the contrary, the laugh is generally on his own side.
Still, Goethe is playing with the Devil all the time. He does not
believe in the actual existence of the Prince of Evil, but simply uses
the familiar old figure to work out a psychological drama. The same is
true of Byron. Satan, in the _Vision of Judgment_, is a superb presence,
moving with a princely splendor; but had it suited his purpose, Byron
could have made him a very different character.

The Devil is, indeed, treated with much greater levity by Coleridge and
Southey, and Shelley knocks him about a good deal in _Peter Bell the
Third_--

The Devil, I safely can aver,
Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;
Nor is he, as some sages swear,
A spirit, neither here nor there,
In nothing--yet in everything.
He is--what we are! for sometimes
The Devil is a gentleman;
At others a bard bartering rhymes
For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;
A swindler, living as he can.

These and many other verses show what liberties Shelley took with the
once formidable monarch of hell. The Devil's treatment by the pulpiteers
is instructive. Take up an old sermon and you will find the Devil all
over it. The smell of brimstone is on every page, and you see the whisk
of his tail as you turn the leaf. But things are changed now. Satan is
no longer a person, except in the vulgar circles of sheer illiteracy,
where the preacher is as great an ignoramus as his congregation. If
you take up any reputable volume of sermons by a Church parson or a
Dissenting minister, you find the Devil either takes a back seat or
disappears altogether in a metaphysical cloud. None of these subtle
resolvers of ancient riddles, however, approaches grand old Donne,
who said in one of his fine discourses that "the Devil himself is only
concentrated stupidity." What a magnificent flash of insight! Yes,
the great enemy of mankind is stupidity; and, alas, against that,
as Schiller said, the gods themselves fight in vain. Yet time fights
against it, and time is greater than the gods; so there is hope after
all.

Gradually the Devil has dropped, until he has at last peached the lowest
depth. He is now patronised by the Salvation Army. Booth exhibits him
for a living, and all the Salvation Army Captains and Hallelujah Lasses
parade him about to the terror of a few fools and the amusement of
everyone else. Poor Devil! Belisarius begging an obolus was nothing
to th