MEPHISTOPHELES.*

Since Thou, O Lord, dost condescend once more
To ask how we are getting on below,
And aye hast seen me willingly before,
Amongst thy servants now my face I shew.

* It seems to me that the personal character of Mephistopheles (literally, a lover of dirt) or the branch of the principle of evil which he represents, is the perversion of the divine principle of Love, as embodied in the Belial of Milton, and the classical Cupido, the son of Nox and Erebus, distinguished for his debauchery and riotous disposition from the true Love, the son of Jupiter and Venus. (The reader is referred to the account which Mephistopheles gives of his own origin when questioned by Faust upon his appearing as a travelling scholar in the study.) The following is the passage in Milton to which I allude:

Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself: to him no temple stood
Or altar smoked, yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled
With lust and violence the house of God.
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage: and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons

Fine words are not my forte, excuse my style,

Even though this scornful circle vote it low.
My pathos certainly would make THEE smile,
Hadst THOU not left off laughing long ago.

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night

In Gibeah.

PARADISE LOST.

Belial is also represented as alone joining Satan in scoffing at the effects of the artillery of hell upon the ranks of heaven :-

To whom thus Belial in like gamesome mood,

"Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight,
Of hard contents, and full of force urged home :"

and in "Paradise Regained" there is a remarkable similitude between the advice he gives as to the course to be pursued in the temptation of the Saviour, and that actually pursued by Mephistopheles in the temptation of Faust:

Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell,
The sensualest, and after Asmodai
The fleshliest incubus, and thus advised:
"Set women in his eye and in his walk
Among the daughters of men the fairest found,
Many are in each region passing fair

As the noon sky, more like to goddesses
Than mortal creatures, graceful and discreet,
Expert in amorous arts, enchanting tongues,
Persuasive, virgin majesty with mild,
And sweet allayed, yet terrible to approach,

About the sun and world I have no skill
To hold forth, all indeed I ever see
Is man, himself tormenting constantly.
The little godling of the world is still

Skilled to retire, and in retiring draw
Hearts after them tangled in amorous nets;
Such object hath the power to soften and tame
Severest temper, smooth the ruggedst brow,
Ennerve, and with voluptuous hope dissolve,
Draw out with credulous desire and lead
At will the manliest, resolutest breast,
As the magnetic hardest iron draws:
Women, when nothing else beguiled the heart
Of wisest Solomon, and made him build

And made him bow to the gods of his wives.

Whereupon Satan turns sharp upon his counsellor, and unhesitatingly saddles him with all the irregularities of the heathen mythology :

Have we not seen or by relation heard,

In courts and regal chambers how thou lurkest,

In grove or wood, by mossy fountain side,

In valley or green meadow to waylay
Some beauty rare, Calisto, Clymene,
Daphne, and Semele, Antiopa

Or Anymone, Syrinx, many more

Too long, then layest thy 'scapes on names adored,

Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, and Pan,

Satyr, or Faun, or Sylvan.

Struck from the selfsame die, and without change
Remains as since his first creation, strange:

A better life he'd lead hadst thou not given
Him a faint glimmering of the light of heaven :
He calls it reason, yet doth it apply
To beat the beasts in bestiality.

Saving your presence, he seems to me
Like a long-legged grasshopper only to be,
That ever is hopping and flying along,

And chirrupping down in the grass its old song;
And would in the grass he might ever repose,
For in each bit of dirt he will bury his nose.

"He hath cast off all obedience to God, and likewise called Belial, which is an Hebrew word and signifies one that is good for nothing, a libertine, one that is extremely wicked. The most subtle of these spirits contrived a temptation which might be most taking and dangerous to man in his exalted and happy state. He attempts him with art, by propounding the lure of knowledge and pleasure to inveigle the spiritual and sensitive. He first allured with the hopes of impunity, YE SHALL NOT DIE. He then promised an universal knowledge of good and evil."-Cruden's Concordance, (Devil).

The character of libertinism Mephistopheles supports to the end, even in his address to the angels who are carrying Faust's soul to heaven. He however fails in inspiring it in Faust, in whom, though disfigured by weaknesses and vices, the loftier principle of love predominates to the last, when he places the highest happiness in beneficence.

THE LORD.

Hast thou no more to say, comest thou ever

With some complaint? will the Earth please thee never?

MEPHISTOPHeles.

No, Lord, for as from the beginning I find
The Earth to this day a creation of evils,
In their days of deep sorrow I feel for mankind,
Even I have not heart to torment the

poor

devils.

MEPHISTOPHELES.

Faith, he's a peculiar way

Of serving you, the idiot does not think Aught good enough to be his meat and drink; He's half aware though that his senses stray.

Yea,