Hast pluck'd a fruit more fatal to thine offspring
Than to thyself; thou at the least hast pass'd
Thy youth in Paradise, in innocent

And happy intercourse with happy spirits:

But we, thy children, ignorant of Eden,
Are girt about by demons, who assume

The words of God, and tempt us with our own
Dissatisfied and curious thoughts-as thou
Wert work'd on by the snake, in thy most flush'd
And heedless, harmless wantonness of bliss.
I cannot answer this immortal thing

Which stands before me; I cannot abhor him;
I look upon him with a pleasing fear,
And yet I fly not from him; in his eye
There is a fastening attraction which
Fixes my fluttering eyes on his; my heart

Consists in slavery-no.

If the blessedness

Adak.
I have heard it said,
The seraphs love most-cherubim know most—
And this should be a cherub-since he loves not.
Lucifer. And if the higher knowledge quenches love,
What must he be you cannot love when known? (2)
Since the all-knowing cherubim love least,
The seraphs' love can be but ignorance:
hat they are not compatible, the doom

If thy fond parents, for their daring, proves.
Choose betwixt love and knowledge-since there is
other choice: your sire hath chosen already;
Is worship is but fear.

Adah.
Oh, Cain! choose love.
Cain. For thee, my Adah, I choose not—it was
forn with me-but I love, nought else.
Adah.

Our parents? Cain. Did they love us when they snatch'd from the at which hath driven us all from Paradise? [tree Adah. We were not born then-and if we had been, bould we not love them and our children, Cain? Cain. My little Enoch! and his lisping sister! ould I but deem them happy, I would half orget-but it can never be forgotten hrough thrice a thousand generations! never hall men love the remembrance of the man Who sow'd the seed of evil and mankind

1 the same hour! They pluck'd the tree of science

ind sin-and, not content with their own sorrow,
legot me-thee-and all the few that are,
and all the unnumber'd and innumerable
fultitudes, millions, myriads, which may be,
to inherit agonies accumulated

Mr. Jeffrey's eulogium on this, perhaps the most hakspearian speech in Lord Byron's tragedies, seems cold ough. He says, “Adah, the wife of Cain, enters, and ariaks from the daring and blasphemous speech which is ing between him and the Spirit. Her account of the astination which he exercises over her is magnificent."—

-E.

By ages! and I must be sire of such things!
Thy beauty and thy love-my love and joy,
The rapturous moment and the placid hour, (3)
All we love in our children and each other,
But lead them and ourselves through many years
Of sin and pain-or few, but still of sorrow,
Intercheck'd with an instant of brief pleasure,
To Death-the unknown! Methinks the tree of
knowledge

Hath not fulfill'd its promise;-if they sinn'd,
At least they ought to have known all things that are
Of knowledge-and the mystery of death.

What do they know ?-that they are miserable.
What need of snakes and fruits to teach us that?
Adah. I am not wretched, Cain, and if thou
Wert happy-

Lucifer.

may

And thou couldst not

Alone, thou say'st, be happy?
Adah.
Alone! Oh, my God!
Who could be happy and alone, or good?
To me my solitude seems sin; unless
When I think how soon I shall see my brother,
His brother, and our children, and our parents.
Lucifer. Yet thy God is alone; and is he happy,
Lonely, and good?

Adah.
He is not so; he hath
The angels and the mortals to make happy,
And thus becomes so in diffusing joy!
What else can joy be, but the spreading joy?
Lucifer. Ask of your sire, the exile fresh from Eden;
Or, of his first-born son: ask your own heart;
It is not tranquil.

Adah.

Are you of heaven?

Lucifer.

Alas! no! and you

If I am not, inquire
The cause of this all-spreading happiness
(Which you proclaim) of the all-great and good
Maker of life and living things; it is

His secret, and he keeps it. We must bear,
And some of us resist, and both in vain,
His seraphs say: but it is worth the trial,
Since better may not be without: there is
A wisdom in the spirit, which directs
To right, as in the dim blue air the eye
Of you, young mortals, lights at once upon
The star which watches, welcoming the morn.
Adah. It is a beautiful star; I love it for
Its beauty.

Lucifer. And why not adore?
Adah.

Adores the Invisible only.
Lucifer.

(2) In the MS.

Our father

But the symbols

"What can he be who places love in ignorance?"-L. E.

(3) This "placid hour" of Cain is, we fear, from a source which it will do Lord B. no credit to name,-the romance of Faublas.-L. E.

All light, they look upon us; but thou seem'st
Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds
Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars
Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault
With things that look as if they would be suns:
So beautiful, unnumber'd, and endearing,
Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them,
They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou.
Thou seem'st unhappy: do not make us so,
And I will weep for thee. (1)
Lucifer.
Alas! those tears!
Couldst thou but know what oceans will be shed--
Adah. By me?

Lucifer.

Adah.

Lucifer.

By all.

What all? The million millionsThe myriad myriads-the all-peopled earthThe unpeopled earth-and the o'er-peopled hell,

Of which thy bosom is the germ.

Adah.

This spirit curseth us.

Cain.

O Cain !

Let him say on;

Him will I follow.

Adah.

Whither?

Who shall return, save ONE), shall come back to thee, To make that silent and expectant world

As populous as this: at present there

Are few inhabitants.

Lucifer. Throughout all space. Where should I
dwell? Where are

Thy God or Gods-there am I : all things are
Divided with me; life and death—and time—
Eternity and heaven and earth-and that
Which is not heaven nor earth, but peopled with
Those who once peopled or shall people both-
These are my realms! So that I do divide
His, and possess a kingdom which is not
His. If I were not that which I have said,
Could I stand here? His angels are within
Your vision.
Adah. So they were when the fair serpent
Spoke with our mother first,
Lucifer.

Cain! thou hast heard.
If thou dost long for knowledge, I can satiate
That thirst; nor ask thee to partake of fruits
Which shall deprive thee of a single good
The conqueror bas left thee. Follow me.
Cain. Spirit, I have said it.

[Exeunt LUCIFER and CAE Adah (follows, exclaiming). Cain! my brother Cain! (2)

ACT II.

SCENE I.

The Abyss of Space. (3)

Cain. I tread on air, and sink not; yet I fear

Cain.

Adah.

Lead on.

Will he,

He shall.

In sooth, return within an hour?
Lucifer.

With us acts are exempt from time, and we

(1) "In the drawing of Cain himself, there is much vigorous 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. Thus, in this dialogue with Adah, he comes forth to our view so qualified as to engage our sympathies." Brit. Crit.-L. E.

(2) "Cain persists in his inquiries as to the nature of death. The demon promises to gratify him, on condition that he becomes his servant. Cain replies, that he has

[the

Lucifer. Have faith in me, and thou shalt be Borne on the air, of which I am the prince. Cain. Can I do so without impiety? Lucifer. Believe-and sink not! doubt-and perish Would run the edict of the other God, Who names me demon to his angels; they Echo the sound to miserable things, Which, knowing nought beyond their shallow senses Worship the word which strikes their ear, and deet

never worshipped even his father's God; and is answered,

He who bows not to him has bow'd to me:
Thou art my worshipper; not worshipping
Him makes thee mine the same!'

Adah, entering, is awed and terrified by the appearance of th unknown and gloomy angel, and endeavours to persuade be husband to contentment, patience, and piety. The act cen cludes with the departure of Cain, under the guidance his new monitor, to see the place of departed spirits. The flight, in the next, across the abyss of space, and amid th unnumbered suns and systems which it comprises, is ver fine." Heber.-L. E.

(3) "In the second act, the demon carries his discip through all the limits of space, and expounds to bim, in ver lofty and obscure terms, the destinies of past and futur worlds. They have a great deal of exceptionable talk jeffrey.-L. E.

Evil or good what is proclaim'd to them

In their abasement. I will have none such:
Worship or worship not, thou shalt behold
The worlds beyond thy little world, nor be
Amerced for doubts beyond thy little life,
With torture of my dooming. There will come
An hour, when, toss'd upon some water-drops, (1)
A man shall say to a man, "Believe in me,
And walk the waters;" and the man shall walk
The billows and be safe. I will not say,
Believe in me, as a conditional creed

To save thee; but fly with me o'er the gulf

Which looks like that which lit our earthly night?
Is this our Paradise? Where are its walls,
And they who guard them?
Lucifer.

Point me out the site

Of Paradise.
Cain.
Like sunbeams onward, it grows small and smaller;
And as it waxes little, and then less,
Gathers a halo round it, like the light

How should I? As we move

Which shone the roundest of the stars, when I
Beheld them from the skirts of Paradise:
Methinks they both, as we recede from them,
Appear to join the innumerable stars

Which are around us; and, as we move on,
Increase their myriads.

Lucifer.
And if there should be
Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited

By greater things, and they themselves far more
la number than the dust of thy dull earth,
Though multiplied to animated atoms,

All living, and all doom'd to death, and wretched,
What wouldst thou think?

Cain.

I should be proud of thought,

Which knew such things. Lucifer.

But if that high thought were Link'd to a servile mass of matter, and, Knowing such things, aspiring to such things, And science still beyond them, were chain'd down

(1) In the MS.

"An hour, when, walking on a petty lake."-L. E. (2) "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 à very elaborate and specious argument it is is 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.

"What does Jeffrey mean by elaborate? Why, they were written as fast as I could put pen to paper, in the midst of evolu tions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions of all who interested me in Italy. They said the same of Lara, which I wrote while undressing, after coming home from balls and masquerades. Of all I have ever written, they are perhaps the most carelessly composed; and their faults, whatever they may be, are those of negligence, and not of labour. I do not think this a merit, but it is a fact." B. Letters.-L. E.

To the most gross and petty paltry wants,
All foul and fulsome, and the very best
Of thine enjoyments a sweet degradation,
A most enervating and filthy cheat
To lure thee on to the renewal of
Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be
As frail, and few so happy (2)—-
Cain.

Spirit! I
Know nought of death, save as a dreadful thing
Of which I have heard my parents speak, as of
A hideous heritage I owe to them
No less than life; a heritage not happy,
If I may judge, till now. But, spirit! if
It be as thou hast said (and I within
Feel the prophetic torture of its truth),
Here let me die: for to give birth to those
Who can but suffer many years, and die,
Methinks is merely propagating death,
And multiplying murder.

Lucifer.

Thou canst not

All die-there is what must survive. Cain.

The Other

The Devil and his pupil have the field entirely to themselves, and are encountered with nothing but feeble obtestations and unreasoning 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 con 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.—L. E.

And still increasing lights! what are ye? what
Is this blue wilderness of interminable
Air, where ye roll along, as I have seen
The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden?
Is your course measured for ye? Or do ye
Sweep on, in your unbounded revelry,
Through an aërial universe of endless
Expansion-at which my soul aches to think-
Intoxicated with eternity?

Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are!
How beautiful ye are! how beautiful
Your works, or accidents, or whatsoe'er
They may be! Let me die, as atoms die,
(If that they die) or know ye in your might
And knowledge! My thoughts are not in this hour
Unworthy what I see, though my dust is;
Spirit! let me expire, or see them nearer.

And wilt thou tell me so?

Lucifer.

Cain.
Why, I have seen the fire-flies and fire-worms
Sprinkle the dusky groves and the green banks
In the dim twilight, brighter than yon world
Which bears them.

Lucifer. Thou hast seen both worms and worlds,
Each bright and sparkling-what dost think of them?
Cain. That they are beautiful in their own sphere,
And that the night, which makes both beautiful,
The little shining fire-fly in its flight,
And the immortal star in its great course,
Must both be guided.

Lucifer.

Cain.

Lucifer. Yea, or things higher.

Cain.

Lucifer. Wouldst thou have men without tha

must no reptiles

Breathe, save the erect ones?

Cain.
Where fly we?
Lucifer.

How the lights recede

To the world of phantoms, which Are beings past, and shadows still to come. Cain. But it grows dark, and dark-the stars are

gone!

Lucifer. And yet thou seest.

Cain. "Tis 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 took, 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?

Cain. I seek it not; but as I know there are
Such, and that my sire's sin makes him and me,
And all that we inherit, liable

To such, I would behold at once what I
Must one day see perforce.
Lucifer.

Behold!

(1) "It is not very easy to perceive what natural or ra ional object the Devil proposes to himself in carrying his fisciple through the abyss of space, to show him that repostory of which we remember hearing something in our fant days, where the old moons are hung up to dry.' To prove that there is a life beyond the grave, was surely no art of his business when he was engaged in fostering the adignation 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 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 reistance; 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.-L. E.

(2) "Death, the last and most dreadful of all evils, is so far from being one, that it is the infallible cure for all

others

'To die, is landing on some silent shore,

Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar:
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 't is o'er.'-Garth.

For, abstracted from the sickness and sufferings usually attending it, it is no more than the expiration of that term of life God was pleased to bestow on us, without any claim or merit on our part. But was it an evil ever so great, it could not be remedied but by one much greater, which is by living for ever; by which means our wickedness, unre. strained by the prospect of a future state, would grow so unsupportable, our sufferings so intolerable by perseverance, and our pleasures so tiresome by repetition, that no being in the universe could be so completely miserable as a species of immortal men. We have no reason, therefore,

Rather than life itself. But here, all is So shadowy and so full of twilight, that It speaks of a day past.

Lucifer.

It is the realm Of death.-Wouldst have it present? Cain.

Till I know

That which it really is, I cannot answer.
But if it be as I have heard my father
Deal out in his long homilies, 'tis a thing-
Oh God! I dare not think on't! Cursed be
He who invented life that leads to death!
Or the dull mass of life, that, being life,
Could not retain, but needs must forfeit it—
Even for the innocent!

Lucifer.
Dost thou curse thy father?
Cain. Cursed he not me in giving me my birth?
Cursed he not me before my birth, in daring
To pluck the fruit forbidden?

Lucifer.

The curse is mutual 'twixt thy But for thy sons and brother?

Cain.

Thou say'st well: sire and thee

Let them share it

to look upon death as an evil, or to fear it as a punishment, even without any supposition of a future life: but if we consider it as a passage to a more perfect state, or a remove only in an eternal succession of still improving states (for which we have the strongest reasons), it will then appear a new favour from the divine munificence; and a man must be as absurd to repine at dying, as a traveller would be, who proposed to himself a delightful tour through various unknown countries, to lament that he cannot take up his residence at the first dirty inn which he baits at on the road. --The instability of human life, or of the changes of its successive periods, of which we so frequently complain, are no more than the necessary progress of it to this necessary con clusion; and are so far from being evils deserving these complaints, that they are the source of our greatest pleasures, as they are the source of all novelty, from which our greatest pleasures are ever derived. The continual succession of seasons in the human life, by daily presenting to us new scenes, render it agreeable, and, like those of the year, afford us delights by their change, which the choicest of them could not give us by their continuance. In the spring of life, the gilding of the sunshine, the verdure of the fields, and the variegated paintings of the sky, are so exquisite in the eyes of infants at their first looking abroad into a new world, as nothing perhaps afterwards can equal. The heat and vigour of the succeeding summer of youth ripens for us new pleasures,-the blooming maid, the nightly revel, and the jovial chase: the serene autumn of complete manhood feasts us with the golden harvests of our worldly pursuits: nor is the hoary winter of old age destitute of its peculiar comforts and enjoyments, of which the recollection and relation of those past are perhaps none of the least; and at last death opens to us a new prospect, from whence we shall probably look back upon the diversions and occupa. tions of this world with the same contempt we do now on our tops and hobby-horses, and with the same surprise that they could ever so much entertain or engage us." Jenyns. -"These," says Dr. Johnson," are sentiments which, though not new, may be read with pleasure and profit in the thousandth repetition."-L. E.