Now this speech both announces and exhibits Mephistopheles's nature. Without even knowing the language, one could hardly hear the original read as Mephistopheles's without seeing in it shamelessness, impudence, volubility, cleverness, a sneering, sarcastic disposition, want of heart, want of sentiment, want of earnestness, want of purpose, complete, confirmed, irrecoverable devilishness. And, besides, Mephistopheles candidly describes himself in it. When, in sly and sarcastic allusion to the song of the Archangels, he tells that _he_ has not the gift of talking fine, he announces in effect that he is not going to be Miltonic. _He_ is not going to speak of suns and universes, he says. Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, are at home in that sort of thing; but _he_ is not. Leaving them, therefore, to tell how the universe is flourishing on the grand scale, and how the suns and the planets are going on as beautifully as ever, he will just say a word or two as to how human nature is getting on down yonder; and, to be sure, if comparison be the order of the day, the little godkin, Man, is quite as odd as on the day he was made. And at once, with astounding impudence, he launches into a train of remark the purport of which is that everything down below is at sixes and sevens, and that in his opinion human nature has turned out a failure. And, heedless of the disgust of his audience, he would go on talking for ever, were he not interrupted. And is this the Satan of the _Paradise Lost_? Is this the Archangel ruined? Is this the being who warred against the Almighty, who lay floating many a rood, who shot upwards like a pyramid of fire, who navigated space wherever he chose, speeding on his errands from star to star, and who finally conceived the gigantic scheme of assaulting the universe where it was weakest, and impregnating the new creation with the venom of his spirit? Yes, it is he; but oh, how changed! For six thousand years he has been pursuing the walk he struck out at the beginning, plying his self-selected function, dabbling devilishly in human nature, and abjuring all interest in the grander physics; and the consequence is, as he himself anticipated, that his nature, once great and magnificent, has become small, virulent, and shrunken, "Subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."