112 LORD BYRON MARINO FALIERO. trial; and the former, after a vain intercession from Angiolina, who candidly admits the enormity of his guilt, and prays only for his life, is led, in his ducal robes, to the place where he was first consecrated a sovereign, and there publicly decapitated by the hands of the executioner. We can afford but a few specimens of the execution. The following passage, in which the ancient Doge, while urging his gentle spouse to enter more warmly into his resentment, reminds her of the motives that had led him to seek her alliance, (her father's request, and his own desire to afford her orphan helplessness the highest and most unsuspected protection,) though not perfectly dramatic, has great sweetness and dignity; and reminds us, in its rich verbosity, of the moral and mellifluous parts of Massinger. "Doge. For love, romantic love, which in my youth I knew to be illusion, and ne'er saw Lasting, but often fatal, it had been No lure for me, in my most passionate days, Rashly, but win you from them ere you knew You had been won, but thought the change your choice; A pride not in your beauty, but your conduct A trust in you - a patriarchal love, And not a doting homage-friendship, faith-- Might claim, I hoped for." "I trusted to the blood of Loredano Pure in your veins; I trusted to the soul God gave you to the truths your father taught you— your belief in heaven-to your mild virtues To your own faith and honour, for my own.— SPLENDID DESCRIPTION. 113 In all his marble-chisell'd beauty, or The demi-deity, Alcides, in His majesty of superhuman manhood, Would not suffice to bind where virtue is not.' p. 50—53.. The fourth Act opens with the most poetical and brilliantly written scene in the play-though it is a soliloquy, and altogether alien from the business of the piece. Lioni, a young nobleman, returns home from a splendid assembly, rather out of spirits; and, opening his palace window for air, contrasts the tranquillity of the night scene which lies before him, with the feverish turbulence and glittering enchantments of that which he has just quitted. Nothing can be finer than this picture, in both its compartments. There is a truth and a luxuriance in the description of the route, which mark at once the hand of a master, and raise it to a very high rank as a piece of poetical painting-while the moonlight view from the window is equally grand and beautiful, and reminds us of those magnificent and enchanting lookings forth in Manfred, which have left, we will confess, far deeper traces on our fancy, than any thing in the more elaborate work before us. Lioni says, I will try And what a contrast with the scene I left, A dazzling mass of artificial light, Which show'd all things, but nothing as they were, &c. - The garlands, the rose odours, and the flowers The sparkling eyes and flashing ornaments The white arms and the raven hair- the braids And bracelets; swan-like bosoms, and the necklace, The eye like what it circled; the thin robes Floating like light clouds 'twixt our gaze and heaven; 114 LORD BYRON GENUINE POETRY. Of the fair forms which terminate so well! All the delusion of the dizzy scene, Its false and true enchantments art and nature, Are gone. Around me are the stars and waters - Rear'd up from out the waters, scarce less strangely The act of opening the forbidden lattice, Of the far lights of skimming gondolas, Some glimmering palace roof, or tapering spire, Are all the sights and sounds which here pervade The ocean-born and earth-commanding city."-p. 98 — 101. and we We can now afford but one other extract; take it from the grand and prophetic rant of which the unhappy Doge delivers himself at the place of execution. He asks whether he may speak; and is told he may, but MISCHIEF OF POETICAL SOPHISTRIES. 117 and against the reasonableness of religion in general; / and there is no answer so much as attempted to the offensive doctrines that are so strenuously inculcated. 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. Philosophy and Poetry are both very good things in 77 their way; but, in our opinion, they do not go very well together. It is but a poor and pedantic sort of poetry that seeks chiefly to embody metaphysical subtilties and abstract deductions of reason-and a very suspicious philosophy that aims at establishing its doctrines by appeals to the passions and the fancy. Though such arguments, however, are worth little in the schools, it does not follow that their effect is inconsiderable in the world. On the contrary, it is the mischief of all poetical paradoxes, that, from the very limits and end of poetry, which deals only in obvious and glancing views, they are never brought to the fair test of argument. allusion to a doubtful topic will often pass for a definitive conclusion on it; and, when clothed in beautiful An 118 CAIN'S SACRIFICIAL ADDRESS. language, may leave the most pernicious impressions behind. In the courts of morality, poets are unexceptionable witnesses: they may give in the evidence, and depose to facts whether good or ill; but we demur to their arbitrary and self-pleasing summings up. They are suspected judges, and not very often safe advocates; where great questions are concerned, and universal principles brought to issue. But we shall not press this point farther at present. We shall give but one specimen, and that the least offensive we can find, of the prevailing tone of this extraordinary drama. It is the address (for we cannot call it prayer) with which Cain accompanies the offering of his sheaves on the altar- and directed to be delivered, standing erect. "Spirit! whate'er or whosoe'er thou art, Shown in the exemption of thy deeds from evil; 'Take them! If thou must be induced with altars, Two beings here erect them unto thee. If thou lov'st blood, the shepherd's shrine, which smokes On my right hand, hath shed it for thy service, In the first of his flock, whose limbs now reek In sanguinary incense to thy skies; Or if the sweet and blooming fruits of earth, I spread them on now offers in the face Of the broad sun which ripen'd them, may seem -- He is such as thou mad'st him; and seeks nothing |