counterfeit than in his genuine shape. But whether in the one or the other; whether in his own dun hide the devil plays his part before the "bacon-brained" boors of the middle ages, in the "Mysteries;" or whether, as Appolyon, he wrestles with Bunyan; or, as Astorath, assaults Saint Anthony; or plays the mischief with Faustus in Marlowe; or fills Dante's Inferno with his form; or sits at the dreaming car of our first mother with Milton, whispering his wily wickedness; or hovers over Madrid on the mantle of Asmodeus; or wings his way with Byron's Cain to the netnermost abysses to look upon pre-Adamite phantoms and the chaos of death; or, with Goethe, dances through the Walpurgis Night among the witches of the Broeken; or blurts out crazed blasphemy with Bailey's Festus; or lures Beauty to a noble sacrifice in Longfellow's Golden Legend; he is not more certainly the principle of evil, and the antagonist of good, than when he plays the hypocrite with Joseph Surface, murders noble natures with the honesty of Iago, harps on his humility with Heep, or embodies the intense badness of Jeffrey Puncheons, or lubricates the downward way with Oily Gammon, or teases and cheats simplicity with Becky Sharp, or dishes out to poor school-boys molasses and brimstone with the ladle of Mrs. Squeers!
But my subject is large enough when limited to the analysis of the Satanic element in literature, where Satan appears in person, and not by proxy. The consideration of the use made of him by Dante, Marlowe, Milton, Goethe, Byron, Southey, and Bailey, will afford theine enough. Its discussion will imply an examination into the original suggestions which these authors profited by in the delineation of their several devils.
The Mosaic history of the evil spirit, his form in Eden, and the consequences of his temptations are familiar. They are the germ out of which nearly all diabolic literature has grown. Wherever introduced, the arch-rebel tempts man to his fall by the alluring fruits of pleasure and knowledge. Another Biblical account, nearly contemporaneous with that of Moses, is that in which Satan is represented as asking of God the privilege to tempt Job. It represents Satan, not as a fallen rebel, but as a tempter; the more potent because authorized by Jehovah; or, as Bailey expresses it, as the
