Again, in reply to a question from CAIN

LUCIFER "Souls who dare use their immortalitySouls 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," &c.

Again

LUCIFER" Goodness would not make Evil; and what else hath he made?"

Again

LUCIFER-" He is alone

Indefinite, indissoluble tyrant!

Could he but crush himself, 'twere the best boon
He ever granted: but let him reign on,

And multiply himself in misery."

Again, in the same dialogue, next page but one

LUCIFER-" Then who was the demon? He
Who would not let you live, or he who would
Have made you live for ever in the joy
And power of knowledge."

Again, in the same page

LUCIFER " Who

Said that? It is not written so on high;

The Proud One will not so far falsify."

Again, in the next page but one

LUCIFER" Ask the destroyer!"
CAIN-"Who?"

LUCIFER -"The Maker - call him

Which name thou wilt; he makes but to destroy."

Citations, in illustration, might be multiplied to a transcript of the whole dialogue between Lucifer and Cain, throughout this act. But I have surely brought forward specimen enough to establish by its quality, however contracted may be its measure, the correctness of the fundamental position, viz. that a total discrepance in spirit, in character, and tendency, exists between the Lucifer of Lord Byron, and the Satan of Milton.

But I wish to proceed a little farther. In Act. II.

CAIN-" Cursed be

He who invented life that leads to death."

Whom is the pronoun "He" meant to represent? Lucifer certainly remarks upon this curse-shocked, as it should seem by Cain's wickedness

"Dost thou curse thy Father?"

But Cain's curse does not justify, or seem

to admit, or explain, such interrogatory from Lucifer; the curse is abstract in conception and in phrase. It does not properly attach to his father, nor to the life of Cain, the speaker, who uses it, but to original, primeval life. Cain does not supply by his own existence, derived as it was from his natural parents, an instance of the invention of life. We must look for that invention, to life in Adam. Was not this as distinctly perceived by Lord Byron, as it is by me, and as it can hardly fail to be by all the world of readers? Then how does his Lordship apply Cain's curse -I beg his Lordship's pardon, I meant Lucifer-how does Lucifer apply Cain's curse to Adam? Something of mystery in this!!-Again, I must just notice, before I take my leave of such high company, that Lucifer appears to be undetermined in his claim of privilege to rank; for instance, Act 1st, p. 13

CAIN" Ah! thou lookest almost a God; and-
LUCIFER-"1 am none,

And having failed to be one, would be nought
But what I am; he conquered, let him reign."

Again, in Act 2d, page 1st

LUCIFER" Believe, and sink not; doubt, and perish-thus

Would run the edict of the other God."

-The conclusion, from these irreconcilable words, from the mouth of Lucifer, is, either that his memory has proved treacherous, or, that he changed his sentiment as the dialogue advanced. His phrase, the other God, clearly intimates what doctrine he would teach, and what pretension he would make. The concluding speeches of Lucifer, in act 2d, and with which the act finishes, manifest indeed a venom, seeking to discharge itself.

Once more, I must go back to pages 16, 17, in each of which Lucifer is made to utter, in allusion to the condition of our first parents in Paradise, the phrase "narrow joys." Animadversion and disdain, operating in a similar direction, and to a similar purpose, may be traced, scattered not thinly, throughout the work. And yet, in what did these narrow joys consist? Perhaps they may have been too hastily passed over by his Plutonic Majesty. We will just remind him, that they consisted in a condition of perfect innocence and tranquillity: the absence of all evil; in a

close communion with the Creator of all things, and the inheritance of his blessing; in a spontaneity, teeming with all requisite; all consolation; all delectability; under the observance of one injunction, one only-add the consciousness of positive good; ignorance only of the quality of evil. It may be, that on a cautious investigation, a state such as this, though unphilosophized by a discriminating faculty of good and evil, might not accord ill with the author's conception, and sentiment of happiness, in the creature; however disposed he might be to canvass the observance of the one injunction.

A few words more shall close what I wish just to mark upon the subject of this drama.

It sometimes happens, in dramatic compositions, that the reader feels anxious to ascertain, whether, while he is contemplating the sentiment and maxim with which the page is stored, he is analyzing the mind, and listening to the didactic of the writer, or catching both as they belong merely to the characters represented. I know not any rule whereby to remove this occasional hesitation. But in the drama of Cain, we are willing to believe our

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