The recent superb production in our cities of an English version of Goethe's tragedy, by Henry Irving, the London actor, sets people to looking up the great German poem,—if not in the original, then in the metrical translations, by Rev. Charles T. Brooks and Bayard Taylor, or the prose translation by Hayward.
How that story enters into the heart of mankind,—because it symbolizes human experience.
Faust has spent a life in study; but worldly wisdom satisfies him not. His age is only in thought; so when the tempting idea comes, symbolized by the red-clad Mephistopheles , Faust straightway becomes young, and seeks youthful pleasures. His intense selfishness leads to the ruin of Margaret, and involves the murder of her mother, brother, and babe. There are compunctions in his heart; but when at last he bids Satan get behind him, Satan declines to do so. He has his prey, and is bound to hold him. Why? Because Faust holds to evil thought.
