affecting his aims and art as a poet, distinctly mark the continuation.

"Whence, having observed them" (the elegiac and love poets) "to account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love, those high perfections which, under one or other name, they took to celebrate, I thought with myself, by every instinct and presage of nature, (which is not wont to be false,) that what emboldened them to this task might, with such diligence as they used, embolden me, and that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share would herein best appear, and best value itself, by how much more wisely, and with more love of virtue I should choose (let rude ears be absent!) the object of not unlike praises. For, albeit these thoughts to some will seem virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort perhaps idle, yet the mentioning of them now will end in serious. Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible, when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For, by the firm settling of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient, that, if I found these authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought in me:-From that time forward, their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and, above them all, preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never wrote but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts, without transgression. And long it was not after when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poemthat is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy."— Apology for Smectymnuus.

Here, at last, therefore, we have Milton's own judgment on the matter of our inquiry. He had speculated himself on that subject; he had made it a matter of conscious investigation what kind of moral tone and career would best fit a man to be a poet, on the one hand, or would be most likely to frustrate his hopes of writing well, on the other; and his conclusion, as we see, was dead against the "wild oats" theory. Had Ben Jonson, according to our previous fancy, proffered him, out of kindly interest, a touch of that theory, while criticising his juvenile poems, and telling him how he might learn to write better, there would have descended on the lecturer, as sure as fate, a rebuke, though from young lips, that would have made his old face blush. "He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem:"-fancy that sentence-an early and often pronounced formula of Milton's, as we may be sure it was-hurled, some

evening, could time and chance have permitted it, into the midst of the assembled Elizabethan wits at the Mermaid! What interruption of the jollity, what mingled uneasiness and resentment, what turning of faces towards the new speaker, what forced laughter to conceal consternation! Only Shakespeare, one thinks, had he been present, would have fixed on the bold youth a mild and approving eye, would have looked round the room thoroughly to observe the whole scene, and, remembering some passages in his own life, would mayhap have had his own thoughts! Certainly, at least, the essence of that wonderful and special development of the literary genius of England, which came between the Elizabethan epoch and the epoch of the Restoration, and which was represented and consummated in Milton himself, consisted in the fact that then there was a temporary protest, and by a man able to make it good, against the theory of "wild oats," as current before and current since. The nearest poet to Milton in this respect, since Milton's time, has undoubtedly been Wordsworth.

THE THREE DEVILS:

LUTHER'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S.*

LUTHER, Milton, and Goethe: these are three strange names to bring together. It strikes us, however, that the effect will be interesting if we connect these three great names, as having each represented to us the Principle of Evil, and each represented him in a different way. Each of the three has left on record his conception of a great accursed being, incessantly working in human affairs, and whose function it is to produce evil. There is nothing more striking about Luther than the amazing sincerity of his belief in the existence of such an evil being, the great general enemy of mankind, and whose specific object, at that time, it was to resist Luther's movement, and, if possible, "cut his soul out of God's mercy." What Luther's exact conception of this being was, is to be gathered from his life and writings. Again, we have Milton's Satan. And, lastly, we have Goethe's Mephistopheles. Nor is it possible to confound the three, or, for a moment, to mistake the one for the other. They are as unlike as it is possible for three grand conceptions of the same thing to be. It cannot, therefore, but be interesting and profitable to make their peculiarities and their differences. a subject of study. Milton's Satan, and Goethe's Mephistopheles, have indeed been frequently contrasted in a vague, antithetic way; for no writer could possibly go through a description of Goethe's Mephistopheles without saying something or other about Milton's Satan. The exposition, however, of the difference between the two has never been sufficiently elaborate; and, besides, it appears to us, that it will have the effect of giving the whole speculation greater

* FRASER'S MAGAZINE. Dec. 1844.

value and interest if, in addition to Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles, we take in Luther's Devil. In this paper, therefore, we shall attempt to expound the difference between Luther's Devil, Milton's Satan, and Goethe's Mephistopheles; and, of course, the way to do this effectively is to expound the three in succession. It is scarcely necessary to premise that here there is to be no theological discussion. All that we propose is, to compare, as we find them, three very striking delineations of the Evil Principle, one of them experimental, the other two poetical.

These last words indicate one respect, in which, it will be perceived, at the outset, that Luther's conception of the Evil Principle on the one hand, and Milton's and Goethe's on the other, are fundamentally distinguishable. All the three, of course, are founded on the Scriptural proposition of the existence of a being whose express function it is to produce evil. Luther, firmly believing every jot and tittle of Scripture, believed the proposition about the Devil also, and so the whole of his experience of evil in himself and others was cast into the shape of a verification of that proposition. Had he started without such a preliminary conception, his experience would have had to encounter the difficulty of expressing itself in some other way; which, it is likely, would not have been nearly so effective, or so Luther-like. Milton, too, borrows the elements of his conception of Satan from Scripture. The Fallen Angel of the Bible is the hero of Paradise Lost; and one of the most striking things about this poem is, that in it we see the grand imagination of the poet blazing in the very track of the propositions of the theologian. And, though there can be no doubt that Goethe's Mephistopheles is conceived less in the spirit of Scripture than either Milton's Satan or Luther's Devil, still, even in Mephistopheles we discern the lineaments of the same traditional being. All the three, then, have this in common-that they are founded on the Scriptural proposition of the existence of an accursed being, whose function it is to produce evil, and that, more or less, they adopt the Scriptural account of that being. Still, as we have said, Luther's conception of this being belongs to

one category; Milton's and Goethe's to another. Luther's is a biographical phenomenon; Milton's and Goethe's are literary performances. Luther illustrated the Evil Being of Scripture to himself, by means of his personal experience. Whatever resistance he met with; whatever obstacle to Divine grace he found in his own heart or in external circumstances; whatever event he saw plainly cast in the way of the progress of the Gospel; whatever outbreak of a bad or unamiable spirit occurred in the Church; whatever strange phenomenon of nature wore a malevolent aspect,-out of that he obtained a clearer notion of the Devil. In this way, it might be said, that Luther was all his life gaining a deeper insight into the Devil's character. On the other hand, Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles are poetical creations—the one epic, the other dramatic. Borrowing the elements of his conception from Scripture, Milton set himself to the task of describing the ruined archangel as he may be supposed to have existed at that epoch of the creation when he had hardly decided his own function; as yet warring with the Almighty, or, in pursuit of a gigantic scheme of revenge, travelling from star to star. Poetically assuming the device of the same Scriptural proposition, Goethe set himself to the task of representing the Spirit of Evil as he existed six thousand years later; no longer gifted with the same powers of locomotion, or struggling for admission into this part of the universe, but plying his understood function in crowded cities and on the minds of individuals.

So far as the mere fact of Milton's making Satan the hero of his epic, or of Goethe's making Mephistopheles a character in his drama, qualifies us to speak of the theological opinions of the one or of the other, we are not entitled to say that either Milton or Goethe believed in a Devil at all, as Luther did. Or, again, it is quite conceivable that Milton might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did, and that Goethe might have believed in a Devil as sincerely as Luther did, also; and yet, that, in that case, the Devil which Milton believed in might not have been the Satan of the Paradise Lost, and the Devil which Goethe believed in might not have been the Mephistopheles of Faust. Of course, we have other