142 
gent as himself, have, in all ages, dif- 
fered. 
But we are told by Dr. S. that there 
is a description of “ Infidels” who have 
a “predilection for the gloomy and 
misanthropic Cain,”” whom “ it would 
be a matter of just surprise should be 
a favourite among a horde of demons ;” 
that they select him “for their patron 
saint,’ and “the god of their idolatry.” 
If this be only a rhetorical flourish 
to shew the fervour of the preacher’s 
zeal, and the vividness of his imagina- 
tion,—fie! fie upon such rhetoric, which 
inflames the hatred of one description 
of human beings against another, paint- 
ing them as worse than devils, because 
they have the misfortune to be blind 
to the truths of that revelation which 
their antagonists perceive so clearly. 
If, on the other hand, Dr. S. is really 
acquainted with any of these worse 
than demons, we give him joy of 
his associations: we thank our stars 
we know them not: we never met with 
them either in converse or in book: 
and certain it is that Lord Byron has 
made of his horrible misanthrope Cain 
neither patron saint nor god; nor 
has he any where (loose and immoral 
as we admit his writings too frequently 
to be) endeavoured to persuade us that 
murder is virtue, and parricide devo- 
tion. Is Dr.S. quite sure that religious 
fanatics might not be found who have 
preached, and have practised both ? 
But is the whole Christian community, 
therefore, to be stigmatized as parricides 
and murderers? Lord Byron has, it 
is true, made both Cain and the Devil 
state their own case as the Devil and 
Cain would be likely to state it. The 
fault of the poem is—and we agree 
with Sir Egerton Brydges (a more can- 
did, and we scruple not to say a more 
Christian critic than Dr. Styles) that 
it is a great fault, both in a moral and 
a critical point of view, that he has not 
put into the mouth of his other charac- 
ters, or had the true imaginative talent 
to embody any character, in his drama, 
into whose mouth he properly could 
put, the antidote to their impious so- 
phistry. But Byron, in fact, was not a 
Milton, and still less a Shakspeare ; 
notwithstanding the hyperbolical com- 
pliment which Dr.S. (p.13*) has thought 
* —< that he should have condescended 
thus to tarnish the glory of a name that 
might have vied with Shakspeare and Mil- 
ton, and have occupied the proudest niche 
in Fame’s imperishable temple.” This 
from the pulpit it must be admitted is to- 
Philosophy of Contemporary Criticism —No. XLII. 
[ Mar. I; 
fit to pay to his poetical genius. What 
he conceived, he conceived strongly, and 
with unparalleled power; but, with re- 
ference to dramatic effect, he was not 
versatile. He could not sink his own 
identity, in the rapid transitions and 
contrasts of character, and change his 
feelings and his being, with every tran- 
sition of the dialogue. He could not 
imagine and sustain the diversities of 
passion, humour and sentiment, which 
constitute the perfection and the veri- 
similitude of dramatic action. When 
his imagination was wrought to the 
highest, it was still egotistical. It could 
sustain the characters of Cain and Lu- 
cifer, not because he loved the devil, 
or approved of murder, but because 
the spirit of wounded pride, of indig- 
nant misanthropy and gloomy discontent 
were in them to be depicted in the 
very sublimity of exaggeration; and 
these were passions which had unfortu- 
nately (perhaps not inexcusably) attain- 
ed an ascendancy in his breast. He had, 
therefore, but to clap the miscroscope 
upon his own feelings, and the picture 
was complete. But he could not, as 
the gentle Shakspeare would have done, 
realize, with the same facility, the mild 
and benignant piety of Abel; or, as 
the divine Milton, embody some bene- 
ficent spirit of light and truth to ex- 
pose, by happy contrast, the insulting 
fallacy of a demoniac logic. Even to 
the wives, the sister and the mother of 
the murdered and the murderer, he 
could not give the deep pathos so na~ 
turally to be expected in the cata- 
strophe. The meltings of sorrow seem- 
ed not to be within his comprehension : 
his griefs always burned: and Eye, 
when she should penetrate our hearts 
with all the wild wofulness of . maternal 
affliction, scolds lixe a billingsgate, and 
departs a fury. 
In short, never, perhaps, was poet of 
such power and energy, whose genius 
was so undramatic. But Murder is not 
therefore his patron-saint, nor the Devil 
his God.* ORIGINAL 
lerably poetical; but Shakspeare gives us 
better divinity from the stage— 
«© The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
Thesolemn temples, yea the great globe itself,— 
Shall dissolve,” &c. &c. 
* This is more, perhaps, than can be 
said in favour’ of some bigotted fanatics, 
whose blasphemous piety plucks a benefi- 
cent Deity from his seat, and enthrones a 
devil there ; or in Dr. Styles’s own words, 
“ a God whom they cloatbe in all the attri- 
butes of Molech,” p. 17. 
