The Spirits. Tear him in pieces!- Crush the worm! Hence! avaunt!-he's mine. Prince of the powers invisible! this man Is of no common order, as his port And presence here denote; his sufferings own; his knowledge, and his powers and will, As far as is compatible with clay, Which clogs the ethereal essence, have been such Of earth and heaven, from which no power, nor being, Let him answer that. Nem. What wouldst thou? Man. [power Thou canst not reply to me. the dead-my question is for them. Nem. Great Arimanes, doth thy will avouch The wishes of this mortal? Ari. Nem. Uncharnel? Man. Astarte. Yea. One without a tomb-call up NEMESIS. Shadow! or spirit! Of the form of thy birth, Of the mould of thy clay, The heart and the form, Who sent thee there requires thee here! Man. Can this be death? there's bloom upon her But a strange hectic-like the unnatural red Astarte! my beloved! speak to me: I have so much endured-so much endure- To bind me in existence-in a life I feel but what thou ert-and what I am; Whom wouldst thou Which answer'd me-many things answer'd me— Whatever thou art, The whole or a part Man. Say, shall we meet again? Phan. Farewell! Man. One word for mercy! Say, thou lovest me. Phan. Manfred! [The Spirit of ASTARTE disappears. (1) Nem. She's gone, and will not be recall'd; Her words will be fulfill'd. Return to the earth. A Spirit. He is convulsed-This is to be a mortal, And seek the things beyond mortality. Another Spirit. Yet, see, he mastereth himself, and makes His torture tributary to his will. Had he been one of us, he would have made Nem. Hast thou further question Of our great sovereign, or his worshippers? Man. None. (1) "Over this fine drama, a moral feeling hangs like a sombrous thunder-cloud. No other guilt but that so darkly shadowed out could have furnished so dreadful an illustration of the hideous aberrations of human nature, however noble and majestic, when left a prey to its desires, its pas. sions, and its imagination. The beauty, at one time so innocently adored, is at last soiled, profaned, and violated. Affection, love, guilt, horror, remorse, and death, come in terrible succession, yet all darkly linked together. We think of Astarte as young, beautiful, innocent-guilty-lostmurdered-buried-judged-pardoned; but still. in her perImitted visit to earth, speaking in a voice of sorrow, and with a countenance yet pale with mortal trouble. We had but a glimpse of her in her beauty and innocence; but, at last, she rises up before us in all the mortal silence of a ghost, with fixed, glazed, and passionless eyes, revealing death, judgment, and eternity. The moral breathes and burns in every word,-in sadness, misery, insanity, desolation, and death. The work is 'instinct with spirit,'-and in the agony and distraction, and all its dimly-imagined canses, we behold, though broken up, confused, and shattered, the elements of a purer existence." Wilson.-L. E. (2) The third Act, as originally written, being shown to the late Mr. Gifford, he expressed his unfavourable opinion of it very distinctly; and Mr. Murray transmitted this to Lord Byron. The result is told in the following extracts from his letters: Thou mayst retire. It is well: [Exit HERMAN. Man. (alone). There is a calm upon meInexplicable stillness! which till now Did not belong to what I knew of life. If that I did not know philosophy To be of all our vanities the motliest, The merest word that ever fool'd the ear From out the schoolman's jargon, I should deem The golden secret, the sought "Kalon," found, And seated in my soul. It will not last, But it is well to have known it, though but once: It hath enlarged my thoughts with a new sense, And I within my tablets would note down That there is such a feeling. Who is there? Re-enter HERMAN. Her. My lord, the Abbot of St. Maurice craves To greet your presence. And good intent, must plead my privilege; And busy with thy name; a noble name Man. Proceed, I listen. Abbot. "Tis said thou holdest converse with the things Which are forbidden to the search of man; "Venice, April 14, 1817.-The third Act is certainly dbad, and, like the Archbishop of Grenada's homily (which savoured of the palsy), has the dregs of my fever, during which it was written. It must on no account be published in its present state. I will try and reform it, or re-write it altogether; but the impulse is gone, and I have no chance of making any thing out of it. The speech of Manfred to the Sun is the only part of this Act I thought good myself; the rest is certainly as bad as bad can be, and I wonder what the devil possessed me. I am very glad, indeed, that you sent me Mr. Gifford's opinion without deduction. Do you suppose me such a booby as not to be very much obliged to him? or that I was not, and am not, convinced and convicted in my conscience of this same overt act of nonsense? I shall try at it again; in the mean time, lay it upon the shelf the whole Drama I mean.-Recollect not to publish, upon pain of I know not what, until I have tried again at the third act. I am not sure that I shall try, and still less that I shall succeed if I do." "Rome, May 5.-1 have re-written the greater part, and returned what is not altered in the proof you sent me. The Abbot is become a good man, and the Spirits are brought in at the death. You will find, I think, some good poetry in this new Act, here and there; and if so, print it, without sending me farther proofs, under Mr. Gifford's correction, if he will have the goodness to overlook it."-L. E. That with the dwellers of the dark abodes, Is as an anchorite's, were it but holy. Nor agony-nor, greater than all these, Would make a hell of heaven-can exorcise Man. And what are they who do avouch these Upon itself; there is no future pang Abbot. My pious brethren-the scared peasantry- Abbot. I come to save, and not destroy- But if these things be sooth, there still is time With the true church, and through the church to Heaven. Man. I hear thee. This is my reply: whate'er may have been, or am, doth rest between Heaven and myself.-I shall not choose a mortal Against your ordinances? prove and punish! (1) Have given me power to smooth the path from sin Man. Old man! there is no power in holy men, we (1) Thus far the text stands, as originally penned sabjain the sequel of the scene, as given in the first MS. : "At. Then, hear and tremble! For the headstrong wretch Who in the mail of innate hardihood Would shield himself, and battle for his sins, There is the stake on earth, and beyond earth eternal Man. Charity, most reverend father, Becomes thy lips so much more than this menace, That I would call thee back to it: but say, What wouldst thou with me? It may be there are Things that would shake thee-but I keep them back, Then if thou dost not all devote thyself To penance, and with gift of all thy lands To the monastery Man. I understand thee,-well? Abbot. Expect no mercy; I have warn'd thee. Man. (opening the casket.) There is a gift for thee within this casket. Stop The raven sits On the raven-stone, And his black wing flits O'er the milk-white bone; To and fro, as the night-winds blow, The fetters creak-and his ebon beak Croaks to the close of the hollow sound; Merrily, merrily, speeds the ball: The dead in their shrouds, and the demons in clouds, Can deal that justice on the self-condemn'd All this is well; Abbot. his last, The victim of a self-inflicted wound, To shun the torments of a public death (3) Abbot. And what of this? "It is too late!" Abbot. I answer, with the Roman, It never can be so, To reconcile thyself with thy own soul, Abbot. I fear thee not-hence-hence- Man. Convey this man to the Shreckhorn-to its peak- Man. No, this will serve for the present. Take him up. And we shall fly the lighter. ASHTABOTH disappears with the ABBOт, singing as follows :— A prodigal son, and a maid undone, And a widow re-wedded within the year; Man. Why would this fool break in on me, and force My art to pranks fantastical?--no matter, It was not of my seeking. My heart sickens, (2) Otho, being defeated in a general engagement near Brixellum, stabbed himself. Plutarch says that, though he lived full as badly as Nero, his last moments were those of a philosopher. He comforted his soldiers, who lamented his fortune, and expressed his concern for their safety, when they solicited to pay him the last friendly offices. Martial says: "Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Cæsare major, Dum moritur, numquid major Othone fuit?"-L. E. (3) In the MS. not loss of life, but public death. And thy own soul with Heaven. Hast thou no hope? Abbot. And wherefore so? Man. I could not tame my nature down; for he Must serve who fain would sway-and soothe-and sue And watch all time-and pry into all place- Abbot. And why not live and act with other men? (1) This speech has been quoted in more than one of the sketches of the poet's own life. Much earlier, when only twenty-three years of age, he had thus prophesied :—“It seems as if I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of old age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families-I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect, here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am, indeed, very wretched. My days are listless, and my nights restless. I have very seldom any society; and when I have, I run out of it. I don't know that I sha'n't end with insanity.” B. Letters, 1811.-L. E. (2) "Of the immortality of the soul, it appears to me that there can be little doubt-if we attend for a moment to the action of mind. It is in perpetual activity. I used to doubt of it--but reflection has taught me better. How far our future state will be individual; or, rather, how far it will at all resemble our present existence, is another ques tion; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so." B. Diary, 1821.-"I have no wish to reject Christianity without investigation; on the contrary, I am very desirous of believing; for I have no happiness in my present unsettled notions on religion." B. Conversations with Kennedy, 1823.-L. E. (3) There are three only, even among the great poets of modern times, who have chosen to depict, in their full shape and vigour, those agonies to which great and meditative intellects are, in the present progress of human history, exposed by the eternal recurrence of a deep and dis Of mortals on the earth, who do become [Exit MANFRED Abbot. This should have been a noble creature: (3) he And mind and dust-and passions and pure thoughts SCENE II. Another Chamber. MANFRED and HERMAN. [Exit ABBOT Her. My lord, you bade me wait on you at sunset: He sinks behind the mountain. contented scepticism. But there is only one who has dared to represent himself as the victim of those nameless and undefinable sufferings. Goethe chose for his doubts and his darkness the terrible disguise of the mysterious Faustus Schiller, with still greater boldness, planted the same as guish in the restless, haughty, and heroic bosom of Wallenstein. But Byron has sought no external symbol is which to embody the inquietudes of his soul. He takes the world, and all that it inherit, for his arena and his spectators; and he displays himself before their gaze. wrestling unceasingly and ineffectually with the demon that torments him. At times, there is something mournful and depressing in his scepticism; but oftener it is of a high and solemn character, approaching to the very verge of a confiding faith. Whatever the poet may believe, we, his readers, always feel ourselves too much ennobled and ele vated, even by his melancholy, not to be confirmed in our belief by the very doubts so majestically conceived and uttered. His scepticism, if it ever approaches to a creed. carries with it its refutation in its grandeur. There is neither philosophy nor religion in those bitter and savage taunts which have been cruelly thrown out, from many quarters, against those moods of mind which are involun tary, and will not pass away; the shadows and spectres which still haunt his imagination may once have distarbed our own--through his gloom there are frequent flashes of illumination;-and the sublime sadness, which to him is breathed from the mysteries of mortal existence, is always joined with a longing after immortality, and expressed is › language that is itself divine." Wilson.-L. E. Man. I will look on him. Doth he so? One chamber where none enter: I would give (MANFRED advances to the Window of the Hall. To pore upon its mysteries. Of early nature, and the vigorous race More beautiful than they, which did draw down Which gladden'd, on their mountain-tops, the hearts Who chose thee for his shadow! Thou chief star! And hearts of all who walk within thy rays! SCENE III. [Exit MANFRED. The Mountains-The Castle of Manfred at some distance-A Terrace before a Tower.-Time, Twilight. HERMAN, MANUEL, and other Dependants of MANFRED. Manuel. "T were dangerous; Content thyself with what thou know'st already. Her. Ah! Manuel! thou art elderly and wise, And couldst say much; thou hast dwelt within the How many years is 't? [castle Manuel. Ere Count Manfred's birth, Manuel. I speak not Of features or of form, but mind and habits: Merrier than day; he did not walk the rocks Must change their chieftain first. Oh! I have seen Her. So like that it might be the same; the wind Her, 'Tis strange enough; night after night, for Count Manfred was, as now, within his tower,— years, He hath pursued long vigils in this tower, (1) And it came to pass, that the Sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair," etc.-"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the Sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown,"-Genesis, ch. vi. verses 2 and 4. 2)Pray, was Manfred's speech to the Sun still retained in Act third? I hope so: it was one of the best in the thing, and better than the Coliseum." B. Letters, 1817. -LE (3) In the MS. "Some strange things in these few years."—L. E. (4) The remainder of the third Act, in its original shape, ran thus: Her. Look-look-the tower- If there be any of you who have heart, [MANUEL goes in. Her. Not that, if one, or two, or more, will join, I do not see precisely to what end. Re-enter MANUEL and HERMAN, bearing MANFRED in their arms. [They sprinkle MANFRED with water; after a pause, he |