Oh! my son, Blaspheme not: these are serpents' words. Cain. Why not? The snake spoke truth: it was the tree of knowledge; I fain would be alone a little while. having bestowed these upon me.'- All this is well,' I said, 'so far as it goes, but to be a Christian you must go farther.' I read more of the Bible than you are aware,' he said: 'I have a Bible which my sister gave me, who is an excellent woman, and I read it very often.' He went into his bed-room on saying this, and brought out a pocket Bible, finely bound, and showed it to me." Kennedy.-L. E. (1) "Say then, shall man, deprived all power of choice, More dear to them, than to himself, is man."—Juv. "Though the Deity is inclined,' says Owen, by his own benignity, to bless his creatures, yet he expects the outward expressions of devotion from the rational part of them.' This is certainly what Juvenal means to inculcate : hence his earnest recommendation of a due regard to the public and ceremonial part of religion." Gifford.-L. E. (2) "Dr. Shaw, the professor of divinity, breakfasted with us. I took out my Ogden on Prayer, and read some of it to the company. Dr. Johnson praised him. 'Abernethy,' said he, allows only of a physical effect of prayer upon the mind, which may be produced many ways as well as by Adah. Be on your spirit, brother! [Exeunt ABEL, ZILLAH, and ADAR. And this is Cain (solus). Life! Toil! and wherefore should I toil?-because My father could not keep his place in Eden. What had I done in this?-I was unborn: I sought not to be born; nor love the state To which that birth has brought me. Why did be Yield to the serpent and the woman? or, Yielding, why suffer? What was there in this? The tree was planted, and why not for him? If not, why place him near it, where it grew, The fairest in the centre? They have but One answer to all questions, "Twas his will, And he is good." How know I that? Because He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow? I judge but by the fruits-and they are bitterWhich I must feed on for a fault not mine. Whom have we here?-A shape like to the angels', Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect Of spiritual essence: why do I quake? Why should I fear him more than other spirits, Whom I see daily wave their fiery swords Before the gates round which I linger oft, In twilight's hour, to catch a glimpse of those Gardens which are my just inheritance, Ere the night closes o'er the inhibited walls And the immortal trees which overtop The cherubim-defended battlements? If I shrink not from these, the fire-arm'd angels, Why should I quail from him who now approaches Yet he seems mightier far than them, nor less Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful As he hath been, and might be: sorrow seems Half of his immortality.(4) And is it So? and can aught grieve save humanity? He cometh. prayer; for instance, by meditation. Ogden goes farther In truth, we have the consent of all nations for the efficacy of prayer, whether offered up by individuals or by assem blies; and revelation has told us it will be effectual Boswell, Croker's edit., vol. ii. p. 303.-L. E. (3) "This passage affords a key to the temper and frame of mind of Cain throughout the piece. He disdains the lim ed existence allotted to him; he has a rooted horror of death. attended with a vehement curiosity as to his nature; and ti nourishes a sullen anger against his parents, to whose mis conduct he ascribes his degraded state. Added to this has an insatiable thirst for knowledge beyond the bourd prescribed to mortality; and this part of the poem bears i strong resemblance to Manfred, whose counterpart, indeed, in the main points of character, Cain seems to be." Cuffy' bell's Magazine.-L. E. (4) "Cain's description of the approach of Lucifer weld have shone in the Paradise Lost. There is something ritually fine in this conception of the terror of presentimen of coming evil." Jeffrey.-L. E. (5) "Of Lucifer, as drawn by Lord Byron, we absolutely know no evil: and, on the contrary, the impression which we receive of him is, from his first introduction, most fa vourable. He is not only endued with all the beauty, the wisdom and the unconquerable daring, which Milton has as signed him, and which may reasonably be supposed to be long to a spirit of so exalted a nature, but he is represented This has not been reveal'd: the tree of life Was withheld from us by my father's folly, But live to die: and, living, see nothing To make death hateful, save an innate clinging, Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I Despise myself, yet cannot overcome- I live, as unhappy without a crime, and as pitying our unhap. piness. Even before he appears, we are prepared (so far as the poet has had skill to prepare us) to sympathise with Dy spiritual being who is opposed to the government of Jehovah. The conversations, the exhibitions which ensue, are all conducive to the same conclusion, that whatever is el, and that, had the Devil been the Creator, he would have made his creatures happier. Above all, his arguments and insinuations are allowed to pass uncontradicted, or are answered only by overbearing force, and punishment infirted, not on himself, but on his disciple. Nor is the inten for less apparent, nor the poison less subtle, because the language employed is not indecorous, and the accuser of the Almighty does not descend to ribaldry or scurrilous invecfive. That the monstrous creed thus inculcated is really the creed of Lord Byron himself, we, certainly, have some difficulty in believing. As little are we inclined to assert that this frightful caricature of Deism is intended as a covert recommendation of that further stage to which the scepticism of modern philosophers has sometimes conducted them. We are willing to suppose that he has, after all, no further view than the fantastic glory of supporting a paradox ably; of showing his powers of argument and poetry at the expense of all the religious and natural feelings of the world, and of ascertaining how much will be forgiven him Fy the unwearied devotion of his admirers. But we cannot, with some of our contemporaries, give him the credit of writing conscientiously. We respect his understanding too highly to apprebend that he intended a benefit to mankind in doing his best to make them discontented."-Heber. "Milton, with true tact and feeling, put no metaphysics into Satan's mouth. There is no querulousness, no sneaking doubts, no petty reasoning in the Archangel fallen.' It is a fine, blunt, sublime, characteristic defiance, that reigas throughout, and animates his character; the spirit is still of celestial birth; and all the evil of his speech and act is utterly neutralised, by the impossibility of man's feeling any sympathy with it. The Satan of Milton is no balf-human devil, with enough of earth about him to typify the malignant sceptic, and enough of heaven to throw a shade of sublimity on his very malignity. The Lucifer of Byron is neither a noble-fiend, nor yet a villain-fiend-he does nothing, and he seems nothing-there is no poetry either of character or description about him-he is a poor, sneaking, talking devil-a most wretched metaphysician, without wit Cain. How should I be so? Look on me! Lucifer. Poor clay! And thou pretendest to be wretched! Thou! Cain. I am:-and thou, with all thy might, what art thou? Thy sire's Maker, and the earth's. And all that in them is. So I have heard on pain Of being that which I am-and thou art- Cain. enough to save him even from the damnation of criticism -he speaks neither poetry nor common sense. Thomas Aquinas would have flogged him more for his bad logic than his unbelief-and St. Dunstan would have caught him by the nose ere the purblind fiend was aware.”—Blackwood. "The impiety chargeable on this Mystery consists mainly in this that the purposeless and gratuitous blasphemies put into the mouths of Lucifer and Cain are left unrefuted, so that they appear introduced for their own sake, and the design of the writer seems to terminate in them. There is no attempt made to prevent their leaving the strongest possible impression on the reader's mind. On the contrary, the arguments, if such they can be called, levelled against the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, are put forth with the utmost ingenuity. And it has been the noble poet's endeavour to palliate as much as possible the characters of the Evil Spirit and of the first murderer; the former of whom is made an elegant, poetical, philosophical sentimentalist, a sort of Manfred,-the latter an ignorant, proud, and self-willed boy. Lucifer, too, is represented as denying all share in the temptation of Eve, which he throws upon the Serpent in his serpentine capacity; the author pleading, that he does so only because the book of Genesis has not the most distant allusion to any thing of the kind, and that a reference to the New Testament would be an anachronism." -Ecl. Rev. "Lucifer now enters on the stage; and if we allow that he is a different and inferior personage to the Satan of Milton, it is a concession which, we have no doubt, would be made as readily by the author as by ourselves. The Satan of Paradise Lost has still a tinge of heaven; his passions are high and heroic, and his motion is vast and solemn. Those of Lord Byron's spirit are less dignified and more abrupt, but charged as intensely with fierce and bitter spleen. The one seems not unworthy to haunt the solitudes of Eden; the other appears to have no little knowledge of the world, and to be most at home in the busy walks of men." Campbell's Mag.-L. E. (1)In this long dialogue, the tempter tells Cain (who is thus far supposed to be ignorant of the fact) that the soul is immortal, and that 'souls who dare use their immortality' are condemned by God to be wretched everlastingly." There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in Cain that I recollect. I hold no such opinions;-but, in a drama, the first rebel and the first murderer must be made to talk according to their characters."-B. Letters. His everlasting face, and tell him that Less burthensome to his immense existence Let him crowd orb on orb: he is alone Could he but crush himself, 't were the best boon He ever granted: but let him reign on, And multiply himself ir. misery! Spirits and men, at least we sympathise And, suffering in concert, make our pangs Innumerable more endurable, By the unbounded sympathy of all With all! But He! so wretched in his height, So restless in his wretchedness, must still Create, and re-create -(2) My sister Zillah sings an earlier hymn [soul I tempt none Cain. Thou speak'st to me of things which long Have made ye live for ever, in the joy have swum In visions through my thought: I never could A watching shepherd-boy, who offers up This sentiment, which is the pervading moral (if we may call it so) of the play, is developed in the lines which follow." Heber.-L. E. (1) The poet rises to the sublime in making Lucifer first inspire Cain with the knowledge of his immortality-a portion of truth which hath the efficacy of falsehood upon the victim; for Cain, feeling himself already unhappy, knowing that his being cannot be abridged, has the less scruple to desire to be as Lucifer, mighty.' The whole of this speech is truly satanic; a daring and dreadful description given by everlasting despair of the Deity." Galt.-L. E. (2) In the MS. "Create, and re-create-perhaps he 'll make Mark me that Son will be a sacrifice!"-L. E. (3) In the MS. "Have stood before thee as I am; but chosen The serpent's charming symbol, as before."-L. E. (4) The tree of life was doubtless a material tree, producing material fruit, proper as such for the nourishment of the body; but was it not also set apart to be partaken of as a symbol or sacrament of that celestial principle which nourishes the soul to immortality?" Bishop Horne.-L. E. (5) "The Eclectic reviewer, we believe the late Robert Hall, says, "A more deadly sentiment, a more insidious falsehood, than is conveyed in these words, could not be in And power of knowledge? Cain. Would they had snatch'd both One is yours already, How so? By being Yourselves, in your resistance. Nothing can Cain. But didst thou tempt my parents? Poor clay! what should I tempt them for, or how! Saith that? It is not written so on high: Who jected into the youthful mind by the Author of Evil. Inte (6) "Cain is described as imagining, that once eating of the tree of life would have conferred immortality: "World, he exclaims, 'they had snatched both the fruits, or neither There is not the slightest ground for such a supposition: the tree of life was among the trees of which Adam' might eat freely,' and of which he had most probably frequently eaten. This privilege was denied as a consequence of sin; as known vice is made an objection to being admitted to the sacra ments, or as concealed vice renders them ineffectual, if not destructive, to the communicant." Harness.-LE Would make him cast upon the spiritual nature The knowledge fatal to their narrow joys. Cain. I knew not that, yet thought it, since I heard Think'st thou I'd take the shape of things that die? By the far-flashing of the cherubs' swords, Cain. But the thing had a demon? He but woke one Who guard the tempting tree. When thousand ages To me a shape I scorn, as I scorn all That bows to him, who made things but to bend "It may appear a very prosaic, but it is certainly a very obvious, criticism on these passages, that the young family of mankind had, long ere this, been quite familiar with the death of animals-some of whom Abel was in the habit of offering up as sacrifices; so that it is not quite conceivable that they should be so much at a loss to conjecture what Death was." Jeffrey.-L. E. (2) Most of Lord Byron's spleen against My Grandmother's Review, the British, may be traced to its critique on Cain, -e. g. "We have heard it remarked, that a great deal of premeditated mischief is couched under the plausible rea I watch'd for what I thought his coming; (1) for Up to the lights above us, in the azure, Lucifer. Perhaps—but long outlive both thine and Cain. I'm glad of that: I would not have them die- Lucifer. To be resolved into the earth. I cannot answer. Cain. As I know not death, Were I quiet earth, That were no evil: would I ne'er had been sonings put into the mouths of Cain and Lucifer. This may or may not be a just conclusion: we have no right to say that Lord Byron adopts the apologies of Cain, or the dialectics of the Devil: all that can be fairly said on this subject is that it has been a part of the poet's plan to throw as much ingenuity into the arguments, both of Cain and his Mentor, as it was competent to his Lordship to furnish; and that he has left these arguments-without refutation or answer to produce their unrestricted influence on the reader." -L.E. Adah. But all we know of it has gather'd Evil on ill: expulsion from our home, And dread, and toil, and sweat, and heaviness; Lucifer. More than thy mother, and thy sire? No, not yet; It one day will be in your children. Lucifer. The sin I speak of is not of my making Lucifer. Ask Eve, your mother: bears she not the knowledge Of good and evil? Adah. Oh, my mother! thou (2) It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between many of these pessages and others in ManfredL. E. |