The devil has always been a pushing, forward sort of person, so he was not content with being handed round by word of mouth in monkish legend or rustic folk-lore, but must worm his way into literature in general. Since then many ink-pots have been emptied upon him besides the one that Luther hurled against his cloister wall. The devil is seen frequently in the miracle plays, showing grotesquerie, the beginnings of that sardonic humor he is to display in more important works later. In his appearance in literature the devil is largely anthropomorphic. Man creates the devil in his own image, one who is not merely personal but racial as well, reflecting his creator. In monkish tradition an adversary in wait for souls, in rustic folk-lore a rollicking buffoon with waggish pranks, in miracle plays reflecting the mingled seriousness and comic elements of popular beliefs, he mirrors his maker. But it is in the great poems and dramas and stories that we find the more personal aspects of devil-production, and it is these epic and dramatic concepts of the devil that have greatly influenced modern fiction. While the Gothic romance was but lightly touched by the epic supernaturalism, the literature since that time has reflected it more, and the Satanic characters of Dante, Milton, Calderon, Marlowe, and Goethe have cast long shadows over modern fiction. The recent revival of interest in Dante has doubtless had its effect here. Burns in his _Address to the De'il_ shows his own kindly heart and honest though ofttimes misdirected impulses by suggesting that there is still hope for the devil to repent and trusting that he may do so yet. Mrs. Browning, in her _Drama of Exile_, likewise shows in Lucifer some appeal to our sympathies, reflecting the pitying heart of the writer,--showing a certain kinship to Milton's Satan yet with weakened intellectual power. She makes Gabriel say to him: "Angel of the sin, Such as thou standest,--pale in the drear light Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath-- Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls, A monumental, melancholy gloom, Seen down all ages whence to mark despair And measure out the distances from good." Byron's devil in _A Vision of Judgment_ is, like Caliban's ideas of Setebos, "altogether such an one" as Byron conceived himself to be. He is a terrible figure, whose "Fierce and unfathomable thoughts engraved Eternal wrath on his immortal face."