To fall.(1)
Adam.

And we must gather it again.

Oh, God! why didst thou plant the tree of know

ledge?

[life ?

Cain. And wherefore pluck'd ye not the tree of Ye might have then defied him.

Adam.

Oh! my son,

Blaspheme not: these are serpents' words.

Cain.

Why not? The snake spoke truth: it was the tree of knowledge; It was the tree of life: knowledge is good,

And life is good; and how can both be evil?

Eve. My boy! thou speakest as I spoke, in sin, Before thy birth: let me not see renew'd My misery in thine. I have repented. Let me not see my offspring fall into The snares beyond the walls of Paradise, Which e'en in Paradise destroy'd his parents. Content thee with what is. Had we been so, Thou now hadst been contented. Oh, my son! Adam. Our orisons completed, let us hence,

(1) [This passage affords a key to the temper and frame of mind of Cain throughout the piece. He disdains the limited existence allotted to him; he has a rooted horror of death, attended with a vehement curiosity as to his nature; and he nourishes a sullen anger against his parents, to whose misconduct he ascribes his degraded state. Added to this, he has an insatiable thirst for knowledge beyond the bounds prescribed to mortality; and this part of the poem bears a strong resemblance to Manfred, whose counterpart, indeed, in the main points of character, Cain seems to be. CAMPBELL'S MAGAZINE.]

Each to his task of toil-not heavy, though

Needful: the earth is young, and yields us kindly Her fruits with little labour.

Abel. Why wilt thou wear this gloom upon thy brow, Which can avail thee nothing, save to rouse

The Eternal anger?

Adah.

My beloved Cain,

No, Adah! no;

Wilt thou frown even on me?

Cain.

I fain would be alone a little while.
Abel, I'm sick at heart; but it will pass;
Precede me, brother-I will follow shortly.
And you, too, sisters, tarry not behind;
Your gentleness must not be harshly met :
I'll follow you anon.

Adah.

If not, I will

Life!-Toil! and wherefore should I toil?-because

My father could not keep his place in Eden.
What had I done in this?—I was unborn :

I sought not to be born; nor love the state
To which that birth has brought me.

Why did he
Yield to the serpent and the woman? or,
Yielding, why suffer? What was there in this?

grew,

The tree was planted, and why not for him?
If not, why place him near it, where it
The fairest in the centre? They have but
One answer to all questions, "'Twas his will,
And he is good." How know I that?

Because
He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow?
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.

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

Enter LUCIFER.(1)

Lucifer. Mortal !

(1) [Of Lucifer, as drawn by Lord Byron, we absolutely know no evil: and, 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 ribaldry or scurrilous invective. That the monstrous creed thus inculcated is really the creed of Lord Byron himself, we, certainly, have some difficulty in believing. As little are we inclined to assert that this frightful caricature of Deism is intended as a covert recommendation of that further stage to which the scepticism of modern philosophers has sometimes conducted them. We are willing to suppose, that he has, after all, no further view than the fantastic glory of supporting a paradox ably; of showing his powers of argument and poetry at the expense of all the religious and natural feelings of the world, and of ascertaining how much will be forgiven him by the unwearied devotion of his admirers. But we cannot, with some of our contemporaries, give him the credit of " writing conscientiously." We respect his understanding too highly to apprehend that he intended a benefit to mankind in doing his best to make them discontented. BISHOP HEBER.

Milton, with true tact and feeling, put no metaphysics into Satan's mouth. There is no querulousness, no sneaking doubts, no petty reasoning in "the Archangel fallen." It is a fine, blunt, sublime, characteristic defiance, that reigns throughout, and animates his character; the spirit is still of celestial birth; and all the evil of his speech and act is utterly neutralised, by the impossibility of man's feeling any sympathy with it. 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

Of dust, and feel for it, and with you.

Cain.

You know my thoughts?

How!

Lucifer. They are the thoughts of all Worthy of thought;-'tis your immortal part Which speaks within you.

criticism- he speaks neither poetry nor common 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 put 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 Manfred, — 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.

Lucifer now enters on the stage; and if we allow that he is a different and inferior personage to the Satan of Milton, it is a concession which, we have no doubt, would be made as readily by the author as by ourselves. The Satan of" Paradise Lost" has still a tinge of heaven; his passions are high and heroic, and his motion is vast and solemn. Those of Lord Byron's spirit are less dignified and more abrupt, but charged as intensely with fierce and bitter spleen. The one seems not unworthy to haunt the solitudes of Eden; the other appears to have no little knowledge of the world, and to be most at home in the busy walks of men. - CAMPBELL'S MAG.]