?"

writing it, the lady sat beneath the shadow of Milton's soul. She is, all through the poem, like her own Corneille, "an orator of rhyme." The subject is the exile of our first parents from Eden. The story commences where Paradise Lost terminatedwith the banishment. The latter concludes, like a sad and lofty dirge, when the afflicted two disappear through the cherubim-guarded gate,

"With solemn steps and slow."

And the poetess continues the strain, as if a mourner with a softer voice caught up the dying note, and prolonged it. Of course, Evil or Lucifer plays a part in the drama. But he is sadly altered since we saw him last, holding high court in Pandemonium, surrounded by his grim and ghastly brethren. He has become quite human; a polished and insidious gentleman; in fact, quite a lady's ideal of a Devil. He is very eloquent, and bad enough-a supernatural Danton. He is more of a rhetorician than Satan, and less of a demon than Mephistopheles. Occasionally, even through his modern phrases and arguments, we recognize the proud spirit which

This is the worst Hell of all. Though we cannot assert, with Pierre Leroux and his brother philosophers, that Hell and Heaven exist only in the human heart-for we leave such questions to the constituted authorities -we may be allowed to remark, that a mind self-tortured by religious doubts is the type of the utterest misery known to us. Poe has given us involuntarily a terrible picture of such a mind in one of his tales-"The Premature Burial "—which will confirm our assertion: "My fancy grew charnal. I talked of worms, of tombs, of epitaphs. I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual possession * Vide Collected Edition of the Works of Edgar of my brain. The ghastly danger to which | Allan Poe, published by Redfield, vol. 1, p. 333.

"Clashed on the sounding shield the din of war” against the Highest. He is a composite demon; and his eighteenth century sarcasm cannot altogether conceal the old audacity and pride. For has Milton ever coined

more ringing sentences than the follow- come at their real meaning. The present ing?

"Here's a brave earth to sin and suffer on!

It holds fast still-it cracks not under curse;
It holds, like mine, immortal. Presently
We'll sow it thick enough with graves as green,
Or greener, certes, than its knowledge-tree!
We'll have the cypress for the tree of life,
More eminent for shadow;-for the rest,
We'll build it dark with towns and pyramids,
And temples, if it please you. We'll have feasts
And funerals also merry-makes and wars,
Till blood and wine shall mix and run along,
Right on the edges! And, good Gabriel,-
(Ye like that word in Heaven!)—I too have
strength-

Strength to behold Him, and not worship Him;
Strength to fall from Him, and not cry on Him;
Strength to be in the universe; and yet
Neither God, nor his servant. The red sign,
Burnt on my forehead, which you taunt me with,
Is God's sign that it bows not unto God;
The potter's mark upon his work, to show
It rings well to the striker. I and the earth
Can bear more curse.

"GABRIEL. O ruined angel!

"LUCIFER.

O miserable earth!

Well! and if it be,

I CHOSE this ruin,-I elected it

Of my will, not of my service. What I do,
I do volitient, not obedient,

And overtop thy crown with my despair.
My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to
Heaven,

And leave me to the earth, which is mine own,
In virtue of her misery, as I hers,
In virtue of my ruin! Turn from both
That bright, impassive, passive angelhood,
And spare to read us backward any more
Of your spent hallelujahs!"

So spake the arch-fiend. The words
worthy of him-proud, bold, defiant,

as fate and salt of life."

are

"sad

writer might be permitted to quote, without being accused of presumption, a few lines from an unpublished poem, in which he has thrown his weak arms round this subject, and striven to clasp it. If they have no other effect, they will show, at all events, that he is able to appreciate the genius of a poet, without being committed to his creed. Dealing with this very question of Evil, he

says:

"The good preponderates;
For good and God are synonyms. Strong Faith,
Which breaks the shell of life, and spreads its
In the broad sunshine of Jehovah's throne,—
wings
Which walks with up-turned face, and even bears
A halo round its head,-the reflex of the light
And Love, that knits two separate hearts together,
Which glances from the features of the One;-
Until they branch and grow like twining trees,
Fed by one sunshine, nourished by one moisture,
Of different kindred, and yet twins in life;
And Hope, that holds the sufferer's head above
The rising waves, and points unto the shore,
Whispering of home, until he strikes forth boldly;
And Knowledge, which is master of the elements,
Calling the lightning of God's truth to earth,
As with a Franklin wand,―all, all are good!
'The universe is but a thought of God,'*
And God can think no evil!"

Bailey holds different opinions, and would be likely to indulge in a hearty laugh at the weak optimism, and, mayhap, rhetorical gammon, which is our best attempt at poetical composition; (we speak on the principle that a modest word turns away wrath ;) and we cannot do better than allow him to explain his own views in his own words. After the popularity of Festus had become a fixed fact, many severe attacks on its theological opinions appeared in the leading journals of And now we come to the Lucifer of Fes- England, which necessitated a reply. Actus-a strange creation, powerful, original, cordingly, in the second edition of the work, unique. The author believes that Evil is a a proem was published, which was intended phantasm, not a reality; or we may say with to be, at the same time, an explanation and more accuracy, he believes that, if it does a vindication. Many persons consider that exist, it is but the mask which conceals the this proem is the most objectionable portion features of Good. He regards it as a neces- of the volume; that the work has been insary shadow of the highest throne, darken- jured, not improved, by it; in a word, that ing the world momentarily, but not disfigur-"explanation has spoiled it." Be this true ing it. It is a necessity, like the mountains or not, the proem is somewhat more than or the atmosphere; it is the complement of an explanatory preface; it is a recapitulation Good. As salt must have a sweet-as sun in brief of the leading thoughts of the writer implies shade, or night day-Good, in his opinion, necessitates that shadow which is called Evil. We do not commit ourselves to the views and speculations of our author, because we endeavor to analyze them, and

the

*This noble line is a literal translation from prose of Schiller. The original may be found in a juvenile work of his, called (we quote from memory) "The Letters of Raphael."

-his final summing up. As a poem, it is [ in nowise inferior to the drama which follows it; nay, it stands alone in literature as a treatise on dogmatic theology which is closely scientific and logical, without ceasing to be poetical. It is solemn and grand as a death-sermon from Bossuet. We may differ from the preacher; but while his warm words and passionate thoughts dig up the tears from our hearts, and shake us as with a storm of grief, we cannot help loving him. Thus nobly his vindication commences-a proud plea for his race and his art:

“Without all fear, without presumption, he

Who wrote this book would speak respecting it
A few brief words, and face his friend, the world;
Revising, not reversing, what hath been.
Poetry is itself a thing of God:

He made his prophets poets; and the more
We feel of poesie, do we become
Like God in love and power; under-makers.
All great lays, equals to the mind of man,
Deal more or less with the divine, and have
For end some good of mind or soul of man.
The mind is this world's, but the soul is God's;
The wise man joins them here all in his power.
The high and holy works, amid lesser lays,
Stand up like churches among village cots;
And it is joy to think that in every age,
However much the world was wrong therein,
The greatest works of mind or hand have been
Done unto God. So may they ever be!
It shows the strength of wish we have to be great,
And the sublime humility of might."

As the pure, colorless intelligence,
Which dwells in Heaven and the dead Hadëan
shades.

We will, and act, and talk of liberty;
And all our wills, and all our doings both,
Are limited within this little life.
Free will is but necessity in play.
The clattering of the golden reins which guide
The thunder-footed coursers of the sun;
The ship which goes to sea informed with fire,
Obeying only its own iron force,

Reckless of adverse tide, breeze dead, or weak
As infant's parting breath, too faint to stir
The feather held before it, is as much
The appointed thrall of all the elements
As the white-bosomed bark which woos the
wind,

And when it dies, desists. And thus with man:
However contrary he set his heart

To God, he is but working out His will;
And, at an infinite angle, more or less
Obeying his own soul's necessity.

He only hath free will, whose will is fate.
Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
By ministry of evil, good is clear;

And by temptation, virtue;-as of yore,
Out of the grave rose God. Let this be deemed
Enough to justify the portion weighed
To the great spirit, Evil, named herein.
If evil seemed the most, yet good most is;
As water may be deep and pure below,
Although the face be filmy for a time."

But the proem, though beautiful in itself was scarcely necessary to the intelligibility of the character of Lucifer in this play. The The Lucifer which tempts Festus is not a character explains itself; it needs no key. mental attribute, as in Milton's Satan; he These lines are sufficient to show that our is not pride, nor skepticism, nor metaphysica poet understands his mission. In no light analysis; he represents sensuality. Through or frivolous spirit does he enter upon his the gratification of his senses; not through lofty theme, not influenced by schoolboy a proud search for wisdom, a wild aspiration ambition, or weak desire to be the object of after the fruit of knowledge; not through pointed fingers and muttered "There he is;" intellectual subtility, or light laughter at not from mere cacoethes scribendi, (the things which are sacred; not by fierce scribbler's itch,) a worse disease than Scot-wrestling with the mysteries of this breathland has begotten; but from a pure and ing world, desperate attempts to read the holy impulse, from a belief in his own in-riddle of the Sphinx, (which is nature,) vain spiration, and a determination to sing a and reckless as the efforts of that strain which shall sink into the world's heart; because, as his own fine words express it, it is "done unto God." But we said we would let him speak on the question which we have been prosing about, in his own words. Here they are. The reader will observe that evil is regarded as a necessity, but a necessity which developes good:

"Necessity, like electricity,

Is in ourselves and all things, and no more
Without us than within us; and we live,
We of this mortal mixture, in the same law

"First poet upon Tiber side, Who dropped his plummet down the broad, Great universe, and said, 'No God,'

Finding no bottom !"

not through such errors falls Festus. His Devil is the flesh; his own nature is his weakness. Lucifer means nothing more than the physical beauty and carnal fascinations which distract the mind of aspiring youth, and sway it from lofty themes to the pursuit of mundane pleasure. Youth is always more or less sensual. Its passage from