But, if you rue it after, blame not me. The spirit of her life Is yet within her breast, and may revive. I! But fear not. I'll not be your rival. Cæs. Arn. Rival! Cæs. I could be one right formidable; But since I slew the seven husbands of 'T was suck'd out by some incense), I have laid Arn. To the palace Oh! I know Now onward, onward! Gently! [Exeunt, bearing OLIMPIA. The scene closes. The morning star of all the flowers, Enter CESAR. Cæs. (singing). The wars are all over, But his armour is rusty, And the veteran grows crusty As he yawns in the hall. He drinks-but what's drinking? A mere pause from thinking! No bugle awakes him with life-and-death call. CHORUS. But the hound bayeth loudly, With birds from their nest. Cæs. Oh! shadow of glory! But the chase hath no story, In the pride of his might, For a spear, 'gainst the mammoth, Or strike through the ravine At the foaming behemoth; While man was in stature As towers in our time, The first-born of Nature, And, like her, sublime! CHORUS. But the wars are over, The spring is come; The bride and her lover Have sought their home: They are happy, and we rejoice; Let their hearts have an echo from every voice! [Exeunt the Peasantry, singing. Cain; A MYSTERY. (1) "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Loan God had made." Genesis, chap, îii. verse 1. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND AND FAITHFUL SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. THE following scenes are entitled A Mystery, in conformity with the ancient title annexed to dramas (1) Cain was begun at Ravenna, on the 16th of July, 1821 -completed on the 9th of September-and published, in the same volume with Sardanapalus and The Two Foscari, in December. Perhaps no production of Lord Byron has been more generally admired, on the score of ability, than this Mystery; certainly none, on first appearing, exposed the author to a fiercer tempest of personal abuse. Besides being unmercifully handled in most of the critical journals of the day, Cain was made the subjeet of a solemn separate essay, entitled "A Remonstrance addressed to Mr. Murray respecting a recent Publication-by Oxoniensis;" of which we may here preserve a specimen : "There is a method of producing conviction, not to be found in any of the treatises on logic, but which I am persuaded you could be quickly made to understand; it is the argumentum ad crumenam; and this, I trust, will be brought home to you in a variety of ways; not least, I expect, in the profit you hope to make by the offending publication. As a bookseller, I conclude you have but one standard of poetic excellence-the extent of your sale. Without assuming any thing beyond the bounds of ordinary foresight, I venture to foretell, that in this case you will be mistaken, the book will dis upon similar subjects, which were styled "Mysteries, or Moralities." The author has by no means taken the same liberties with his subject which were com mon formerly, as may be seen by any reader curious appoint your cupidity, as much as it discredits your feeling and do cretion. Your noble employer has deceived you, Mr. Murray has profited by the celebrity of his name to palm upon you obs trash, the very off-scourings of Bayle and Voltaire, which Ee bat made you pay for as though it were first-rate poetry and metaphysics. But I tell you (and, if you doubt it, you may cent." any of the literary gentlemen who frequent your reading-ront that this poem, this Mystery, with which you have insulted as is nothing more than a cento from Voltaire's novels, and the most o jectionable articles in Bayle's Dictionary, served up in chimsy cu tings of ten syllables, for the purpose of giving it the guise of p Still, though Cain has no claims to originality, there are eart objects to which it may be made subservient; and so well are the noble author's schemes arranged, that in some of them be will be sure to succeed. "In the first place, this publication may be useful as a financial measure. It may seem hard to suspect, that the high-souled ph sophy, of which his Lordship makes profession, could be servi the influence' of money; but you could tell us, Sir, if you wil what sort of a hand your noble friend is at a bargain; whether Plutus does not sometimes go shares with Apollo in his insp tions. "In the second place (second I mean in point of order, for I not presume to decide which motive predominates in his Lordship' mind), the blasphemous impieties of Cain, though nothing mo; 6) L enough to refer to those very profane productions, (1) whether in English, French, Italian, or Spanish. The anthor has endeavoured to preserve the language adapted to his characters; and where it is (and this "ality than the echo of often-refuted sophisms, by being newly freed and put forth in a form easy to be remembered, may proace considerable effect; that is, they may mislead the ignorant, fie the wavering, or confirm the hardened sceptic in his misef. These are consequences which Lord Byron must have conplated; with what degree of complacency he alone can tell. Bat, in the third place, if neither of these things happens, and "should not prove either lucrative or mischievous, there is ther point which Lord Byron has secured to himself, so that he be deprived of it,-the satisfaction of insulting those from whom he differs both in faith and practice. ... Now, at last, he els with the very conditions of humanity, rebels against that dence which guides and governs all things, and dares to adopt Se language which had never before been attributed to any being padome, 'Evil, be thou my good.' Such, as far as we can judge, is Lord Byron." This critic's performance is thus alluded to in one of Lord Byron's letters to Mr. Douglas Kinnaird :-"I know nothing of Rivington's Remonstrance' by the eminent Churchman; but I suppose the man wants a living." On hearing that his publisher was threatened with more strious annoyances, in consequence of the appearance of the Ystery, Lord Byron addressed the following letter to Mr. Morray: "Pisa, February 1822. "Attacks upon me were to be expected; but I perceive one upon the papers, which I confess that I did not expect. How, or at manner, you can be considered responsible for what I pubah I am at a loss to conceive." If Cain be blasphemous,' Paradise Lost is blasphemous; and the very words of the Oxford gentleman, Evil, be thou my good,' are from that very poem, from the mouth of Satan; and is there more in that of Lucifer in the Mystery? Cain is nothing more than a drama, not a piece of argument. If Lucifer and Cain *This letter was thus versified at the time in Blackwood's Noctes "Attacks on me were what I look'd for, Murray; I mean those canting Quacks of your Review- They surely don't suspect you, Mr. John, Of being more than accoucheur to Cain; The thing's a drama, not a sermon-book; Here stands the Murderer-that's the Old One thereIn gown and cassock how would Satan look? Should fratricides discourse like Dr. Blair? The puritanic Milton freedom took, Which now-a-days would make a bishop stare; But not to shock the feelings of the age, I only bring your angels on the stage. To bully You, yet shrink from battling Me, Is baseness-nothing baser stains The Times: While Jeffrey in each catalogue I see While no one talks of priestly Playfair's crimes, While Drummond, at Marseilles, blasphemes with glee- if this goes on, I wish you'd plainly tell 'em, Come Dr. Sewell, show you have been knighted! - You may tell all who come into your shop, They shall not touch a hair, man, on your head. Mr. Sharpe and Sir John Sewell, LL.D., managers of the Contutional Association.] is but rarely) taken from actual Scripture, he has made as little alteration, even of words, as the rhythm would permit. The reader will recollect that the book of Genesis does not state that Eve was tempted speak as the first murderer and the first rebel may be supposed to speak, surely all the rest of the personages talk also according to their characters-and the stronger passions have ever been per mitted to the drama. "I have even avoided introducing the Deity, as in Scripture (though Milton does, and not very wisely either); but have adopted his angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any feelings on the subject, by falling short of what all uninspired men must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate notion of the effect of the presence of Jehovah. The old Mysteries introduced him liberally enough, and all this is avoided in the new one. "The attempt to bully you, because they think it won't succeed with me, seems to me as atrocious an attempt as ever disgraced the times. What! when Gibbon's, Hume's, Priestley's, and Drummond's publishers have been allowed to rest in peace for seventy years, are you to be singled out for a work of fiction, not of history or argu. ment? There must be something at the bottom of this-some private enemy of your own: it is otherwise incredible. "I can only say, 'Me, me; en adsum qui feci;'-that any proceedings directed against you, I beg, may be transferred to me, who am willing, and ought, to endure them all;-that if you have lost money by the publication, I will refund any or all of the copyright; -that I desire you will say that both you and Mr. Gifford remonstrated against the publication, as also Mr. Hobhouse ;-that I alone occasioned it, and I alone am the person who, either legally or otherwise, should bear the burden. If they prosecute, I will come to England; that is, if, by meeting it in my own person, I can save yours. Let me know. You sha'n't suffer for me, if I can help it. Make any i use of this letter you please. "Yours ever, etc. "BYRON. "P.S.-I write to you about all this row of bad passions and absurdities with the summer moon (for here our winter is clearer than your dog-days) lighting the winding Arno, with all her buildings and bridges, so quiet and still!-What nothings are we before the least of these stars!" An individual of the name of Benbow having pirated Cain, Mr. (now Sir Lancelot) Shadwell applied to the Lord Chancellor (Eldon) for an injunction to protect Mr. Murray's property in the Mystery. The learned counsel, on the 9th of February, 1822, spoke as follows: "This work professes to record, in a dramatic poem of three acts, the story contained in the book of Genesis. It is meant to represent the state of Cain's mind when it received those temptations which led him to commit the murder of his brother. The actors in the poem are few: they consist of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and their two wives, with Lucifer, and, in the third act, the Angel of the Lord. The book only does that which was before done by Milton, and adheres more closely to the words contained in Scripture. The book, in the commencement, represents Cain in a moody dissipated disposition, when the Evil Spirit tempts him to go forth with him to acquire knowledge. After the first act, he leads him through the abyss of space; and, in the third, Cain returns with a still more gloomy spirit. Although the poet puts passages into his mouth, which of themselves are blasphemous and impious, yet it is what Milton has done also, both in his Paradise Lost and Regained. But those passages are powerfully combated by the beautiful arguments of his wife, Adah. It is true that the book represents what Scripture represents,-that he is, notwithstanding, instigated to destroy the altar of his brother, whom he is then led on to put to death; but then the punishment of his crime follows, in the very words of the Scripture itself. Cain's mind is immediately visited with all the horror of remorse, and he goes forth a wanderer on the face of the earth. I trust I am the last person in the world who would attempt to defend a blasphemous or impious work; but I say that this poem is as much entitled to the protection of the court, in the abstract, as either the Paradise Lost or the Paradise Regained. So confident am I of this, that I would at present undertake to compare it with those works, passage by passage, and show that it is perfectly as moral as those productions of Milton. Every sentence carries with it, if I may use the expression, its own balsam. The authority of God is recognised; and Cain's impiety and crime are introduced to show that its just punishment immediately followed. I repeat, that there is no reason why this work, taken abstractedly, should not be protected as well as either of the books I have mentioned. I therefore trust that your Lordship will grant this injunction in limine, and then the defendants may come in and show cause against it." The following is a note of the Lord Chancellor's judg ment: "This court, like the other courts of justice in this country, acknowledges Christianity as part of the law of the land. The jurisdiction of this court in protecting literary property is founded on this, that where an action will lie for pirating a work, there the court, attending to the imperfection of that remedy, grants its injunction; because there may be publication after publication, which you may never be able to hunt down by proceeding in the other courts. But where such an action does not lie, I do not apprehend that it is according to the course of the court to grant an injunction to protect the copyright. Now this publication, if it is one intended to vilify and bring into discredit that portion of Scripture history by a demon, but by "the Serpent;" and that only because he was "the most subtil of all the beasts of the field." Whatever interpretation the Rabbins and the Fathers may have put upon this, I take the words as I find them, and reply, with Bishop Watson upon similar occasions, when the Fathers were quoted to him, as Moderator in the schools of Cambridge, "Behold the Book!"-holding up the Scripture. (2) It is to be recollected, that my present subject has nothing to do with the New Testament, to which no reference can be here made without anachronism. With the poems upon similar topics I have not been recently familiar. Since I was twenty, I have never read Milton; but I had read him so frequently before, that this may make little difference. Gesner's Death of to which it relates, is a publication with reference to which, if the principles on which the case of Dr. Priestley, at Warwick, was decided, be just principles of law, the party could not recover any damages in respect of a piracy of it. This court has no criminal jurisdiction; it cannot look on any thing as an offence; but in those cases it only administers justice for the protection of the civil rights of those who possess them, in consequence of being able to maintain an action. You have alluded to Milton's immortal work: it did happen in the course of last long vacation, amongst the solicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ, I read that work from beginning to end; it is therefore quite fresh in my memory, and it appears to me that the great object of its author was to promote the cause of Christianity: there are undoubtedly a great many passages in it, of which, if that were not its object, it would be very improper by law to vindicate the publication; but, taking it all together, it is clear that the object and effect were not to bring into disrepute, but to promote, the reverence of our religion. Now the real question is, looking at the work before me, its preface, the poem, its manner of treating the subject, particularly with reference to the Fall and the Atonement, whether its intent be as innocent as that of the other with which you have compared it; or whether it be to traduce and bring into discredit that part of sacred history. This question I have no right to try, because it has been settled, after great difference of opinion among the learned, that it is for a jury to determine that point; and where, therefore, a reasonable doubt is entertained as to the character of the work (and it is impossible for me to say I have not a doubt, I hope it is a reasonable one), another course must be taken for determining what is its true nature and character. There is a great difficulty in these cases, because it appears a strange thing to permit the multiplication of copies, by way of preventing the circulation of a mischievous work, which I do not presume to determine that this is; but that I cannot help and the singularity of the case in this instance is more obvious, because here is a defendant who has muitiplied this work by piracy, and does not think proper to appear. If the work be of that character which a court of common law would consider criminal, it is pretty clear why he does not appear, because he would come confitens reus; and for the same reason the question may perhaps not be tried by an action at law; and if it turns out to be the case, I shall be bound to give my own opinion. That opinion I express no further now than to say that, after having read the work, I cannot grant the injunction until you show me that you can maintain an action for it. If you cannot maintain an action, there is no pretence for granting an injunction; if you should not be able to try the question at law with the defendant, I cannot be charged with impropriety if I then give my own opinion upon it. It is true that this mode of dealing with the work, if it be calculated to produce mischievous effects, opens a door for its dissemination, but the duty of stopping the work does not belong to a court of equity, which has no criminal jurisdiction, and cannot punish or check the offence. If the character of the work is such that the publication of it amounts to a temporal offence, there is another way of proceeding, and the publication of it should be proceeded against directly as an offence; but whether this or any other work should be so dealt with, it would be very improper for me to form or intimate an opinion."-The injunction was refused accordingly. We must not encumber our pages with the long argu. ments pro and con which this famous judgment elicited. The reader will probably be satisfied with the following extract from the Life of Johnson, and its last editor's note. "When," says Boswell, "Dr. Johnson and I were left by our selves, I read to him my notes of the opinions of our Judges upon the questions of literary property. He did not like them; and said, They make me think of your Judges not with that respect which I should wish to do.' To the argument of one of them, that there can be no property in blasphemy or nonsense, he answered, Then your rotten sheep are mine! By that rule, when a man's house falls into decay, he must lose it.'"-Boswell, vol. ii. p. 286.-" Dr. Johnson's illustration is sophistical, and might have been retorted upon him; for if a man's sheep are so rotten as to render the meat unwholesome, or if his house be so decayed as to threaten mischief to passengers, the law will confiscate the mutton and abate the house, without any regard to property, which the owner thus abuses. Moreover, Johnson should have discriminated between a criminal offence and a civil right. Blasphemy is a crime: would it not be in the highest degree absurd, that there should be a right of property in a crime, or that the law should be called upon to protect that which is illegal? If this be true in law, it is much more so in equity; as he who ap Abel I have never read since I was eight years of age at Aberdeen. The general impression of my recol. lection is delight; but of the contents I remember only that Cain's wife was called Mahala, and Abel's Thirza: in the following pages I have called them Adah and Zillah, the earliest female names which occur in Genesis; they were those of Lamech's wives: those of Cain and Abel are not called by their names. Whether, then, a coincidence of subject may have caused the same in expression, I know nothing, and care as little. (3) The reader will please to bear in mind (what few choose to recollect), that there is no allusion to a future state in any of the books of Moses, nor, indeed in the Old Testament. (4) For a reason for this extraordinary plies for the extraordinary assistance of a court of equity should have a right, consistent at least with equity and morals.”—Croker. The reader is referred to Mr. Moore's Life, for abundant, evidence of the pain which Lord Byron suffered from the virulence of the attacks on Cain, and the legal procedure above alluded to. There appeared, in the Bijou for 1828, fragment by Mr. Coleridge, entitled The Wanderings Cain; which was, no doubt, suggested by the perusal of this Mystery, and which every reader will thank us for inserting in an Appendix to the piece. Sir Walter Scott announced his acceptance of the de dication, in the following letter to Mr. Murray "I accept, with feelings of great obligation, the flattering propo sal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and treme dous drama of Cain. I may be partial to it, and you will alw I have cause; but I do not know that his Muse has ever taken lufty a flight amid ber former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the language is bas, and may shock one class of readers, whose line will be adopted by th out of affectation or envy. But then they must condemn the Parede Lost, if they have a mind to be consistent. The fiend-like reasoning and bold blasphemy of the fiend and of his pupil lead exactly to point which was to be expected,-the commission of the first murde and the ruin and despair of the perpetrator. "I do not see how any one can accuse the author himself of cheism. The Devil talks the language of that sect, doubtless: cause, not being able to deny the existence of the Good Prine ph endeavours to exalt himself-the Evil Principle-to a seeming equ ity with the Good; but such arguments, in the mouth of such a bring can only be used to deceive and to betray. Lord Byron might have made this more evident, by placing in the mouth of Adam, or a some good and protecting spirit, the reasons which render the exa ence of moral evil cousistent with the general benevolence of the Deity. The great key to the mystery is, perhaps, the imperfect of our own faculties, which see and feel strongly the partial ev which press upon us, but know too little of the general system 道 the universe, to be aware how the existence of these is to be recone ciled with the benevolence of the great Creator. "To drop these speculations, you have much occasion for som mighty spirit, like Lord Byron, to come down and trouble the wate for, excepting The John Bull, you seem stagnating strangely London. "Yours, my dear Sir, very truly, (2) "I never troubled myself with answering any arg ments which the opponents in the divinity-schools brought against the Articles of the Church, nor ever admitted their authority as decisive of a difficulty; but I used on such o casions to say to them, holding up the New Testament in my hand, En sacrum codicem! Here is the fountain of truth; why do you follow the streams derived from it by the sophistry, or polluted by the passions, of man?'" Bishop Watson's Life, vol. i. p. 63.-L. E. (3) Here follows, in the original draught,—“I am prepared to be accused of Manicheism, or some other hard name ending in ism, which make a formidable figure sk awful sound in the eyes and ears of those who would be a much puzzled to explain the terms so bandied about, as the liberal and pious indulgers in such epithets. Against such I can defend myself, or, if necessary, I can attack in turn -L. E. स (4) "There are numerous passages dispersed throughout The pungent Sunday print so called had been established some little time before this letter was written, and had excited a sens tion unequalled in the recent history of the newspaper press-LE omission he may consult Warburton's Divine Legation; whether satisfactory or not, no better has yet been assigned. I have therefore supposed it new to Cain, without, I hope, any perversion of Holy Writ. With regard to the language of Lucifer, it was difficult for me to make him talk like a clergyman upon the same subjects; but I have done what I could to restrain him within the bounds of spiritual politeness. If he disclaims having tempted Eve in the shape of the Serpent, it is only because the book of Genesis has not the most distant allusion to any thing of the kind, but merely to the Serpent in his serpentine capacity. Note. The reader will perceive that the author has partly adopted in this poem the notion of Cuvier, that the world had been destroyed several times before This speculation, derived from the different strata and the bones of enormous and asknown animals found in them, is not contrary to the Mosaic account, but rather confirms it; as no human bones have yet been discovered in those strata, although those of many known animals are found near the remains of the unknown. The assertion of Lu the creation of man. cider, that the pre-Adamite world was also peopled by rational beings much more intelligent than man, and proportionably powerful to the mammoth, etc. etc. is, of course, a poetical fiction to help him to make out his case. I ought to add, that there is a "tramelogedia" of Alfieri, called Abele.-I have never read that, nor any other of the posthumous works of the writer, except his Life. Ravenna, Sept. 20, 1821. DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. CAIN. (1) ACT I. SCENE 1. The Land without Paradise.-Time, Sunrise. ADAM, EVE, CAIN, ABEL, ADAH, ZILLAH, offering a Sacrifice. Who out of darkness on the deep didst make Adam. Gon, the Eternal! Infinite! All-wise!Light on the waters with a word--all hail! Jehovah, with returning light, all hail! Eve. God! who didst name the day, and separate Earth-ocean-air-and fire, and with the day Adah. God, the Eternal! Parent of all things! Cain. To pray. (3) Have ye not pray'd? Adam. We have, most fervently. Cain. And loudly: I EVE. Have heard you. ADAH. ZILLAH Abel. Amen! ANGELS. ANGEL OF THE LORD. LUCIFER. the Old Testament, which import something more than an Mission to a future state.' In truth, the Old Testament abounds in phrases which imply the immortality of the soul, and which would be insignificant and hardly intelligible, but apon that supposition. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it.' -Eccl. xii. 7. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.'- Dan. x. 2. I know that My Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand in the latter days upon the earth: and though after my skin worms shall destroy my body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.'-Job, xix. But there would be no end of citing passages from the Old Testament, to show that not only the immortality of the oal is implied in its divine pages, but the resurrection of The body also." Brit. Rev.-L. E. 1) "Lord Byron has thought proper to call this drama a mystery; the name which, as is well known, was given our own country, before the Reformation, to those scenic epresentations of the mysterious events of our religion, ➡hich, indecent and unedifying as they seem to ourselves, ere, perhaps, the principal means by which a knowledge of those events was conveyed to our rude and uninstructed ncestors. But, except in the topics on which it is employed, ord Byron's Mystery has no resemblance to those which it ms as its prototypes. These last, however absurd and ndecorous in their execution, were, at least, intended reve rently. The composition now before us is, unhappily, too famous for its contrary character." Heber.-L. E. "The morning hymns and worship with which the Mystery opens are grave, solemn, and scriptural, and the dialogue which follows with Cain is no less so: his opinion of the tree of life is, I believe, orthodox; but it is daringly expressed indeed all the sentiments ascribed to Cain are but the questions of the sceptics." Galt.-P. E. (2) "The drama opens with a hymn, addressed by Adam and his family (with the exception of Cain) to the Almighty. Lord Byron tells us, in his preface, with some portion, we think, of that feeling, certainly not of English growth, which leads him to refuse to Shakspeare the name of a dramatic poet, that he has not read Milton since he was twenty,' From the opening lines we are not indisposed to believe him. Cain, however, is now introduced,-refusing to ask any thing of God, or to thank him for all which he has received at his hands; alleging that the boon of existence, which is embittered by toil, and shortly to be cancelled by death, is not worth a prayer or a thanksgiving. After a little feeble expostulation, the pious family leave him to his gloomy thoughts, which are interrupted by the approach of Lucifer." Heber.-L. E. (3) "Prayer,' said Lord Byron, at Cephalonia, does not consist in the act of kneeling, nor in repeating certain words in a solemn manner. Devotion is the affection of the heart, and this I feel; for when I view the wonders of creation, I bow to the majesty of Heaven; and when I feel the enjoy ment of life, health, and happiness, I feel grateful to God for |