Chapter 14

[bd] {141} _To tears save those of dotage_----.--[MS. M.]

[52] {143}[Five sons were born to the Doge, of whom four died of the plague (_Two Doges, etc._, by A. Wiel, 1891, p. 77).]

[53] {144}[The Doge offered to abdicate in June, 1433, in June, 1442, and again in 1446 (see Romanin, _Storia, etc._, 1855, iv. 170, 171, note 1).]

[54] [_Vide ante_, p. 123.]

[55] {148}[For the _Pozzi_ and _Piombi_, see _Marino Faliero_, act i. sc. 2, _Poetical Works_, 1901, iv. 363, note 2.]

[be] _Keep this for them_----.--[MS. M.]

[bf] {149} _The blackest leaf, his heart, and blankest, his brain_.--[MS. M.]

[bg] ----_and best in humblest stations_.--[MS. M.]

[bh]

_Where hunger swallows all--where ever was_ _The monarch who could bear a three days' fast?_--[MS. M.]

[bi] _Their disposition_----.--[MS. M.]

[56] [It would seem that Byron's "not ourselves" by no means "made for" righteousness.]

[bj]

----_the will itself dependent_ _Upon a storm, a straw, and both alike_ _Leading to death_----.--[MS. M.]

[57] [Compare--"The boldest steer but where their ports invite." _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza lxx. lines 7-9; and Canto IV. stanza xxxiv., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 260, 353, and 74, note 1.]

[58] {152}[Compare--

"Our voices took a dreary tone, An echo of the dungeon stone."

_Prisoner of Chillon_, lines 63, 64.

Compare, too--

"----prisoned solitude. And the Mind's canker in its savage mood, When the impatient thirst of light and air Parches the heart."

_Lament of Tasso_, lines 4-7.]

[59] {153}[For inscriptions on the walls of the _Pozzi_, see note 1 to _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, Canto IV., _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 465-467. Hobhouse transferred these "scratchings" to his pocket-books, and thence to his _Historical Notes_; but even as prison inscriptions they lack both point and style.]

[60] [Compare--

"Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree The fair, the chaste and unexpressive she."

_As You Like It_, act iii. sc. 2, lines 9, 10.]

[bk]

_Which never can be read but, as 'twas written,_ _By wretched beings_.--[MS.]

[bl] {154}

_Of the familiar's torch, which seems to love_ _Darkness far more than light_.--[MS.]

[61] {157}[Compare--

"Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider."

_Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza ii. lines 1-3, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 217, note 1.]

[bm] _At once by briefer means and better_.--[MS.]

[62] {158} In Lady Morgan's fearless and excellent work upon Italy, I perceive the expression of "Rome of the Ocean" applied to Venice. The same phrase occurs in the "Two Foscari." My publisher can vouch for me, that the tragedy was written and sent to England some time before I had seen Lady Morgan's work, which I only received on the 16th of August. I hasten, however, to notice the coincidence, and to yield the originality of the phrase to her who first placed it before the public.

[Byron calls Lady Morgan's _Italy_ "fearless" on account of her strictures on the behaviour of Great Britain to Genoa in 1814. "England personally stood pledged to Genoa.... When the British officers rode into their gates bearing the white flag consecrated by the holy word of '_independence_,' the people ... '_kissed their garments_.'... Every heart was open.... Lord William Bentinck's flag of '_Independenza_' was taken down from the steeples and high places at sunrise; before noon the arms of Sardinia blazoned in their stead; and yet the Genoese did not rise _en masse_ and massacre the English" (_Italy_, 1821, i. 245, 246). The passage which Byron feared might be quoted to his disparagement runs as follows: "As the bark glides on, as the shore recedes, and the city of waves, the Rome of the ocean, rises on the horizon, the spirits rally; ... and as the spires and cupolas of Venice come forth in the lustre of the mid-day sun, and its palaces, half-veiled in the aërial tints of distance, gradually assume their superb proportions, then the dream of many a youthful vigil is realized" (_ibid_., ii. 449).]

[63] [Compare _Marino Faliero_, act ii. sc. 2, line 110, _Poetical Works_, 901, iv. 386, note 3.]

[64] {159} The Calenture.--[From the Spanish _Calentura_, a fever peculiar to sailors within the tropics--

"So, by a calenture misled, The mariner with rapture sees, On the smooth ocean's azure bed, Enamelled fields and verdant trees: With eager haste he longs to rove In that fantastic scene, and thinks It must be some enchanted grove; And in he leaps, and down he sinks."

Swift, _The South-Sea Project_, 1721, ed. 1824, xiv. 147.]

[65] Alluding to the Swiss air and its effects.--[The _Ranz des Vaches_, played upon the bag-pipe by the young cowkeepers on the mountains:--"An air," says Rousseau, "so dear to the Swiss, that it was forbidden, under the pain of death, to play it to the troops, as it immediately drew tears from them, and made those who heard it desert, or die of what is called _la maladie du païs_, so ardent a desire did it excite to return to their country. It is in vain to seek in this air for energetic accents capable of producing such astonishing effects, for which strangers are unable to account from the music, which is in itself uncouth and wild. But it is from habit, recollections, and a thousand circumstances, retraced in this tune by those natives who hear it, and reminding them of their country, former pleasures of their youth, and all their ways of living, which occasion a bitter reflection at having lost them." Compare Byron's Swiss "Journal" for September 19, 1816, _Letters_, 1899, ii. 355.]

[bn] _That malady, which_----.--[MS. M.]

[66] [Compare _Don Juan_, Canto XVI. stanza xlvi. lines 6, 7--

"The calentures of music which o'ercome The mountaineers with dreams that they are highlands."]

[bo] {160} ----_upon your native towers_.--[MS. M.]

[bp] {162} _Come you here to insult us_----.--[MS. M.]

[67] {163}[For "steeds of brass," compare _Childe Harold_, Canto IV. stanza xiii. line I, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 338, and 336, note 1.]

[68] [The first and all subsequent editions read "skimmed the coasts." Byron wrote "skirred," a word borrowed from Shakespeare. Compare _Siege of Corinth_, line 692, _Poetical Works_, 1900, iii. 480, note 4.]

[bq] {165} ----_which this noble lady worst_,--[MS. M.]

[69] {169}[According to the law, it rested with the six councillors of the Doge and a majority of the Grand Council to insist upon the abdication of a Doge. The action of the Ten was an usurpation of powers to which they were not entitled by the terms of the Constitution.]

[70] {170}[A touching incident is told concerning an interview between the Doge and Jacopo Memmo, head of the Forty. The Doge had just learnt (October 21, 1457) the decision of the Ten with regard to his abdication, and noticed that Memmo watched him attentively. "Foscari called to him, and, touching his hand, asked him whose son he was. He answered, 'I am the son of Messer Marin Memmo.'--' He is my dear friend,' said the Doge; 'tell him from me that it would be pleasing to me if he would come and see me, so that we might go at our leisure in our boats to visit the monasteries'" (_The Two Doges_, by A. Weil, 1891, p. 124; see, too, Romanin, _Storia, etc._, 1855, iv. 291).]

[71] {171}[_Vide ante_, p. 139, note 1.]

[br] _Decemvirs, it is surely_----.--[MS. M.]

[72] {172}[Romanin (_Storia, etc._, 1855, iv. 285, 286) quotes the following anecdote from the _Cronaca Dolfin_:--

"Alla commozione, alle lagrime, ai singulti che accompagnavano gli ultimi abbraciamenti, Jacopo più che mai sentendo il dolore di quel distacco, diceva: _Padre ve priego, procurè per mi, che ritorni a casa mia_. E messer lo doxe: _Jacomo va e obbedisci quel che vuol la terra e non cerear più oltre_. Ma, uscito l'infelice figlio dalla stanza, più non resistendo alla piena degli affetti, si getto piangendo sopra una sedia e lamentando diceva: _O pietà grande_!"]

[73] [_Vide ante_, act ii. sc. I, line 174, p. 143, note 1.]

[74] {175}[So, too, Coleridge of Keats: "There is death in that hand;" and of Adam Steinmetz: "Alas! there is _death_ in that dear hand." See _Table Talk_ for August 14, 1832, and _Letter to John Peirse Kennard_, August 13, 1832, _Letters of S. T. C._, 1895, ii. 764. Jacopo Foscari was sent back to exile in Crete, and did not die till February, 1457. His death at Venice, immediately after his sentence, is contrived for the sake of observing "the unities."]

[bs]

----_he would not_ _Thus leave me_.--[MS. M.]

[75] {178}[It is to be noted that the "Giunta" was demanded by Loredano himself--a proof of his bona fides, as the addition of twenty-five nobles to the original Ten would add to the chance of opposition on the part of the supporters and champions of the Doge (see _The Two Doges_, and Romanin, _Storia, etc., iv. 286, note 3_).]

[76] {179} An historical fact. See DARU [1821], tom. ii. [pp. 398, 399. Daru quotes as his authorities Sabellicus and Pietro Giustiniani. As a matter of fact, the Doge did his utmost to save Carmagnola, pleading that his sentence should be commuted to imprisonment for life (see _The Two Doges_, p. 66; and Romanin, _Storia, etc._, iv. 161).]

[77] {183}[By the terms of the "parte," or act of deposition drawn up by the Ten, October 21, 1457, the time granted for deliberation was "till the third hour of the following day." This limitation as to time was designed to prevent the Doge from summoning the Grand Council, "to whom alone belonged the right of releasing him from the dukedom." (_The Two Doges_, p. 118; _Diebeiden Foscari_, 1878, pp. 174-176).]

[bt] {188} _The act is passed--I will obey it_.--[MS. M.]

[78] [For this speech, see Daru (who quotes from Pietro Giustiniani, _Histoire, etc._, 1821, ii. 534).]

[79] {190}[See Daru's _Histoire, etc._, 1821, ii. 535. The _Cronaca Augustini_ is the authority for the anecdote (see _The Two Doges_, 1891, p. 126).]

[bu] {192}

_I take yours, Loredano--'tis the draught_ _Most fitting such an hour as this_.--[MS. M.]

[80] {193}[_Vide ante_, Introduction to _The Two Foscari_, p. 118.]

[bv] _The wretchedness to die_----.--[MS. M.]

[81] ["A decree was at once passed that a public funeral should be accorded to Foscari, ... and the bells of St. Mark were ordered to peal nine times.... The same Council also determined that on Thursday night, November 3, the corpse should be carried into the room of the 'Signori di notte,' dressed in a golden mantle, with the ducal bonnet on his head, golden spurs on his feet, ... the gold sword by his side." But Foscari's wife, Marina (or Maria) Nani, opposed. "She declined to give up the body, which she had caused to be dressed in plain clothes, and she maintained that no one but herself should provide for the funeral expenses, even should she have to give up her dower." It is needless to add that her protest was unavailing, and that the decree of the Ten was carried into effect.--_The Two Doges_, 1891, pp. 129, 130.]

[bw] {194} ----_comfort to my desolation_.--[MS. M.]

[82] {195} The Venetians appear to have had a particular turn for breaking the hearts of their Doges. The following is another instance of the kind in the Doge Marco Barbarigo: he was succeeded by his brother Agostino Barbarigo, whose chief merit is here mentioned.--"Le doge, blessé de trouver constamment un contradicteur et un censeur si amer dans son frère, lui dit un jour en plein conseil: 'Messire Augustin, vous faites tout votre possible pour hâter ma mort; vous vous flattez de me succéder; mais, si les autres vous connaissent aussi bien que je vous connais, ils n'auront garde de vous élire.' Là-dessus il se leva, ému de colere, rentra dans son appartement, et mourut quelques jours après. Ce frère, contre lequel il s'etait emporté, fut précisement le successeur qu'on lui donna. C'était un mérite don't on aimait à tenir compte; surtout à un parent, de s'être mis en opposition avec le chef de la république."--DARU, _Hist, de Vénise_, 1821, in. 29.

[bx] _I trust Heavens will be done also_.--[MS.]

[83] "_L'ha pagata_." An historical fact. See _Hist. de Vénise_, par P. DARU, 1821, ii. 528, 529.

[Daru quotes Palazzi's _Fasti Ducales_ as his authority for this story. According to Pietro Giustiniani (_Storia_, lib. viii.), Jacopo Loredano was at pains to announce the decree of the Ten to the Doge in courteous and considerate terms, and begged him to pardon him for what it was his duty to do. Romanin points out that this version of the interview is inconsistent with the famous "_L'hapagata_."--_Storia, etc._, iv. 290, note i.]

[84] {196}[Here the original MS. ends. The two lines which follow, were added by Gifford. In the margin of the MS. Byron has written, "If the last line should appear obscure to those who do not recollect the historical fact mentioned in the first act of Loredano's inscription in his book, of 'Doge Foscari, debtor for the deaths of my father and uncle,' you may add the following lines to the conclusion of the last act:--

_Chief of the Ten_. For what has he repaid thee?

_Lor._ For my father's And father's brother's death--by his son's and own!

Ask Gifford about this."]

[85] [The _Appendix_ to the First Edition of _The Two Foscari_ consisted of (i.) an extract from P. Daru's _Histoire de la République Française_, 1821, ii. 520-537; (ii.) an extract from J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi's _Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age_, 1815, x. 36-46; and (iii.) a note in response to certain charges of plagiarism brought against the author in the _Literary Gazette_ and elsewhere; and to Southey's indictment of the "Satanic School," which had recently appeared in the Preface to the Laureate's _Vision of Judgement_ (_Poetical Works of Robert Southey_, 1838, x. 202-207). See, too, the "Introduction to _The Vision of Judgment_," _Poetical Works_, 1891, iv. pp. 475-480.]

CAIN:

A MYSTERY.

"Now the Serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." _Genesis_, _Chapter 3rd, verse 1_.

INTRODUCTION TO _CAIN_.

Cain was begun at Ravenna, July 16, and finished September 9, 1821 (_vide_ MS. M.). Six months before, when he was at work on the first act of _Sardanapalus_, Byron had "pondered" _Cain_, but it was not till _Sardanapalus_ and a second historical play, _The Two Foscari_, had been written, copied out, and sent to England, that he indulged his genius with a third drama--on "a metaphysical subject, something in the style of _Manfred_" (_Letters_, 1901, v. 189).

Goethe's comment on reading and reviewing _Cain_ was that he should be surprised if Byron did not pursue the treatment of such "biblical subjects," as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (_Conversations, etc._, 1879, p. 62); and, many years after, he told Crabb Robinson (_Diary_, 1869, ii. 435) that Byron should have lived "to execute his vocation ... to dramatize the Old Testament." He was better equipped for such a task than might have been imagined. A Scottish schoolboy, "from a child he had known the Scriptures," and, as his _Hebrew Melodies_ testify, he was not unwilling to turn to the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration. Moreover, he was born with the religious temperament. Questions "of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate," exercised his curiosity because they appealed to his imagination and moved his spirit. He was eager to plunge into controversy with friends and advisers who challenged or rebuked him, Hodgson, for instance, or Dallas; and he responded with remarkable amenity to the strictures and exhortations of such orthodox professors as Mr. Sheppard and Dr. Kennedy. He was, no doubt, from first to last a _heretic_, impatient, not to say contemptuous, of authority, but he was by no means indifferent to religion altogether. To "argue about it and about" was a necessity, if not an agreeable relief, to his intellectual energies. It would appear from the Ravenna diary (January 28, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 190,191), that the conception of Lucifer was working in his brain before the "tragedy of Cain" was actually begun. He had been recording a "thought" which had come to him, that "at the very height of human desire and pleasure, a certain sense of doubt and sorrow"--an _amari aliquid_ which links the future to the past, and so blots out the present--"mingles with our bliss," making it of none effect, and, by way of moral or corollary to his soliloquy, he adds three lines of verse headed, "Thought for a speech of Lucifer in the Tragedy of _Cain_"--

"Were Death an _Evil_, would _I_ let thee live? Fool! live as I live--as thy father lives, And thy son's sons shall live for evermore."

In these three lines, which were not inserted in the play, and in the preceding "thought," we have the key-note to _Cain_. "Man walketh in a vain shadow"--a shadow which he can never overtake, the shadow of an eternally postponed fruition. With a being capable of infinite satisfaction, he is doomed to realize failure in attainment. In all that is best and most enjoyable, "the rapturous moment and the placid hour," there is a foretaste of "Death the Unknown"! The tragedy of _Manfred_ lies in remorse for the inevitable past; the tragedy of _Cain_, in revolt against the limitations of the inexorable present.

The investigation of the "sources" of _Cain_ does not lead to any very definite conclusion (see _Lord Byron's Cain und Seine Quellen_, von Alfred Schaffner, 1880). He was pleased to call his play "a Mystery," and, in his Preface (_vide post_, p. 207), Byron alludes to the Old Mysteries as "those very profane productions, whether in English, French, Italian, or Spanish." The first reprint of the _Chester Plays_ was published by the Roxburghe Club in 1818, but Byron's knowledge of Mystery Plays was probably derived from _Dodsley's Plays_ (ed. 1780, l., xxxiii.-xlii.), or from John Stevens's Continuation of Dugdale's _Monasticon_ (_vide post_, p. 207), or possibly, as Herr Schaffner suggests, from Warton's _History of English Poetry_, ed. 1871, ii. 222-230. He may, too, have witnessed some belated _Rappresentazione_ of the Creation and Fall at Ravenna, or in one of the remoter towns or villages of Italy. There is a superficial resemblance between the treatment of the actual encounter of Cain and Abel, and the conventional rendering of the same incident in the _Ludus Coventriæ_, and in the _Mistère du Viel Testament_; but it is unlikely that he had closely studied any one Mystery Play at first hand. On the other hand, his recollections of Gessner's _Death of Abel_ which "he had never read since he was eight years old," were clearer than he imagined. Not only in such minor matters as the destruction of Cain's altar by a whirlwind, and the substitution of the Angel of the Lord for the _Deus_ of the Mysteries, but in the Teutonic domesticities of Cain and Adah, and the evangelical piety of Adam and Abel, there is a reflection, if not an imitation, of the German idyll (see Gessner's _Death of Abel_, ed. 1797, pp. 80, 102).

Of his indebtedness to Milton he makes no formal acknowledgment, but he was not ashamed to shelter himself behind Milton's shield when he was attacked on the score of blasphemy and profanity. "If _Cain_ be blasphemous, _Paradise Lost_ is blasphemous" (letter to Murray, Pisa, February 8, 1822), was, he would fain believe, a conclusive answer to his accusers. But apart from verbal parallels or coincidences, there is a genuine affinity between Byron's Lucifer and Milton's Satan. Lucifer, like Satan, is "not less than Archangel ruined," a repulsed but "unvanquished Titan," marred by a demonic sorrow, a confessor though a rival of Omnipotence. He is a majestic and, as a rule, a serious and solemn spirit, who compels the admiration and possibly the sympathy of the reader. There is, however, another strain in his ghostly attributes, which betrays a more recent consanguinity: now and again he gives token that he is of the lineage of Mephistopheles. He is sometimes, though rarely, a mocking as well as a rebellious spirit, and occasionally indulges in a grim _persiflage_ beneath the dignity if not the capacity of Satan. It is needless to add that Lucifer has a most lifelike personality of his own. The conception of the spirit of evil justifying an eternal antagonism to the Creator from the standpoint of a superior morality, may, perhaps, be traced to a Manichean source, but it has been touched with a new emotion. Milton's devil is an abstraction of infernal pride--

"Sole Positive of Night! Antipathist of Light! Fate's only essence! primal scorpion rod-- The one permitted opposite of God!"

Goethe's devil is an abstraction of scorn. He "maketh a mock" alike of good and evil! But Byron's devil is a spirit, yet a mortal too--the traducer, because he has suffered for his sins; the deceiver, because he is self-deceived; the hoper against hope that there is a ransom for the soul in perfect self-will and not in perfect self-sacrifice. Byron did not uphold Lucifer, but he "had passed that way," and could imagine a spiritual warfare not only against the _Deus_ of the Mysteries or of the Book of Genesis, but against what he believed and acknowledged to be the Author and Principle of good.

_Autres temps, autres m[oe]urs!_ It is all but impossible for the modern reader to appreciate the audacity of _Cain_, or to realize the alarm and indignation which it aroused by its appearance. Byron knew that he was raising a tempest, and pleads, in his Preface, "that with regard to the language of Lucifer, it was difficult for me to make him talk like a clergyman," and again and again he assures his correspondents (_e.g._ to Murray, November 23, 1821, "_Cain_ is nothing more than a drama;" to Moore, March 4, 1822, "With respect to Religion, can I never convince you that _I_ have no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which seems to have frightened everybody?" _Letters_, 1901, v. 469; vi. 30) that it is Lucifer and not Byron who puts such awkward questions with regard to the "politics of paradise" and the origin of evil. Nobody seems to have believed him. It was taken for granted that Lucifer was the mouthpiece of Byron, that the author of _Don Juan_ was not "on the side of the angels."

Little need be said of the "literature," the pamphlets and poems which were evoked by the publication of _Cain: A Mystery_. One of the most prominent assailants (said to be the Rev. H. J. Todd (1763-1845), Archdeacon of Cleveland, 1832, author _inter alia_ of _Original Sin_, _Free Will_, etc., 1818) issued _A Remonstrance to Mr. John Murray, respecting a Recent Publication_, 1822, signed "Oxoniensis." The sting of the _Remonstrance_ lay in the exposure of the fact that Byron was indebted to Bayle's _Dictionary_ for his rabbinical legends, and that he had derived from the same source his Manichean doctrines of the _Two Principles, etc._, and other "often-refuted sophisms" with regard to the origin of evil. Byron does not borrow more than a poet and a gentleman is at liberty to acquire by way of raw material, but it cannot be denied that he had read and inwardly digested more than one of Bayle's "most objectionable articles" (_e.g._ "Adam," "Eve," "Abel," "Manichees," "Paulicians," etc.). The _Remonstrance_ was answered in _A Letter to Sir Walter Scott, etc._, by "Harroviensis." Byron welcomed such a "Defender of the Faith," and was anxious that Murray should print the letter together with the poem. But Murray belittled the "defender," and was upbraided in turn for his slowness of heart (letter to Murray, June 6, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 76).

Fresh combatants rushed into the fray: "Philo-Milton," with a _Vindication of the "Paradise Lost" from the charge of exculpating "Cain: A Mystery_," London, 1822; "Britannicus," with a pamphlet entitled, _Revolutionary Causes, etc., and A Postscript containing Strictures on "Cain," etc._, London, 1822, etc.; but their works, which hardly deserve to be catalogued, have perished with them. Finally, in 1830, a barrister named Harding Grant, author of _Chancery Practice_, compiled a work (_Lord Byron's "Cain," etc., with Notes_) of more than four hundred pages, in which he treats "the proceedings and speeches of Lucifer with the same earnestness as if they were existing and earthly personages." But it was "a week too late." The "Coryphæus of the Satanic School" had passed away, and the tumult had "dwindled to a calm."

_Cain_ "appeared in conjunction with" _Sardanapalus_ and _The Two Foscari_, December 19, 1821. Last but not least of the three plays, it had been announced "by a separate advertisement (_Morning Chronicle_, November 24, 1821), for the purpose of exciting the greater curiosity" (_Memoirs of the Life, etc._ [by John Watkins], 1822, p. 383), and it was no sooner published than it was pirated. In the following January, "_Cain: A Mystery_, by the author of _Don Juan_," was issued by W. Benbow, at Castle Street, Leicester Square (the notorious "Byron Head," which Southey described as "one of those preparatory schools for the brothel and the gallows, where obscenity, sedition, and blasphemy are retailed in drams for the vulgar"!).

Murray had paid Byron £2710 for the three tragedies, and in order to protect the copyright, he applied, through counsel (Lancelot Shadwell, afterwards Vice-Chancellor), for an injunction in Chancery to stop the sale of piratical editions of _Cain_. In delivering judgment (February 12, 1822), the Chancellor, Lord Eldon (see _Courier_, Wednesday, February 13), replying to Shadwell, drew a comparison between _Cain_ and _Paradise Lost_, "which he had read from beginning to end during the course of the last Long Vacation--_solicitæ jucunda oblivia vitæ_." No one, he argued, could deny that the object and effects of _Paradise Lost_ were "not to bring into disrepute," but "to promote reverence for our religion," and, _per contra_, no one could affirm that it was impossible to arrive at an opposite conclusion with regard to "the Preface, the poem, the general tone and manner of _Cain_." It was a question for a jury. A jury might decide that _Cain_ was blasphemous, and void of copyright; and as there was a reasonable doubt in his mind as to the character of the book, and a doubt as to the conclusion at which a jury would arrive, he was compelled to refuse the injunction. According to Dr. Smiles (_Memoir of John Murray_, 1891, i. 428), the decision of a jury was taken, and an injunction eventually granted. If so, it was ineffectual, for Benbow issued another edition of _Cain_ in 1824 (see Jacob's _Reports_, p. 474, note). See, too, the case of Murray _v_. Benbow and Another, as reported in the _Examiner_, February 17, 1822; and cases of Wolcot _v_. Walker, Southey _v_. Sherwood, Murray _v_. Benbow, and Lawrence _v_. Smith [_Quarterly Review_, April, 1822, vol. xxvii. pp. 120-138].

"_Cain_," said Moore (February 9, 1822), "has made a sensation." Friends and champions, the press, the public "turned up their thumbs." Gifford shook his head; Hobhouse "launched out into a most violent invective" (letter to Murray, November 24, 1821); Jeffrey, in the _Edinburgh_, was regretful and hortatory; Heber, in the _Quarterly_, was fault-finding and contemptuous. The "parsons preached at it from Kentish Town to Pisa" (letter to Moore, February 20, 1822). Even "the very highest authority in the land," his Majesty King George IV., "expressed his disapprobation of the blasphemy and licentiousness of Lord Byron's writings" (_Examiner_, February 17, 1822). Byron himself was forced to admit that "my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain" (_Don Juan_, Canto XI. stanza lvi. line 2). The many were unanimous in their verdict, but the higher court of the few reversed the judgment.

Goethe said that "Its beauty is such as we shall not see a second time in the world" (_Conversations, etc._, 1874, p. 261); Scott, in speaking of "the very grand and tremendous drama of _Cain_," said that the author had "matched Milton on his own ground" (letter to Murray, December 4, 1821, _vide post_, p. 206); "_Cain_," wrote Shelley to Gisborne (April 10, 1822), "is apocalyptic; it is a revelation never before communicated to man."

Uncritical praise, as well as uncritical censure, belongs to the past; but the play remains, a singular exercise of "poetic energy," a confession, _ex animo_, of "the burthen of the mystery, ... the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world."

For reviews of _Cain: A Mystery_, _vide ante_, "Introduction to _Sardanapalus_," p. 5; see, too, _Eclectic Review_, May, 1822, N.S. vol. xvii. pp. 418-427; _Examiner_, June 2, 1822; _British Review_, 1822, vol. xix. pp. 94-102.

For O'Doherty's parody of the "Pisa" Letter, February 8, 1822, see _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, February, 1822, vol. xi. pp. 215-217; and for a review of Harding Grant's _Lord Byron's Cain, etc._, see _Fraser's Magazine_, April, 1831, iii. 285-304.

TO

SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.,

THIS MYSTERY OF CAIN

IS INSCRIBED,

BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND

AND FAITHFUL SERVANT,

THE AUTHOR.[86]

PREFACE

The following scenes are entitled "A Mystery," in conformity with the ancient title annexed to dramas upon similar subjects, which were styled "Mysteries, or Moralities."[87] The author has by no means taken the same liberties with his subject which were common formerly, as may be seen by any reader curious enough to refer to those very profane productions, whether in English, French, Italian, or Spanish. The author has endeavoured to preserve the language adapted to his characters; and where it is (and this 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 by a demon, but by "the Serpent[88];" 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[89] upon similar occasions, when the Fathers were quoted to him as Moderator in the schools of Cambridge, "Behold the Book!"--holding up the Scripture. 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.[90] 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 Abel" I have never read since I was eight years of age, at Aberdeen. The general impression of my recollection 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. [I[91] am prepared to be accused of Manicheism,[92] or some other hard name ending in _ism_, which makes a formidable figure and awful sound in the eyes and ears of those who would be as 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. "Claw for claw, as Conan said to Satan and the deevil take the shortest nails" (Waverley).[93]]

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. For a reason for this extraordinary omission he may consult Warburton's "Divine Legation;"[94] 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 anything 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,[95] that the world had been destroyed several times before the creation of man. This speculation, derived from the different strata and the bones of enormous and unknown 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 Lucifer, 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."[96] I have never read that, nor any other of the posthumous works of the writer, except his Life.

RAVENNA, _Sept_. 20, 1821.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

MEN.

ADAM. CAIN. ABEL.

SPIRITS.

ANGEL OF THE LORD. LUCIFER.

WOMEN.

EVE. ADAH. ZILLAH.

CAIN: A MYSTERY.