ne of his chief
whims to be reckoned by the fiends as the inventor of the sciences. He
often said, in his pride, that he had begotten them in his intercourse
with the daughters of earth, in order to divert men from the
straightforward and noble feelings of their hearts; to remove from their
eyes the mystic veil which constitutes their happiness; to make them
acquainted with their state of restriction and weakness; and to fill them
with painful doubt concerning their after destination. "I taught them,"
he would continue, "by their means, to reason, so that they might forget
to practise virtue, and to worship. We ourselves have defied Heaven with
bold and open weapons, and I have at least shown them the way of
skirmishing incessantly with the Eternal."

The sensible reader will here pause, and admire the strict resemblance of
all courts to each other: that is, how the great, through the service,
toil, and sweat of the little, win the favour of their sovereigns, and
bear away the rewards. Leviathan gave himself out as the inventor of
this allegorical ballet, and was on that account thanked and caressed,
although the real author of it was the Bavarian Poet Laureate, who a
short time before had died of hunger, and found his way to hell. He
prepared the ballet after the latest court-fashion, by the command of
Prince Leviathan, who had at least talent enough to discover merit: the
reason of his bitter allusions to the sciences was, probably, because
they had so ill supported him; and perhaps Leviathan, who knew perfectly
well what would please Satan, had given him a hint to that effect. Be
this as it may, the devil had the reward, and the thin shade of the
Bavarian Laureate sat cowering behind a rock of the theatre, and observed
with bitterest agony the marks of unmerited favour which Satan had
lavished on Leviathan.

The half-intoxicated devils now became so clamorous as nearly to drown
the howls of the damned; when suddenly the powerful voice of Faustus
echoed from the upper world through hell. He had at length surmounted
every obstacle, and now summoned before him one of the first princes of
the kingdom of darkness.

Satan started up in ecstasy: "It is Faustus who calls there. No one else
has the power; and no one else, if he had such power, would dare to knock
so loudly against the iron portals. Up! up! a man like him is worth a
thousand of the scoundrels who come down hither every day by rote."
Then, turning t