The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's With Other Essays

The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's; With Other Essays

Transcribers Note: Text underscored in gray indicates the site of a correction. Hover the cursor over the marked text and the nature of the correction should appear. Otherwise inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. The first five of the following Essays are reprinted from the Authors Essays Biographical and Critical: chiefly on English Poets, published in 1856. The present Volume and two similar Volumes issued separately (under the titles Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays and Chatterton: A Story of the Year 1770) may be taken together as forming a new and somewhat enlarged edition of the older book. The addition in the present Volume consists of the last Essay. Luther, Milton, and Goethe: these are very strange names to bring together. It strikes us, however, that the effect may not be uninteresting if we connect the names of those three great men, 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, in Luthers time, it was to resist Luthers movement, and, if possible, cut his soul out of Gods mercy. What was Luthers exact conception of this being is to[Pg 4] be gathered from his life and writings. Again, we have Miltons Satan. Lastly, we have Goethes 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. May it not, then, be profitable to make their peculiarities and their differences a subject of study? Miltons Satan and Goethes Mephistopheles have indeed been frequently contrasted in a vague, antithetic way; for no writer could possibly give a description of Goethes Mephistopheles without saying something or other about Miltons Satan. The exposition, however, of the difference between the two has never been sufficient; and it may give the whole speculation greater interest if, in addition to Miltons Satan and Goethes Mephistopheles, we include Luthers Devil. 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. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 35438
Author: Masson, David
Release Date: Mar 1, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English