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I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter
Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.
Whom have we here? A shape like to the angels,
Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect

Of spiritual essence: why do I quake?

Why should I fear him more than other spirits,
Whom I see daily wave their fiery swords
Before the gates round which I linger oft,
In twilight's hour, to catch a glimpse of those
Gardens which are my just inheritance,
Ere the night closes o'er the inhibited walls
And the immortal trees which overtop
The cherubim-defended battlements?

If I shrink not from these, the fire-arm'd angels,
Why should I quail from him who now approaches?
Yet he seems mightier far than them, nor less
Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful

As he hath been, and might be: sorrow seems
Half of his immortality. 1 And is it
So? and can aught grieve save humanity?
He cometh.

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1 [Cain's description of the approach of Lucifer would have shone in the Paradise Lost." There is something spiritually fine in this conception of the terror of presentiment of coming evil. JEFFREY.]

2 [Of Lucifer, as drawn by Lord Byron, we absolutely know no evil: on the contrary, the impression which we receive of him is, from his first introduction, most favourable. He is not only endued with all the beauty, the wisdom, and the unconquerable daring which Milton has assigned him, and which may reasonably be supposed to belong to a spirit of so exalted a nature, but he is represented as unhappy without a crime, and as pitying our unhappiness. Even before he appears, we are prepared (so far as the poet has had skill to prepare us) to sympathise with any spiritual being who is opposed to the government of Jehovah. The conversations, the exhibitions which ensue, are all conducive to the same conclusion, that whatever is is evil, and that, had the Devil been the Creator, he would have made his creatures happier. Above all, his arguments and insinuations are allowed to pass uncontradicted, or are answered only by overbearing force, and punishment inflicted not on himself but on his disciple. Nor is the intention less apparent, nor the poison less subtle, because the language employed is not indecorous, and the accuser of the Almighty does not descend to rihaldry or scurrilous invective. - HEBER.]

The Satan of Milton is no half-human devil, with enough of earth about him to typify the malignant sceptic, and enough of heaven to throw a shade of sublimity on his very malignity. The Lucifer of Byron is neither a noble-fiend, nor yet a villain-fiend he does nothing, and he seems nothing there is no poetry either of character or description about him- he is a poor, sneaking talking devil- a most wretched metaphysician, without wit enough to save him even from the damnation of criticism - he speaks neither poetry nor common

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sense. Thomas Aquinas would have flogged him more for his bad logic than his unbelief; and St. Dunstan would have caught him by the nose ere the purblind fiend was aware.-BLACKWOOD.]

The impiety chargeable on this Mystery consists mainly in this-that the purposeless and gratuitous blasphemies pur into the mouth of Lucifer and Cain are left unrefuted, so that they appear introduced for their own sake, and the design of the writer seems to terminate in them. There is no attempt made to prevent their leaving the strongest possible impression on the reader's mind. On the contrary, the arguments, if such they can be called, levelled against the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, are put forth with the utmost ingenuity. And it has been the noble poet's endeavour to palliate as much as possible the characters of the Evil Spirit and of the first Murderer; the former of whom is made an elegant, poetical, philosophical sentimentalist, a sort of Man. fred, the latter an ignorant, proud, and self-willed boy. Lucifer, too, is represented as denying all share in the temptation of Eve, which he throws upon the Serpent"in his serpentine capacity;" "the author pleading, that he does so, only because the book of Genesis has not the most distant allusion to any thing of the kind, and that a reference to the New Testament would be an anachronism. - Ecl. Rev.]

3 [In this long dialogue, the tempter tells Cain (who is thus far supposed to be ignorant of the fact) that the soul is immortal, and that "souls who dare use their immortality" are condemned by God to be wretched everlastingly. This sen timent, which is the pervading moral (if we may call it so) of the play, is developed in the lines which follow. HEBER "There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in Cain' that I recollect. I hold no such opinions; but, in a drama, the first rebel and the first murderer must be made to talk according to their characters."- Byron Letters.]

Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in
His everlasting face, and tell him, that
His evil is not good! If he has made,
As he saith-which I know not, nor believe
But, if he made us - he cannot unmake:
We are immortal! — nay, he'd have us so,
That he may torture: let him! He is great
But, in his greatness, is no happier than
We in our conflict! Goodness would not make
Evil; and what else hath he made? But let him

Sit on his vast and solitary throne,

Creating worlds, to make eternity

Less burthensome to his immense existence

And unparticipated solitude!

Let him crowd orb on orb: he is alone

Indefinite, indissoluble tyrant !!

Could he but crush himself, 't were the best boon

He ever granted: but, let him reign on,

And multiply himself in misery!
Spirits and men, at least we sympathise.
And, suffering in concert, make our pangs,
Innumerable, more endurable,

By the unbounded sympathy of all—

With all! But He! so wretched in his height, So restless in his wretchedness, must still Create, and re-create

2

Cain. Thou speak'st to me of things which long have swum

In visions through my thought: I never could
Reconcile what I saw with what I heard.
My father and my mother talk to me
Of serpents, and of fruits and trees: I see
The gates of what they call their Paradise
Guarded by fiery-sworded cherubim,

Which shut them out, and me: I feel the weight
Of daily toil and constant thought: I look
Around a world where I seem nothing, with
Thoughts which arise within me, as if they
Could master all things: —but I thought alone
This misery was mine. My father is
Tamed down; my mother has forgot the mind
Which made her thirst for knowledge at the risk
Of an eternal curse; my brother is

A watching shepherd boy, who offers up
The firstlings of the flock to him who bids
The earth yield nothing to us without sweat;
My sister Zillah sings an earlier hymn
Than the birds' matins; and my Adah, my
Own and beloved, she, too, understands not
The mind which overwhelms me: never till
Now met I aught to sympathise with me.
'Tis well- I rather would consort with spirits. [soul
Lucifer. And hadst thou not been fit by thine own

[The poet rises to the sublime in making Lucifer first inspire Cain with the knowledge of his immortality-a por tion of truth which hath the efficacy of falsehood upon the victim; for Cain, feeling himself already unhappy, knowing that his being cannot be abridged, has the less scruple to desire to be as Lucifer, "mighty." The whole of this speech is truly satanic; a daring and dreadful description given by everlasting despair of the Deity. — GALT.]

2

["Create, and re-create- perhaps he 'll make
One day a Son unto himself as he
Gave you a father and if he so doth,
Mark ine! that Son will be a sacrifice!"-MS.]

3 ["Have stood before thee as I am; but chosen
The serpent's charming symbol, as before." - MS.]

4 [The tree of life was doubtless a material tree, producing material fruit, proper as such for the nourishment of the body; but was it not also set apart to be partaken of as a

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Save with the truth: was not the tree, the tree

Of knowledge? and was not the tree of life
Still fruitful ? 4 Did / bid her pluck them not?
Did I plant things prohibited within

The reach of beings innocent, and curious

By their own innocence ?5 I would have made ye
Gods; and even He who thrust ye forth, so thrust ye
Because "ye should not eat the fruits of life,
And become gods as we." Were those his words?
Cain. They were, as I have heard from those who
heard them,

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Saith that? It is not written so on high:
The proud One will not so far falsify,
Though man's vast fears and little vanity
Would make him cast upon the spiritual nature
His own low failing. The snake was the snake
No more; and yet not less than those he tempted,
In nature being earth also— more in wisdom,
Since he could overcome them, and foreknew
The knowledge fatal to their narrow joys.
Think'st thou I'd take the shape of things that die?
Cain. But the thing had a demon?
Lucifer.
He but woke one
In those he spake to with his forky tongue.
I tell thee that the serpent was no more
Than a mere serpent: ask the cherubim
Who guard the tempting tree. When thousand ages
Have roll'd o'er your dead ashes, and your seed's,

symbol or sacrament of that celestial principle which nourishes the soul to immortality?— BISHOP HORNE.]

5 [The Eclectic reviewer, we believe the late Robert Hall, says, "Innocence is not the cause of curiosity, but has, in every stage of society, been its victim. Curiosity has ruined greater numbers than any other passion; and as, in its incipient actings, it is the most dangerous foe of innocence, so, when it becomes a passion, it is only fed by guilt. Innocence, indeed, is gone, when desire has conceived the sin. Cain, in this drama, is made, like the Faust of Goethe, to be the victim of curiosity; and a tine moral might have been deduced from it." Dr. Johnson, on the contrary, says, "A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than by an eminent degree of curiosity. This passion is, perhaps, regularly heightened in proportion as the powers of the mind are elevated and enlarged. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched."]

Y

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Crowd in my breast to burning, when I hear
Of this almighty Death, who is, it seems,
Inevitable. Could I wrestle with him?

I wrestled with the lion, when a boy,

In play, till he ran roaring from my gripe.
Lucifer. It has no shape; but will absorb all things
That bear the form of earth-born being.
Cain.

I thought it was a being: who could do
Such evil things to beings save a being?
Lucifer. Ask the Destroyer.
Cain.

Lucifer.

Who?

Ah!

The Maker - call him
Which name thou wilt; he makes but to destroy.
Cain. I knew not that, yet thought it, since I heard
Of death: although I know not what it is,
Yet it seems horrible. I have look'd out
In the vast desolate night in search of him;
And when I saw gigantic shadows in
The umbrage of the walls of Eden, chequer'd
By the far-flashing of the cherubs' swords,

I watch'd for what I thought his coming; for
With fear rose longing in my heart to know
What 't was which shook us all but nothing came.
And then I turn'd my weary eyes from off
Our native and forbidden Paradise,

Up to the lights above us, in the azure,
Which are so beautiful: shall they, too, die?
Lucifer. Perhaps - but long outlive both thine

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Why?
To offer up

Cain. To cull some first-fruits.
Lucifer.
Cain.

With Abel on an altar.

up as sacrifices; so that it is not quite conceivable that they should be so much at a loss to conjecture what Death was. - JEFFREY.]

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