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It must not be.

Angel. Cain. My brow, but nought to that which is within it. Is there more? let me meet it as I may. Angel. Stern hast thou been and stubborn from the womb,

[The ANGEL sets the mark on CAIN's brow.
It burns

As the ground thou must henceforth till; but he
Thou slew'st was gentle as the flocks he tended.
Cain. After the fall too soon was I begotten;
Ere yet my mother's mind subsided from
The serpent, and my sire still mourn'd for Eden.
That which I am, I am; I did not seek
For life, nor did I make myself; but could I
With my own death redeem him from the dust-
And why not so? let him return to day,
And I lie ghastly! so shall be restored

By God the life to him he loved; and taken
From me a being I ne'er loved to bear.

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And everlasting witness! whose unsinking
Blood darkens earth and heaven! what thou now art
I know not! but if thou see'st what I am,

I think thou wilt forgive him, whom his God
Can ne'er forgive, nor his own soul.-Farewell!
I must not, dare not, touch what I have made thee.
I, who sprang from the same womb with thee, drain'd
The same breast, clasp'd thee often to my own,
In fondness brotherly and boyish, I

Can never meet thee more, nor even dare
To do that for thee, which thou shouldst have done
For me-compose thy limbs into their grave
The first grave yet dug for mortality.
But who hath dug that grave? Oh, earth! Oh, earth!
For all the fruits thou hast render'd to me, I
Give thee back this.-Now for the wilderness.

[ADAH stoops down and kisses the body of ABEL
Adah. A dreary, and an early doom, my brother,
Has been thy lot! Of all who mourn for thee,
I alone must not weep. My office is
Henceforth to dry up tears, and not to shed them;
But yet of all who mourn, none mourn like me,
Not only for thyself, but him who slew thee.
Now, Cain! I will divide thy burden with thee.

Cain. Eastward from Eden will we take our way "Tis the most desolate, and suits my steps. Adah. Lead! thou shalt be my guide, and may

Angel. Who shall heal murder? what is done is done; Be thine! Now let us carry forth our children. [G Go forth! fulfil thy days! and be thy deeds

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(1) The "four rivers" which flowed round Eden, and consequently the only waters with which Cain was acquainted upon earth.

(2) "The catastrophe is brought about with great dramatic skill and effect. The murderer is sorrowful and confounded, his parents reprobate and renounce him, his wife clings to him with eager and unhesitating affection; and they wander forth together into the vast solitude of the universe." Jeffrey.-L. E.

(3) The reader has seen what Sir Walter Scott's general opinion of Cain was, in the letter relative to the dedication, antè, p. 506. Mr. Moore's was conveyed to Lord Byron in these words:

"I have read Foscari and Cain. The former does not please me so highly as Sardanapalus. It has the fault of all those violent Venetian stories; being unnatural and improbable, and therefore, in spite of all your fine management of them, appealing but remotely to one's sympathies. But Cain is wonderful-terrible-uever to be forgotten. If I am not mistaken, it will sink deep into the world's heart; and while many will shudder at its blasphemy, all must fall prostrate before its grandeur. Talk of Eschylus and his Prometheus! -here is the true spirit both of the Poet-and the Devil.”

Lord B.'s answer to Mr. Moore on this occasion contains the substance of all that he ever thought fit to advance in defence of the assaulted points in his Mystery :

"With respect to religion," he says, "can I never convince you that I hold no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which seems to have frightened every body? My ideas of a character may

Cain. And he who lieth there was childless. I
Have dried the fountain of a gentle race,
Which might have graced his recent marriage-co
And might have temper'd this stern blood of mine,
Uniting with our children Abel's offspring!
O Abel!

Adah. Peace be with him!
Cain.

But with me![Exeunt

run away with me: like all imaginative men, I, of course, emb myself with the character while I draw it, but not a moment k the pen is from off the paper."

He thus alludes to the effects of the critical tempest é cited by Cain, in the eleventh canto of Don Juan:

"In twice five years the greatest living poet,"
Like to the champion in the fisty ring.
Is call'd on to support his claim, or show it,
Although 't is an imaginary thing.
Even 1-albeit I'm sure I did not know it,
Nor sought of foolscap subjects to be king-
Was reckon'd, a considerable time,
The Grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.
"But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero

My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain."

We shall now present the reader with a few of the mai elaborate summaries of the contemporary critics,-favou able and unfavourable, beginning with the Edinby Review. Mr. Jeffrey says:

"Thongh Cain abounds in beautiful passages, and shows mor power, perhaps, than any of the author's dramatical comp tions, we regret very much that it should ever have been par lished. It will give very great scandal and offence to pious sons in general, and may be the means of suggesting there painful doubts and distressing perplexities to hundreds of that might never otherwise have been exposed to such danger disturbance. Lord Byron has no priestlike cant or priestlike ing to apprehend from us. We do not charge him with bring elem a disciple or an apostle of Lucifer; nor do we describe his poetry

APPENDIX.

THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN.

A FRAGMENT.

BY S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

"A LITTLE further, O my father, yet a little further, and we shall come into the open moonlight!" Their road was through a forest of fir-trees; at its entrance the trees stood at distances from each other, and the path was broad, and the moonlight and the moonlight shadows reposed upon it, and appeared quietly to inhabit that solitude. But soon the path winded and became narrow; the sun at high noon sometimes speckled but never illumined it, and now it was dark as a cavern.

"It is dark, O my father!" said Enos, "but the path under our feet is smooth and soft, and we shall 19on come out into the open moonlight. Ah! why dost thou groan so deeply?"

"Lead on, my child," said Cain; "guide me, little child. And the innocent little child clasped a finger

mere compound of blasphemy and obscenity. On the contrary, we are inclined to believe that he wishes well to the happiness of mankind, and are glad to testify that his poems abound with sentents of great dignity and tenderness, as well as passages of infisamity and beauty...... Philosophy and poetry are both very good things in their way; but, in our opinion, they do not go very well together. It is but a poor and pedantic sort of poetry that ser to embody nothing but metaphysical subtleties and abstract detections of reason-and a very suspicious philosophy that aims at Shing its doctrines by appeals to the passions and the fancy. Tega sach arguments, however, are worth little in the schools, it do not follow that their effect is inconsiderable in the world. the contrary, it is the mischief of all poetical paradoxes, that, the very limits and end of poetry, which deals only in obvious glancing views, they are never brought to the fair test of arguAn allusion to a doubtful topic will often pass for a definitive viason on it; and, clothed in beautiful language, may leave the pernicious impressions behind. We therefore think that poets fairly to be confined to the established creed and morality of er country, or to the actual passions and sentiments of mankind; at poetical dreamers and sophists who pretend to theorise acwing to their feverish fancies, without a warrant from authority reason, ought to be banished the commonwealth of letters. he courts of morality, poets are unexceptionable witnesses: they gave in the evidence, and depose to facts whether good or ill, ad we demur to their arbitary and self-pleasing summing up; they resuspected judges, and not very often safe advocates, where great jstations are concerned and universal principles brought to issue." The Reviewer in the Quarterly was the late Bishop Heber. Es article ends as follows:

In

"We do not think, indeed, that there is much vigour or poetical ropriety in any of the characters of Lord Byron's Mystery. Eve, une occasion, and one only, expresses herself with energy, and ot even then with any great depth of that maternal feeling which be death of her favourite son was likely to excite in her. Adam

ralises without dignity. Abel is as dull as he is pious. Lucifer, Lough his first appearance is well conceived, is as sententious and arcastic as a Scotch metaphysician, and the gravamina which drive 4ate impiety are circumstances which could only produce a clar effect on a weak and sluggish mind, the necessity of exerand the fear of death! Yet, in the happiest climate of earth, adamid the early vigour of nature, it would be absurd to describe has Lord Byron so described it) the toil to which Cain can have been subject as excessive or burthensome. And he is made too appy in his love, too extravagantly fond of his wife and his child, have much leisure for those gloomy thoughts which belong to dis pated ambition and jaded licentiousness. Nor, though there are passages in this drama of no common power, is the general me of its poetry so excellent as to atone for these imperfections of The dialogue is cold and constrained. The descriptions are te the shadows of a phantasmagoria, at once indistinct and arti al. Except Adah, there is no person in whose fortunes we are sterested; and we close the book with no distinct or clinging reelection of any single passage in it, and with the general impres

only that Lucifer has said much and done little, and that Cain s been unhappy without grounds and wicked without an object. But if, as a poem, Cain is little qualified to add to Lord Byron's reation, we are unfortunately constrained to observe that its poetic defects are the very smallest of its demerits. It is not, indeed, is some both of its admirers and its enemies appear to have suped, a direct attack on Scripture and on the authority of Moses.

of the hand which had murdered the righteous Abel; and he guided his father. "The fir branches drop upon thee, my son."-"Yea, pleasantly, father, for I ran fast and eagerly to bring thee the pitcher and the cake, and my body is not yet cool. How happy the squirrels are that feed on these fir-trees! they leap from bough to bough, and the old squirrels play round their young ones in the nest. I clomb a tree yesterday at noon, O my father, that I might play with them; but they leapt away from the branches, even to the slender twigs did they leap, and in a moment I beheld them on another tree, Why, O my father, would they not play with me? Is it because we are not so happy as they? Is it because I groan sometimes even as thou groanest?" Then Cain stopped, and, stifling his groans, he sank to the earth, and the child Enos stood in the darkness beside him, and Cain lifted up his voice, and cried bitterly, and said, "The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like the wind, like the sand-blast he passeth through me; he is around me even as the air; O that I might be utterly no more! I desire to die!-yea, the things that never had life, neither move they upon the earth-behold they seem precious to mine eyes. O that a man might live with

The expressions of Cain and Lucifer are not more offensive to the ears of piety than such discourses must necessarily be, or than Milton, without offence, has put into the mouths of beings similarly situated. And though the intention is evident which has led the Atheists and Jacobins (the terms are convertible) of our metropolis to circulate the work in a cheap form among the populace, we are not ourselves of opinion that it possesses much power of active mischief, or that many persons will be very deeply or lastingly impressed by insinuations which lead to no practical result, and difficulties which so obviously transcend the range of human experi ence."

It is not unamusing to compare the above with the fol lowing paragraph in one of the Bishop's private letters at the time:

"I have been very busy since I came home in reviewing Lord Byron's dramatic poems. Of course, I have had occasion to find a reasonable quantity of fault, but I do not think that I have done him injustice. Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.' I should have liked to have taken up the same ground in a great degree with Jeffrey; but, as it will never do to build on another man's foundation, I have been obliged to break ground on a different side of the fortress, though not, I think, so favourable a one, and with the disadvantage of contending against a rival, who has conducted his attack with admirable taste and skill."

The following extract is from Mr. Campbell's Magazine:

"Cain, a Mystery, is altogether of a higher order than Sardana. palus and the Two Foscari. Lord Byron, has not, indeed, fulfilled our expectations of a gigantic picture of the first murderer; for there is scarcely any passion, except the immediate agony of rage, which brings on the catastrophe; and Cain himself is little more than the subject of supernatural agency. This piece is essentially nothing but a vehicle for striking allusions to the mighty abstrac tions of Death and Life, Eternity and Time; for vast but dim de scriptions of the regions of space, and for daring disputations on that great problem, the origin of evil. The groundwork of the arguments on the awful subjects handled is very common-place; but they are arrayed in great majesty of language, and conducted with a frightful audacity. The direct attacks on the goodness of God are not, perhaps, taken apart, bolder than some passages of Milton; but they inspire quite a different sensation; because, in thinking of Paradise Lost, we never regard the Deity, or Satan, as other than great adverse powers, created by the imagination of the poet. The personal identity which Milton has given to his spiritual intelligences, the local habitations which he has assigned them,the material beauty with which he has invested their forms,-all these remove the idea of impurity from their discourses. But we know nothing of Lord Byron's Lucifer, except his speeches: he is invented only that he may utter them and the whole appears an abstract discussion, held for its own sake, not maintained in order to serve the dramatic consistency of the persons. He has made no attempt to imitate Milton's plastic power;-that power by which our great poet has made his Heaven and Hell, and the very regions of space, sublime realities, palpable to the imagination, and has traced the lineaments of his angelic messengers with the precision of a sculptor. The Lucifer of Cain is a mere bodiless abstraction, -the shadow of a dogma; and all the scenery over which he presides is dim, vague, and seen only in faint outline. There is, no doubt, a very uncommon power displayed, even in this shadowing

out the breath of his nostrils, so I might abide in darkness and blackness, and an empty space! Yea 1 would lie down, I would not rise, neither would I stir my limbs till I became as the rock in the den of the lion, on which the young lion resteth his head whilst he sleepeth. For the torrent that roareth far off hath a voice; and the clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty One who is against me speaketh in the wind of the cedar-tree; and in silence am I dried up." Then Enos spake to his father," Arise, my father, arise; we are but a little way from the place where I found the cake and the pitcher." And Cain said, "How knowest thou?" and the child answered-"Behold, the bare rocks are a few of thy strides distant from the forest; and while even now thou wert lifting up thy voice, I heard the echo." Then the child took hold of his father, as if he would raise him; and Cain, being faint and feeble, rose slowly on his knees and pressed himself against the trunk of a fir, and stood upright and followed the child. The path was dark till within three strides' length of its termination, when it turned suddenly: the thick black trees formed a low arch, and the moonlight appeared

out of the ethereal journey of the spirit and his victim, and in the vast sketch of the world of phantasms at which they arrive: but they are utterly unlike the massive grandeurs of Milton's creation. We are far from imputing intentional impiety to Lord Byron for this Mystery; nor, though its language occasionally shocks, do we apprehend any danger will arise from its perusal."

[The following is Mr. Galt's opinion:

"This performance in point of conception is of a sublime order. The object of the poem is to illustrate the energy and the art of Lucifer in accomplishing the ruin of the first-born. By an unfair misconception the arguments of Lucifer have been represented as the sentiments of the author, upon some imaginary warranty derived from the exaggerated freedom of his life; and yet the moral tendency of the reflections is framed in a mood of reverence as awful towards Omnipotence as the austere divinity of Milton. would be presumption in me, however, to undertake the defence of any question in theology; but I have not been sensible to the imputed impiety, whilst I have felt in many passages influences that have their being amidst the shadows and twilights of 'old religion.'"' -P. E.]

It

So much for the professed Reviewers. We shall conclude with a passage from Sir Egerton Brydges's Letters on the Character and Genius of Lord Byron :—

"One of the pieces which have had the effect of throwing the most unfavourable hues, not upon the brilliancy of Lord Byron's poetry, but upon its results to society, is Cain. Yet, it must be confessed, that there is no inconsiderable portion of that poem which is second only to portions of similar import in Milton,-and many of them not second; in a style still sweeter and more eloquent, and with equal force, grandeur, and purity of sentiment and conception; such as the most rigidly-religious mind would have read, had it come from Milton, or any other poet whose piety was not suspected, as the effusion of something approaching to holy inspiration.

"Let us then reconsider this extraordinary poem, which we have abandoned a little too hastily; let us task our candour afresh, and inquire of ourselves, whether he who could write such passages could mean wrong? Let us recollect, that as the rebellious and blasphemous speeches he has put into the mouths of Lucifer and Cain are warranted by Milton's example, and the fact of Cain's transgression recorded in the Bible, the omission of the design and filling up a character who should answer all those speeches might be a mere defect in the poet's judgment. He might think that Lucifer's known character as an Evil Spirit precluded his arguments from the sanction of authority; and that Cain's punishment, and the denunciations which accompanied it, were a sufficient warning.

"I know not that any objection has been made to Heaven and Earth. It has the same cast of excellence as the more perfect parts of Cain, but, perhaps, not quite so intense in degree.

"It seems as if Lord Byron persuaded himself, with regard to his own being, that he had always within him two contrary spirits of good and evil contending for the dominion over him, and thus reconciled those extraordinary flights of intellectual elevation and purity with a submission to the pride, the ferocity, the worldly passions, the worldly enjoyments, the corporeal pastimes, the familiar humour, the vulgarisms, the rough and coarse manliness, to which he alternately surrendered himself, and which the good-natured public chose to consider as the sole attributes of his personal character. Much of his time, however, must have been spent in the musings by which these high poems, so compacted of the essence of thought, were produced; and, in all this large portion of his existence here, his imagination must have borne him up on its wings into etherial regions, far above the gross and sensual enjoyments of this grovelling earth.

for a moment like a dazzling portal. Enos ran before and stood in the open air; and when Cain, his father, emerged from the darkness, the child was affrighted, for the mighty limbs of Cain were wasted as by fire; his hair was black, and matted into loathly curls, and his countenance was dark and wild, and told, in a strange and terrible language, of agonies that had been, and were, and were still to continue to be. The scene around was desolate; as far as the eye could reach, it was desolate; the bare rocks faced each other, and left a long and wide interval of their white sand. You might wander on and look round and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks, and discover nothing that acknowledged the influence of the seasons. There was no spring, no summer, no autumn; and the winter's snow, that would have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks and scorching sands. Never morning lark had poised himself over this desert; but the huge serpent often hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and the vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within the coils the serpent. The pointed and shattered summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude mimicry of

Did he deal, as minor poets deal, in mere splendour of words, his poetry would be no proof of this; but he never does so there i always a breathing soul beneath his words,

'That o'er-informs the tenement of clay :'

it is like the fragrant vapour that rises in incense from the earth/ through the morning dew: and when we listen to his lyre,

'Less than a god we think there cannot dwell
Within the hollow of that shell,

That sings so sweetly and so well!'

"If Lord Byron thought that, however loudly noisy voices might salute him with a rude and indiscriminate clamour of applause, hit poems were not received with the taste and judgment they merak and that severe and cruel comments were attached to them by th who assumed to themselves authority, and who seldom allowed) genius without perverting it into a cause of censure, that more fa | outweighed the praise; those fumes of flattery which are impsted the causes of a delirium that led him into extravagancies, our decorum and the respect due to the public, never, in fact, react him. To confer faint praise' is 'to damn;' to confer praist a wrong place is to insult and provoke. Lord Byron, therefore, not, after all, the encouragement that is most favourable to rig the richest fruit; and it was a firm and noble courage that prompted him to persevere.

"For this reason, as well as for others, I think his foreign r dences were more propitious to the energies of his Muse than a chấ tinued abode in England would have been. The poison of t praises that were insidious did not reach him so soon; and he wa not beset by treacherous companions, mortifying gossip, and that petty intercourse with ordinary society which tames and lowers tone of the mind. To mingle much with the world is to be infa Thin degraded by familiarity; not to mingle, at least, among the busy atď the known, is to incur the disrespect to which insignificance is subs jected. Lord Byron's foreign residence exempted him from these evils: he saw a few intimate friends, and he corresponded whi few others; but such an intercourse does not expose to similar effects The necessary knowledge and necessary hints may thus be conveyed but not all the pestilent chills which general society is so afficrous to unveil.

"If Lord Byron had not had a mind with a strong spring of vert within it, I think that he would have thrown down his pen at scre of the attacks he received, and given himself up to the sensual pirsures of his rank for the remainder of his life. The finer party d his poems were of such spiritual splendour, and so pure, though per sionate, an elevation, that they ought to have redeemed any pat which were open to doubt from a malevolent construction, 1 even have eclipsed and rendered unnoticeable many positive fanta "Lord Byron's style, like his thoughts, had every variety: it not attempt (as is the common practice) to make poetry by the me taphorical and the figurative; it followed his thoughts, and was a part of them: it did not fatigue itself to render clear by illustra or important by ornament, because the thought was clear or impat

ant in itself.

"I remember, when I first read Cain, I thought it, as a compan tion, the most enchanting and irresistible of all Lord Byron's work, and I think so still. Some of the sentiments, taken detachedly, and left unanswered, are no doubt dangerous, and therefore ought not * have been so left; but the class of readers whom this poem is akry to interest are of so very elevated a cast, and the effect of the poetry to refine, spiritualise, and illumine the imagination with such a suite unearthly sublimity, that the mind of these, I am persuaded, will come too strong to incur any taint thus predicted, from the defect which has been so much insisted on."-L. E.

human concerns, and seemed to prophesy mutely of things that then were not; steeples, and battlements, and ships with naked masts. As far from the wood as a boy might sling a pebble of the brook, there was one rock by itself at a small distance from the main ridge. It had been precipitated there, perhaps by the terrible groan the earth gave when our first father fell. Before you approached, it appeared to lie flat on the ground, but its base started from its point, and between its points and the sands a tall man might stand upright. It was here that Enos had found the pitcher and cake, and to this place he led his father; but, ere they arrived there, they beheld a human shape; his back was towards them, and they were coming up unperceived when they heard him smite his breast, and cry aloud, "Woe is me! woe is me! | I must never die again, and yet I am perishing with thirst and hunger."

The face of Cain turned pale; but Enos said, "Ere yet I could speak, I am sure, O my father, that I heard that voice. Have not I often said that I remembered a sweet voice? O my father! this is it;" and Cain trembled exceedingly. The voice was sweet indeed, but it was thin and querulous like that of a feeble slave in misery, who despairs altogether, yet cannot refrain himself from weeping and lamentation. Enos crept softly round the base of the rock, and stood before the stranger, and looked up into his face. And the Shape shrieked, and turned round, and Cain beheld him, that his limbs and his face were those of his brother Abel whom he had killed; and Cain stood like one who struggles in his sleep, because of the exceeding terribleness of a dream; and ere he had recovered himself from the tumult of his agitation, the Shape fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, and cried out with a bitter outcry, "Thou eldest-born of Adam, whom Eve, my mother, brought forth, cease to torment me! I was feeding my flocks in green pastures by the side of quiet rivers, and thou killedst me; and now I am in misery." Then Cain closed eyes, and hid them with his hands-and again he opened his eyes, and looked around him, and said to Enos, "What beholdest thou? Didst thou hear a voice, my son?”—“Yes, my father, I beheld a man in unclean garments, and he uttered a sweet voice fall of lamentation." Then Cain raised up the shape that was like Abel, and said, "The Creator of our father, who had respect unto thee, and unto thy of tering, wherefore hath he forsaken thee?" Then the Shape shrieked a second time, and rent his garment, and his naked skin was like the white sands beneath their feet; and he shrieked yet a third time, and threw

himself on his face upon the sand that was black with the shadow of the rock, and Cain and Enos sate beside him; the child by his right hand, and Cain by his left. They were all three under the rock, and within the shadow. The Shape that was like Abel raised himself up, and spake to the child. "I know where the cold waters are, but I may not drink; wherefore didst thou then take away my pitcher?" But Cain said, "Didst thou not find favour in the sight of the Lord thy God?" The Shape answered, "The Lord is God of the living only, the dead have another God." Then the child Enos lifted up his eyes and prayed; but Cain rejoiced secretly in his heart. "Wretched shall they be all the days of their mortal life," exclaimed the Shape, "who sacrifice worthy and acceptable sacrifices to the God of the dead; but after death their toil ceaseth. Woe is me, for I was well beloved by the God of the living, and cruel wert thou, O my brother, who didst snatch me away from his power and his dominion!" Having attered these words, he rose suddenly, and fled over the sands; and Cain said in his heart, "The curse of the Lord is on me-but who is the God of the dead?" and he ran after the Shape, and the Shape fled shrieking over the sands, and the sands rose like white mists behind the steps of Cain, but the feet of him that was like Abel disturbed not the sands. He greatly outran Cain; and, turning short, he wheeled round, and came again to the rock where they had been sitting, and where Enos still stood; and the child caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and he fell upon the ground; and Cain stopped, and, beholding him not, said, "he has passed into the dark woods," and walked slowly back to the rock; and when he reached it, the child told him that he had caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and that the man had fallen upon the ground; and Cain once more sat beside him, and said

"Abel, my brother, I would lament for thee, but that the spirit within me is withered and burnt up with extreme agony. Now, I pray thee, by thy flocks and by thy pastures, and by the quiet rivers which thou lovedst, that thou tell me all that thou knowest. Who is the God of the dead? where doth he make his dwelling? what sacrifices are acceptable unto him? for I have offered, but have not been received; I have prayed, and have not been heard; and how can I be afflicted more than I already am?" The Shape arose and answered-“O that thou hadst had pity on me, as I will have pity on thee. Follow me, son of Adam! and bring thy child with thee:" and they then passed over the white sands between the rocks, silent as their shadows.

Werner, or the Inheritance;

A

A TRAGEDY ,(1)

TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS GOETHE,

PREFACE.

BY ONE OF HIS HUMBLEST ADMIRERS,

This Tragedy is Dedicated.

THE following drama is taken entirely from the German's Tale, Kruitzner, published many years ago in Lee's Canterbury Tales; written (I believe) by two sisters, of whom one furnished only this story and another, both of which are considered superior to the remainder of the collection. (2) I have adopted the characters, plan, and even the language, of many parts of this story. Some of the characters are modified or altered, a few of the names changed, and one character (Ida of Stralenheim) added by myself: but in the rest the original is chiefly followed. When I was young (about fourteen, I think), I first read this tale, which made a deep impression upon me; and may, indeed, be said to contain the germ of much that I have since written. I am not sure that it ever was very popular; or, at any rate, its popularity has since been eclipsed by that of other great writers in the same department. But I have generally found that those who had read it agreed with me in their estimate of the singular power of mind and concep

(1) The tragedy of Werner was begun at Pisa, December the 18th, 1821, completed January the 20th, 1822, and published in London in the November after. The reviews of Werner were, we believe, without exception, unfavourable. One critique of the time thus opens:

"Who could be so absurd as to think that a dramatist has no right to make free with other people's fables? On the contrary, we are quite aware that that particular species of genius which is exhibited in the construction of plots never at any period flourished in England. We all know that Shakspeare himself took his stories from Italian novels, Danish sagas, English chronicles, Plutarch's Lives-from any where rather than from his own invention. But did he take the whole of Hamlet, or Juliet, or Richard the Third, or Antony and Cleopatra, from any of these foreign sources? Did he not invent, a the noblest sense of the word, all the characters of his pieces? Who dreams that any old Italian novelist, or ballad-maker, could have formed the imagination of such a creature as Juliet? Who dreams that the Hamlet of Shakspeare, the princely enthusiast, the melancholy philosopher, that spirit refined even to pain, that most incomprehensible and unapproachable of all the creations of human genius, is the same being, in any thing but the name, with the rough, strong-hearted, bloodyhanded Amlett of the north? Who is there that supposes Goethe to have taken the character of his Faust from the nursery rhymes and penny pamphlets about the Devil and Dr. Faustus? Or who, to come nearer home, imagines that Lord Byron himself found his Sardanapalus in Dionysius of Halicarnassus?"

"But here Lord Byron has invented nothing-absolutely NOTHING. There is not one incident in his play not even the most trivial, that is not to be found in Miss Lee's novel, occurring exactly in the same manner, brought about by exactly the same agents, and producing exactly the same effects on the plot. And then as to the characters, not only is every one of them to be found in Kruitzner, but every one is to be found there more fully and powerfully developed. Indeed, but for the preparation which we had received from our old familiarity with Miss Lee's own admirable work, we rather incline to think that we should have been unable to comprehend the gist of her noble imifator, or rather copier, in several of what seem to be meant for his most elaborate delineations. The fact is, that this undeviating closeness, this humble fidelity of imitation, is a thing so perfectly new in any thing worthy of the name of literature, that we are sure no one

tion which it developes. I should also add conception, rather than execution; for the story might, perhaps, have been developed with greater advantage. Amongst those whose opinions agreed with mine upon this story, I could mention some very high names: bat it is not necessary, nor indeed of any use; for every one must judge according to his own feelings. I merely refer the reader to the original story, that he may see to what extent I have borrowed from it; and am not unwilling that he should find much greater pleasure in perusing it than the drama which is founded upon its contents.

I had begun a drama upon this tale so far back as 1815 (the first I ever attempted, except one at thir teen years old, called Ulric and Ilvina, which I had. sense enough to burn), and had nearly completed an act, when I was interrupted by circumstances. This is somewhere amongst my papers in England; but as it has not been found, I have re-written the first, and added the subsequent acts.

The whole is neither intended, nor in any sh adapted, for the stage. (3)

PISA, February 1822.

who has not read the Canterbury Tales will be able to form the leas conception of what it amounts to.

"Those who have never read Miss Lee's book will, however, bel pleased with this production; for, in truth, the story is our of the most powerfully conceived, one of the most picturesque and at the same time instructive stories, that we are acquainted with. Inde thus led as we are to name Harriet Lee, we cannot allow the oppor tunity to pass without saying, that we have always considered bet works as standing upon the verge of the very first rank of excellence that is to say, as inferior to no English novels whatever, exceping those of Fielding. Sterne, Smollett, Richardson, Defoe, Radd Godwin, Edgeworth, and the Author of Waverley. It would no perhaps, be going too far to say, that the Canterbury Tales exhib more of that species of invention which, as we have already re marked, was never common in English literature, than any of th works even of those first-rate novelists we have named, with the single exception of Fielding.

Kruitzner, or the German's Tale, possesses mystery, and yet clear ness, as to its structure, strength of characters, and admirable com trast of characters; and, above all, the most lively interest, blended with and subservient to the most affecting of moral lessons. The main idea which lies at the root of it is the horror of an erring father, who, having been detected in vice by his own son, has dared to de fend his own sin, and so to perplex the son's notions of moral rectis tude, on finding that the son, in his turn, has pushed the false princi ples thus instilled, to the last and worst extreme-on hearing his owa sophistries fiung in his face by a-murderer."

The reader will find a minute analysis, introduced by the above remarks, in Blackwood, vol. xii. p. 710.-L. E. (2) This is not correct. The Young Lady's Tale, or the Two Emily's, and the Clergyman's Tale, or Pembroke, were contributed by Sophia Lee, the author of The Recess, the comedy of The Chapter of Accidents, and Almeyda, a tra gedy, who died in 1824. The German's Tale, and all the others in the Canterbury Collection, were written by Harriet, the younger of the sisters.-L. E.

(3) Ferner is, however, one of Lord Byron's drama that has proved successful in representation. It is still (1834) in possession of the stage.-L. E.

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