"Had I as many souls as there be stars,
I'd give them all for Mephistopheles."
Mr. Hallam, in comparing Marlowe's production with Goethe's, remarks,—"The fair form of Margaret is wanting." As if this were all that was wanting! Margaret belonged, indeed, exclusively to Goethe. But Helena, the favorite ideal of beauty of all old writers, is introduced in the popular tale, and so, too, in Marlowe. Faustus conjures up her spirit at the request of the students. Her beauty is described with glowing colors; "it would," says the old romance, "nearly have enflamed the students, but that they persuaded themselves she was a spirit, which made them lightly passe away such fancies." Not so Faustus; although he is already in the twenty-third year of his compact, he himself falls in love with the spirit, and keeps her with him until his end. In all this, Marlowe follows closely; though he has good taste enough to suppress the figure of the little Justus Faustus, who was the fruit of this union.
It now only remains to us to consider the way in which modern poets have apprehended the idea of the Faust-fable. None of the German dramas and operas which the seventeenth century produced, though they never failed to draw large audiences, could be compared, in poetical value, to Marlowe's tragedy. The German stage of that period was of very low standing, and the few poets who wrote for it, as, for instance, Lohenstein, preferred foreign subjects,—the more remote in space and time, the better. The writers of neither the first nor the second Silesian school were exactly the men to appreciate the depth of a legend like that of Faustus,—still less the watery poets of the beginning of the eighteenth century. Lessing, who, with his sharp, sound criticism, and his clear perception of the beautiful, led the way to a higher state of things in literature, appears also to have been the first to discover the deep meaning buried in the popular farces of Faustus. He pronounced it worthy the genius of a Shakspeare, and himself attempted to make it the subject of a tragedy. How much it occupied his mind we may conclude from the circumstance that he seems to have made for it two plans, essentially different from each other. We can only regret that they were never executed. Although Lessing was not a poetical genius like Goethe, the power and acuteness of his mind were so eminent, the force of his critical faculties was so penetrating, that his treatment of a subject of so much depth and intrinsic poetry would have been of the highest interest. This expectation is also justified by the few sketches of single scenes which are all that remain of his plans. One of the latter is, indeed, also in so far remarkable, as we see from it that Lessing's mind inclined to the modern view, according to which Faustus ought to be and would be finally saved. One of the devils describes him, before temptation, as "a solitary, thinking youth, entirely devoted to wisdom,—living, breathing, only for wisdom and knowledge,—renouncing every passion but the one for truth,—highly dangerous to thee [Satan] and to us all, if he were ever to be a teacher of the people." Satan resolves at once to seduce and destroy him. But Faustus's good angel has mercy on him. He buries him in a deep sleep, and creates in his place a phantom, with which the cheated devils try successfully the whole process of temptation and seduction. All this appears to Faustus in a dream. He awakes; the Devil discovers his error, and flies with shame and fury, and Faustus, thanking Providence for its warning, clings to truth and virtue more firmly than ever.
The other plan, to judge from the fragment we possess, is less fanciful, and seems to follow more closely the popular tradition, according to which the temptations of Faustus were by no means external, but lay deep in his individual mind. In one of its lightly-sketched scenes, the poet has evidently availed himself of the one from the Miracle-Book heretofore mentioned, and, indeed, with a great deal of force. Faustus, impatient and annoyed at the slow process of human action, desires the quickest servant from hell, and successively cites seven spirits. One after another he rejects. The arrows of the plague, the wings of the winds, the beams of light, are all not quick enough for him. The fifth spirit rises:—
"Faustus. How quick art thou?
"Fifth Spirit. As quick as the thoughts of men.
"Faustus. That is something!—But the thoughts of men are not always quick. They are slothful when truth and virtue demand them. Thou canst be quick, if thou wilt. But who will warrant me thy being always quick?—No, I trust thee as little as I ought to have trusted myself.—Ah!—(to the sixth spirit.) Now tell me how quick thou art!
"Sixth Spirit. As quick as the vengeance of the Avenger.
"Faustus. Of the Avenger? Of what Avenger?
"Sixth Spirit. Of the All-powerful, the Terrible, who has kept vengeance for himself alone, because vengeance is his delight.