Word: deviled
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...even these epics possessed little merit until they underwent their final transformation into the forms in which we know them, just as the first streaks of a new dawn were beginning to relieve the night of the Dark Ages. At the same time or a little later, the Devil too began to show some improvement. In Dante we see little of him. But where he does appear at the close of the "Inferno," he is no longer the spiteful imp of human or even less than human size, going about the earth to play practical jokes and catch the souls...
...another step remained to be taken in the evolution of the Devil. In Dante the Devil is still powerless against the Almighty. He is chained up in the lowest circle of hell. It was in Milton that the Devil became truly grand. Here he is represented as comparatively free, warring against the Almighty, detiant even when conquered by superior force. I am far from joining in the general admiration for "Paradise Lost." The poem, except the part which deals with Satan, seems to me exceedingly formal and wanting in true inspiration. God and the whole heavenly council talk like...
After Milton comes the classical age, and the Christian mythology ceases to inspire poetry. The classical poets return to the dead and formal use of the personifications and abstractions of the heathen mythology. We have the Devil of De Foe's matter-of-fact "History;" but here the Devil is the old popular Devil with the horns, tail, and cloven foot, which he acquired in the Middle Ages period of his evolution, His principal occupation is to play the devil with old women and other simple people, and we find little new in him. This same Devil has appeared from...
...greatest Devil of all, from a literary point of view, seems to me to be Goethe's Mephistopheles. He has little in common with Milton's Satan. There is none of the grandeur, indomitable will, and unconquerable love of independence and power, which mark the creation of the great Puritan poet. This is the modern Devil. He has seen through this great humbug which men call the world. He has no desire to get himself into trouble by trying to overturn the powers that be. Of course they are all wrong, but then he likes to make an occasional morning...
Yesterday, a Junior heard one Freshman say to another, "Let's go into Boston to-night on a devil of a toot. We won't be back till eleven o'clock." This is fact, not rumor...