need to be reversed; but may be made as it now is, or with very
slightest change, to contain a confession of the ignorance,
worthlessness, or futility of the bearer. If it implies, or can be made
to imply, anything bad, it is instantly laid hold of as expressing the
very truth about him. You know the story of Helen of Greece, whom in
two of his 'mighty lines' Marlowe's Faust so magnificently
apostrophizes:

'Is this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?'

It is no frigid conceit of the Greek poet, when one passionately
denouncing the ruin which she wrought, finds that ruin couched and
fore-announced in her name; [Footnote: [Greek: Helenas [=helenaos],
helandros, heleptolis], Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_, 636.] as in English it
might be, and has been, reproduced--

'_Hell_ in her name, and heaven in her looks.'

Or take other illustrations. Pope Hildebrand in one of our _Homilies_
is styled 'Brand of Hell,' as setting the world in a blaze; as
'Hoellenbrand' he appears constantly in German. Tott and Teuffel were
two officers of high rank in the army which Gustavus Adolphus brought
with him into Germany. You may imagine how soon those of the other side
declared that he had brought 'death' and 'hell' in his train. There
were two not inconsiderable persons in the time of our Civil Wars, Vane
(not the 'young Vane' of Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets), and
Sterry; and one of these, Sterry, was chaplain to the other. Baxter,
having occasion to mention them in his profoundly instructive
_Narrative of his Life and Times_, and liking neither, cannot forbear