Essays Biographical and Critical - 1856 Author:David Masson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE THREE DEVILS: LUTHEK'S, MILTON'S, AND GOETHE'S/ Luther, Milton, and Goethe: these are three strange names to bring together. It strikes us, however, th... more »at 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 sufftciently elaborate; and, besides, it appears to us, that it will have the effect of giving the whole speculation greater Eraser's Magazine. Dec. 1314. value and interest if, in addition to Milton's Satan and Goe...« less