some. In the room of the Wartburg where he sat
translating the Bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall;
the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. Luther sat translating
one of the Psalms; he was worn-down with long labour, with sickness,
abstinence from food: there rose before him some hideous indefinable
Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther
started-up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre,
and it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious monument
of several things. Any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we
are to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense: but the man's
heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell itself, can
give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before
exists not on this Earth or under it.--Fearless enough! 'The Devil is
aware,' writes he on one occasion, 'that this does not proceed out of
fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George,'
of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, 'Duke George is not equal to one
Devil,'--far short of a Devil! 'If I had business at Leipzig, I would
ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke-Georges for nine days
running.' What a reservoir of Dukes to ride into!--

At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man's courage
was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obstinacy and savagery, as many
do. Far from that. There may be an absence of fear which arises from
the absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and
stupid fury. We do not value the courage of the tiger highly! With
Luther it was far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than
this of mere ferocious violence brought against him. A most gentle
heart withal, full of pity and love, as indeed the truly valiant heart
ever is. The tiger before a _stronger_ foe--flies: the tiger is not
what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few things more
touching than those soft breathings of affection, soft as a child's or
a mother's, in this great wild heart of Luther. So honest,
unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their utterance; pure as
water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was all that downpressed
mood of despair and reprobation, which we saw in his youth, but the
outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and
fine? It is the course such men as the poor Poet Cowper fall into.
Luther to a slight observer mi