d 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.

"_Faustus_. Devil, thou blasphemest, for I see thou art
trembling!--Quick, thou sayest, as the vengeance of----no! he may not
be named among us! Quick, thou sayest, is his vengeance? Quick? And I
still live? And I still sin?

"_Sixth Spirit_. That he suffereth thee still to sin is the beginning
of his vengeance.

"_Faustus_. Oh that a Devil should teach me this!--But no, his
vengeance is not quick; if thou art no quicker, begone!--(To the
seventh spirit.) How quick art thou?

"_Seventh Spirit_. Unsatisfiable (_unzuvergnuegender_) mortal! If I,
too, am not quick enough for thee------

"_Faustus_. Tell me, then, how quick?

"_Seventh Spirit_. No more nor less than the transition from Good to
Evil.

"_Faustus_. Ha! thou art my devil! Quick as the transition from Good to
Evil!--Yes, that is quick! Nothing is quicker!--Away from here, ye
horrors of Orcus! Away!--Quick as the transition from Good to Evil!--I
have learned how quick that is! I know it!"

Lessing had this fragment printed in the "Literaturbriefe," professedly
as a specimen of one of the old popular dramas, despised at that time
by the higher classes, though Lessing remarks,--"How fond was Germany
once of its Dr. Faustus,--and is so, partly, still!" But even this bold
reformer of German taste seems not to have had the temerity to come
forward at once as the author of a conception so entirely contrary to
the reigning rules and the Frenchified taste by which, at the period of
the "Literaturbriefe," (1759-1763,) Germany was still subjugated.

We do not know whether some of the young poets who took hold of the
subject a short time after were instigated by this fragment of
Lessing's, or whether they were moved by the awakening German Genius,
who, just at that period, was beginning to return to his national
sources for the quenching of his thirst. Between 1770 and 1780, Lenz
and Maler Mueller composed, the former his "Hoellenrichter," the latter
his dramatized Life of Dr. Faustus. No more appropriate hero could