have been either a very supercilious or a very incurious traveller if he did not, for the gratification of his guide at least, inform himself by means of his pen-knife, that the said marvellous blot bids defiance to all the toils of the fcrubbing brush, and is to remain a fign for ever; and with this advantage over most of its kindred, that being capable of a double interpretation, it is equally flattering to the Proteftant and the Papift, and is regarded by the wonder-loving zealots of both parties, with equal faith. Whether the great man ever did throw his inkftand at his Satanic Majefty, whether he ever boasted of the exploit, and himself declared the dark blotch on his study wall in the Warteburg, to be the refult and relict of this author-like handgrenado, (happily for mankind he used his inkstand at other times to better purpose, and with more effective hostility against the arch-fiend)-I leave to my reader's own judgment; on condition, however, that he has previously perused Luther's Table Talk, and other writings of the same stamp, of fome of his moft illuftrious contemporaries, which contain facts still more strange and whimfical, related by themselves and of themselves, and accompanied with solemn protestations of the truth of their statements. Luther's Table Talk, which to a truly philofophic mind, will not be lefs interefting than Rouffeau's Confeffions, I have not myself the means of confulting at present, and cannot therefore fay, whether this ink-pot adventure is, or is not, told or referred to, in it;* but many confiderations incline me to give credit to the story. Luther's unremitting literary labour and his sedentary mode of life, during his confinement in the Warteburg, where he was treated with the greatest kindness, and enjoyed every liberty confiftent with his own safety, had begun to undermine his former unusually strong health. He fuffered many and most diftreffing effects of indigeftion and a deranged ftate of the digeftive organs. Melancthon, whom he had defired to confult the physicians at Erfurth, sent him some de-obftruent medicines, and the advice to take regular and severe exercise. At first he followed the advice, fate and laboured less, and spent whole days in the chase; but like the younger Pliny, he ftrove in vain to form a tafte for this favourite amusement of the gods of the earth, as appears from a paffage in his letter to George Spalatin, which I tranflate for an additional reason; to prove to the admirers of Rouffeau, who perhaps will not be less affronted by this biographical parallel, than the zealous Lutherians will be offended, that if my comparison should turn out groundless on the whole, the failure will not have arifen either from the want of fenfibility in our great reformer, or of angry averfion to those in high places, whom he re * It is not.-Ed. garded as the oppreffors of their rightful equals. "I have been," he writes, "employed for two days in the sports of the field, and was willing myfelf to tafte this bitter-fweet amusement of the great heroes: we have caught two hares, and one brace of poor little partridges. An employment this which does not ill fuit quiet leisurely folks for even in the midft of the ferrets and dogs, I have had theological fancies. But as much pleasure as the general appearance of the scene and the mere looking-on occafioned me, even so much it pitied me to think of the mystery and emblem which lies beneath it. For what does this fymbol fignify, but that the devil, through his godless huntsmen and dogs, the bishops and theologians to wit, doth privily chase and catch the innocent poor little beasts? Ah! the fimple and credulous fouls came thereby far too plain before my eyes. Thereto comes a yet more frightful mystery: as at my earnest entreaty we had saved alive one poor little hare, and I had concealed it in the fleeve of my great coat, and had strolled off a short distance from it, the dogs in the mean time found the poor hare. Such, too, is the fury of the Pope with Satan, that he destroys even the fouls that had been saved, and troubles himself little about my pains and entreaties. Of such hunting then I have had enough." In another paffage he tells his correfpondent, "You know it is hard to be a prince, and not in fome degree a robber, and the greater a prince the more a robber." Of our Henry VIII. he says, "I must answer the grim lion that passes himself off for king of England. The ignorance in the book is fuch as one naturally expects from a king; but the bitterness and impudent falsehood is quite leonine." And in his circular letter to the princes, on occasion of the peasants' war, he uses a language so inflammatory, and holds forth a doctrine which borders fo near on the holy right of infurrection, that it may as well remain untranflated. Had Luther been himself a prince he could not have defired better treatment than he received during his eight months stay in the Warteburg; and in confequence of a more luxurious diet than he had been accustomed to, he was plagued with temptations both from the flesh and the devil. It is evident from his letters* that he suffered under great irritability of his nervous fyftem, the common effect of deranged digeftion in men of sedentary habits, who are at the fame time intense thinkers; and this irritability added to, and revivifying, the impreffions made upon him in early life, and fostered by the theological systems of his manhood, is abundantly fufficient to explain all his apparitions and all his nightly combats with * I can scarcely conceive a more delightful volume than might be made from Luther's letters, especially from those that were written from the Warteburg, if they were tranflated in the fimple, finewy, idiomatic, hearty, mother-tongue of the original. A difficult task I admit-and fcarcely poffible for any man, however great his talents in other refpects, whofe favourite reading has not lain among the English writers from Edward VI. to Charles I. evil spirits. I fee nothing improbable in the suppofition, that in one of those unconscious halffleeps, or rather thofe rapid alternations of the fleeping with the half-waking state, which is the true witching time, the season Wherein the spirits hold their wont to walk. the fruitful matrix of ghofts-I see nothing improbable, that in fome one of those momentary flumbers, into which the suspension of all thought in the perplexity of intense thinking so often passes, Luther fhould have had a full view of the room in which he was fitting, of his writing table and all the implements of study, as they really existed, and at the fame time a brain-image of the devil, vivid enough to have acquired apparent outness, and a distance regulated by the proportion of its distinctness to that of the objects really impressed on the outward fenfes. If this Christian Hercules, this heroic cleanser of the Augean stable of apostasy, had been born and educated in the present or the preceding generation, he would, doubtlefs, have holden himfelf for a man of genius and original power. But with this faith alone he would scarcely have removed the mountains which he did remove. The darkness and fuperftition of the age, which required fuch a reformer, had moulded his mind for the reception of impreffions concerning himself, better fuited to inspire the strength and enthusiasm necessary for the task of reformation, impressions |