Art thou that steppest between heart and heart? Adah. Cain. A god. How know'st thou ? [that Adah. So did the serpent, and it lied. Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch? Things which will love each other as we love Hast pluck'd a fruit more fatal to thine offspring He speaks like Thy youth in Paradise, in innocent Ay-to our eternal sorrow. Lucifer. And yet that grief is knowledge—so he And if he did betray you, 't was with truth; But good. Adah. But all we know of it has gather'd Lucifer. More than thy mother, and thy sire? [The first interview of Lucifer with Cain is full of sublimity. JEFFREY.] [It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between many of these passages and others in Manfred.] 3 [Mr. Jeffrey's eulogium on this, perhaps the most Shak I look upon him with a pleasing fear, And yet I fly not from him in his eye There is a fastening attraction which him !3 Cain. What dreads my Adah? This is no ill spirit. spearian speech in Lord Byron's tragedies, seems cold enough. He says, "Adah, the wife of Cain, enters, and shrinks from the daring and blasphemous speech which is passing between him and the Spirit. Her account of the fascination which he exercises over her is magnificent."] In the same hour! They pluck'd the tree of science By ages! and I must be sire of such things! Alone! Oh, my God! Who could be happy and alone, or good? Adah. Or of his first-born son: ask your own heart; Adah. Are you of heaven? Lucifer. Alas! no! and you If I am not, inquire The cause of this all-spreading happiness Lucifer. And why not adore? Adores the Invisible only. Our father But the symbols Of the Invisible are the loveliest Our father Save in my father, who is God's own image; which it will do Lord B. no credit to name, - the romance of "Faublas."] [In the drawing of Cain himself, there is much vigorous Out of old worlds this new one in few days? He shall. In sooth, return within an hour? With us acts are exempt from time, and we Or stretch an hour into eternity: We breathe not by a mortal measurement — Ay, woman! he alone To make that silent and expectant world As populous as this: at present there Are few inhabitants. expression. It seems, however, as if, in the effort to give to Lucifer that spiritual politeness" which the poet professes to have in view, he has reduced him rather below the standard of diabolic dignity, which was necessary to his dramatic interest. He has scarcely "given the devil his due." We thought Lord Byron knew better. Milton's Satan, with his faded majesty, and blasted but not obliterated glory, holds us suspended between terror and amazement, with something like awe of his spiritual essence and lost estate; but Lord Byron has introduced him to us as elegant. pensive, and beautiful, with an air of sadness and suffering that ranks him with the oppressed, and bespeaks our pity.-Brit. Crit.] ACT II. SCENE I. The Abyss of Space. 2 Cain. I tread on air, and sink not; yet I fear To sink. Lucifer. Have faith in me, and thou shalt be Would run the edict of the other God, and Which, knowing nought beyond their shallow senses, In their abasement. I will have none such : Of past, and present, and of future worlds. [The act concludes with the departure of Cain, under the guidance of his new monitor, to see the place of departed spirits. Their flight, in the next, across the abyss of space, and amid the unnumbered suns and systems which it comprises, is very fine. — HEBER.] [In the second act, the demon carries his disciple through all the limits of space, and expounds to him, in very lofty and obscure terms, the destinies of past and future worlds. They have a great deal of exceptionable talk. - JEFFREY.] 3["An hour, when, walking on a petty lake, A man shall say, &c."— MS.] Know nought of death, save as a dreadful thing The Other All die-there is what must survive. Spake not of this unto my father, when I may be in the rest as angels are. Lucifer. I am angelic: wouldst thou be as I am? Lucifer. What are they which dwell So humbly in their pride, as to sojourn Cain. Is it not glorious? Oh, thou beautiful And unimaginable ether! and Ye multiplying masses of increased And still increasing lights! what are ye? what The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden? Expansion at which my soul aches to think – Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are ! Spirit! let me expire, or see them nearer. Lucifer. Art thou not nearer? look back to thine earth! Cain. Where is it? I see nothing save a mass Cain. I cannot see it. Cain. That! - yonder ! Look there! Yet it sparkles still. Yea. And wilt thou tell me so ? Why, I have seen the fire-flies and fire-worms Lucifer. Thou hast seen both worms and worlds, [It is nothing less than absurd to suppose, that Lucifer cannot well be expected to talk like an orthodox divine, and that the conversation of the first Rebel and the first Murderer was not likely to be very unexceptionable; or to plead the authority of Milton, or the authors of the old mysteries, for such offensive colloquies. The fact is, that here the whole argument and a very elaborate and specious argument it isis directed against the goodness or the power of the Deity; and there is no answer so much as attempted to the offensive doctrines that are so strenuously inculcated. The Devil and his pupil have the field entirely to themselves, and are encountered with nothing but feeble obtestations and un. reasoning horrors. Nor is this argumentative blasphemy a mere incidental deformity that arises in the course of an action directed to the common sympathies of our nature. It forms, on the contrary, the great staple of the piece, and occupies, we should think, not less than two thirds of it; so that it is really difficult to believe that it was written for any other purpose than to inculcate these doctrines; or, at least, to discuss the question upon which they bear. Now, we can certainly have no objection to Lord Byron writing an essay on the origin of evil, and sifting the whole of that vast and perplexing subject, with the force and the freedom that would be expected and allowed in a fair philosophical discussion; but we do not think it fair thus to argue it partially and com amore, in the name of Lucifer and Cain, without the responsibility or the liability to answer, that would attach to a philosophical disputant; and in a form which both doubles the danger, if the sentiments are pernicious, and almost precludes his opponents from the possibility of a reply. JEFFREY. What does Jeffrey mean by elaborate & Why they were written as fast as I could put pen to paper, in the midst of evolutions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions of all who interested me in Italy."— Byron Letters.] A Or I were, or the things which seem to us Greater than either: many things will have As thou; and mightier things have been extinct [It is not very easy to perceive what natural or rational object the Devil proposes to himself in carrying his disciple through the abyss of space, to show him that repository of which we remember hearing something in our infant days, "where the old moons are hung up to dry." To prove that there is a life beyond the grave, was surely no part of his business when he was engaged in fostering the indignation of one who repined at the necessity of dying. And, though it would seem, that entire Hades is, in Lord Byron's picture, a place of suffering, yet, when Lucifer himself had premised Cain. "T is a fearful light: No sun, no moon, no lights innumerable. The very blue of the empurpled night Fades to a dreary twilight, yet I see Huge dusky masses: but unlike the worlds We were approaching, which, begirt with light, Seem'd full of life even when their atmosphere Of light gave way, and show'd them taking shapes Unequal, of deep valleys and vast mountains ; And some emitting sparks, and some displaying Enormous liquid plains, and some begirt With luminous belts, and floating moons, which tock Like them, the features of fair earth: - instead,, All here seems dark and dreadful. Lucifer. But distinct. Thou seekest to behold death, and dead things? To such, I would behold at once, what I Lucifer. And so it shall be ever; but we will Unfold its gates! Cain. Apart-what's this? Lucifer. Cain. Enormous vapours roll Enter ! Can I return? that these sufferings were the lot of those spirits who had sided with him against Jehovah, is it likely that a more accurate knowledge of them would increase Cain's eagerness for the alliance, or that he would not rather have inquired whether a better fortune did not await the adherents of the triumphant side? At all events, the spectacle of many ruined worlds was more likely to awe a mortal into submission, than to rouse him to hopeless resistance; and, even if it made him a hater of God, had no natural tendency to render him furious against a brother who was to be his fellow-sufferer.-HEBER.] |