After visiting the battle-field of Waterloo, Byron went, by way of the
Rhine, to Switzerland, where he spent several months, residing most of
the time in the neighbourhood of Geneva. In a boarding-house there,
he for the first time met Shelley. Shelley, who was Byron's junior by
four years, had sent him, at the time of its publication, a copy of
_Queen Mab_; but the letter accompanying the book had miscarried, and
no further communication had passed between them, Shelley had arrived
at Geneva a fortnight before Byron, accompanied by Mary Godwin and her
step-sister, Miss Jane Clairmont, who had always passionately admired
Byron. His illegitimate daughter Allegra was the fruit of the brief
connection between him and this young lady.
Intercourse with Shelley produced on Byron's mind some of the
strongest, deepest impressions which it was capable of receiving. The
first great impression was that made by Shelley's personality and
view of life. In him Byron for the first time came into contact with
a man of a perfectly modern and perfectly emancipated mind. In spite
of his genius for assimilating everything that harmonised with his own
nature, it was but a half education, in philosophy as in literature,
which Byron had received; and he had hitherto, been led by sympathies
rather than convictions. Now Shelley, glowing with the enthusiasm
of an apostle, his doubts long since disposed of, a true priest of
humanism, came across his path. The dissipated life of London society,
and the pressing burden of his private misfortunes, had allowed Byron
neither tranquillity of mind nor leisure to reflect on the problems
of existence or on the reformation of humanity; he had been too much
occupied with himself. Now, at the moment in his literary career when
his Ego was beginning to expand, he was brought into contact with a
spirit which baptized with fire. He gladly welcomed the new influence;
and in much of what he now wrote it is plainly perceptible. The
numerous pantheistic outbursts in the Third Canto of _Childe Harold_
are undoubtedly, one and all, the fruit of conversations with Shelley;
worthy of special attention is the beautiful passage (iii. ioo) in
which everything in Nature is assumed to be a manifestation of "undying
Love"--an expression of Shelley's theory of love and beauty being
the mysterious powers which uphold the world. In one of the notes in
his journal, Byron at this time goes so far in his Shelley-derived
pantheism as to write: "The feeling with which all around Clarens and
the opposite rocks of Meillerie is invested, is of a still higher
and more comprehensive order than the mere sympathy with individual
passion; it is a sense of the existence of love in its most extended
and sublime capacity, and of our own participation of its good and of
its glory: it is the great principle of the universe, which is there
more condensed, but not less manifested; and of which, though knowing
ourselves a part, we lose our individuality, and mingle in the beauty
of the whole."
Shelley's influence is also traceable in the spirit scenes in
_Manfred_, and very specially in the third act of the drama, which was
re-written by his advice. And as to _Cain_, even if Shelley, as he
affirms, had no actual share in the writing of the work, it certainly
would not have been what it is if Byron had never known him.
The two poets saw Chillon and all its beautiful surroundings in
company; and Byron received the second great impression which was to
bear fruit in his poetry--the impression of the Alps. Coming from
the confinement and close atmosphere of the London drawing-rooms, it
was a relief to him to let his eye rest on the eternal snow, and the
giant peaks that tower sky-high above the haunts of men. His poetic
forerunner, Chateaubriand, hated the Alps; their grandeur had an
oppressive effect on his vanity; Byron felt at home among them.
_Manfred_, which derives its truest claim to admiration from its
matchlessness as an Alpine landscape, was a direct result of the
impressions of nature received at this time. Taine let himself be
tempted to use the strong expression, that Byron's Alpine Spirits in
_Manfred_ are only stage gods; but Taine, when he wrote this, did not
himself know Switzerland.
Nowhere else do circumstances in the same degree incline the mind to
the personification of nature. Even the ordinary traveller feels the
temptation. I remember standing one evening on the summit of the Righi,
looking down on the beautiful lakes at the foot of the mountain, and
the vapoury clouds which were driving across them, quite close to their
surface. Suddenly, far away on the horizon, a little solid white cloud
appeared. By the time it had reached Pilatus, a minute later, it was an
enormous vapoury mass. With frightful speed it rushed onwards, covering
the whole sky with the league-wide flaps of its mantle. Sinking down
towards the lakes, it enveloped the mountain peaks, rode along the
ridges, filled the hollows; then, spreading itself out still wider, it
mounted in circles like smoke towards the sky, and sank like lead over
the towns and villages, effacing every colour, and turning the whole
into one monotonous expanse of grey. The white of the snow, the green
of the trees, the thousand gleams and colours of the sunlit clouds were
deluged and gone in one moment. The eye, which had but a second before
been wandering at will over the immeasurable expanse now, irresistibly
attracted, gazed steadfastly at the shapeless mass, which, tearing
through the sky with the force of a sphere in its earliest stage,
rapidly approached the beholder. It was like the hosts of heaven, like
hundreds of thousands of ethereal riders, sweeping onwards in closed
ranks upon winged, silent horses, and, more irresistible than any
earthly army, tracklessly effacing everything behind them, like the
hordes of Asia or Attila's Huns. A Scandinavian could not but think
of the ride of the Valkyries. The moment the cloud reached the Righi,
the watchers there began to lose sight of each other; first one, then
another, disappeared from the view of his companions; the mist slung
itself in a clammy, tight embrace round each one, closing his mouth and
weighing on his breast.
Natural phenomena of this description suggested the apparitions
which appear to Manfred. Passage after passage from Byron's journal
is incorporated in his poem. Not unfrequently the entries in their
original, careless form are fully as effective as when transcribed in
verse. "Arrived at the Grindelwald; dined; mounted again, and rode to
the higher glacier--like _a frozen hurricane_. (In Manfred, for the
sake of the verse--"a tumbling tempest's foam, frozen in a moment.")
Starlight, beautiful, but a devil of a path! ... A little lightning;
but the whole of the day as fine in point of weather as the day on
which Paradise was made. Passed _whole woods of withered pines, all
withered_; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done by a
single winter,--their appearance reminded me of me and my family." All
these expressions occur, with slight alterations, in the poem.
But the time Shelley and Byron spent together, profitable and enjoyable
as it was, would have been happier but for the behaviour of some of
their fellow-countrymen, whose curiosity led them to dog the footsteps
and spy the actions of the two poets. English tourists had the
incredible impertinence to force their way into Byron's house. When a
stop was put to this, they stood with telescopes on the shore or on
the road; they looked over the garden-wall; and hotel waiters were
bribed, as the Venetian gondoliers afterwards were, to communicate
all that went on. The first report set in circulation was, that Byron
and Shelley lived in "promiscuous intercourse" with two sisters; and,
gossip by degrees making the two poets out to be incarnate devils,
the reports gained steadily in repulsiveness. It consequently hardly
surprises us to read that, one day at Madame de Staël's, when Byron was
announced, a pious old English lady, Mrs. Hervey, the novel-writer,
fainted when she heard the name, as if, says Byron, it had been "his
Satanic majesty" himself who was appearing.
Our attempt to understand this actual fear of Byron's person, which to
us appears so absurd, leads us to the consideration of the last great
impression received by him during his stay by the Lake of Geneva,
namely, that produced by his clear apprehension of the exact nature
of a certain calumny which had been for some time in circulation
in England, and also of the wide-spread belief in it. This was the
same story which Mrs. Beecher Stowe in the sixties published to the
world, as having been confidentially communicated to herself by Lady
Byron, "whilst a heavenly brightness shone from that lady's ethereal
countenance"--the story of the criminal relations between Lord Byron
and his step-sister, Augusta Leigh. The assurance that such relations
had existed became in course of time so firmly rooted in Lady Byron's
mind that (as is proved by a work entitled _Medora Leigh_, published
in 1869) she did not even shrink from telling Augusta's daughter,
Medora, who applied to her for assistance when in difficulties, that
she was not a daughter of Colonel Leigh, but of Lord Byron. Lady Byron
at the same time promised Medora that she would always provide for her
maintenance--a promise she did not keep.
At the time he left England, Byron had evidently known nothing, or
as good as nothing, of this report. He had probably not read all the
hostile newspaper articles. He himself writes that it was not till some
time afterwards that he heard of all his enemies had done and said; and
he blames his friends for having concealed various things from him. It
was while he was in Switzerland that he learned everything. Knowing
this, we understand the full meaning of the poetry addressed at that
time to Augusta. In the Third Canto of _Childe Harold_ we find the
following stanza:--
"And there was one soft breast, as hath been said,
Which unto his was bound by stronger ties
Than the Church links withal; and, though unwed,
_That_ love was pure, and, far above disguise,
Had stood the test of mortal enmities
Still undivided, and cemented more
By peril, dreaded most in female eyes;
But this was firm, and from a foreign shore
Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour!"
The _Stanzas to Augusta_ express similar sentiments; and the line,
"Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake" (in the second of the
poems to her), shows that she, too knew of the shameful rumours.
And now we also have the explanation of the sudden revulsion which
occurred in Switzerland in Byron's feeling towards Lady Byron. In the
days immediately following the separation he had written: "I do not
believe that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder,
or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady B.," and had laid
the blame of everything on his own violence and inconsiderateness;
but now he sees only the blemishes in her character; and it is while
under the overpowering impression made by the accusation just alluded
to, that he begins the ugly war upon a woman, which, if we did not
know the circumstances, would seem utterly inexcusable, and draws the
unflattering portrait of his wife as Donna Inez in the First Canto of
_Don Juan_.
Decisive, and positively crushing, evidence against Lady Byron was
produced in 1869, in the _Quarterly Review_. Seven letters and notes
were printed, written after the separation by her to Mrs. Leigh, all
brimming over with tenderness and assurances of affection. It is her
"great comfort" that Mrs. Leigh is with Lord Byron. "Shall I still be
your sister? I must resign my rights to be so considered; but I don't
think that will make any difference in the kindness I have so uniformly
experienced from you." "In this at least I am 'truth itself' when I say
that whatsoever the situation may be, there is no one whose society is
dearer to me, or can contribute more to my happiness. These feelings
will not change under any circumstances.... Should you hereafter
condemn me, I shall not love you the less." Thus did Lady Byron write
to the woman whom, after the lapse of many years, she accused as
the guilty person who had driven her from her husband's house. This
friendly correspondence between Lady Byron and Mrs. Leigh actually
continues till Byron's death. His last unfinished letter begins with
the words: "My dearest Augusta, I received a few days ago your and Lady
Byron's report of Ada's health." And yet we are asked to believe that
Lady Byron the whole time regarded Augusta, who continued to be the
reconciling intermediary between the spouses, as the unnatural criminal
who was one of the authors of the misfortune of her life. What a chaos
of lies and insanity!
Insanity is the right word, for, as the _Quarterly Review_ has
remarked, "Lady Byron could at first account for her gifted husband's
conduct on no hypothesis but insanity; and now, by a sort of Nemesis,
there is no other hypothesis on which the charitable moralist can
account for hers. But there is this marked difference in their
maladies: he morbidly exaggerated his vices, and she her virtues; his
monomania lay in being an impossible sinner, and hers in being an
impossible saint ... He in his mad moods did his best to blacken his
own reputation, whilst her self-delusions invariably tended to damage
the characters of all that were nearest and should have been dearest
to her. Which was the more dangerous or less amiable delusion of the
two?"[1]
The last impression received by Byron in Switzerland was, then, the
crushing one of this slander. His thoughts revolved round the story,
and the artist in him was ever more fascinated by it. George Sand, in
a letter to Sainte-Beuve, has, with a few rapid touches, described her
nature, and the nature of the poet generally. She is writing about
Jouffroy the philosopher, who has expressed a desire to be introduced
to her, but of whom, as an extremely rigorous and unimaginative
moralist, she is a little afraid. She remarks: "I have once or twice
said to myself: Might it not be permissible to eat human flesh? You
have said to yourself: People doubtless exist who think that it might
be permissible to eat human flesh! Jouffroy has said to himself:
Such an idea never occurred to any one, &c."--a clever definition of
the nature of the poet as compared with that of the observer and the
moralist.
Byron was one of those who permit their imaginative and their
reflective powers every possible experiment; he had a strong
inclination to brood over, and let his fancy play with, what people
in general fear and avoid. The well-known anecdote (which aroused
such horror) of his exclaiming, with a knife in his hand: "I wish I
knew what it feels like to have committed a murder," means this and
nothing more. There was the same fascination for him in thinking
and working himself into the feeling of guilt which accompanies a
criminal attachment, as there was in imagining the feelings which
accompany a murder. His earliest heroes, such as the Giaour and Lara,
have committed a mysterious murder; and, as is well known, Byron was
promptly credited with the crime of his heroes. Even the aged Goethe
allowed himself to be so far led astray by the gossip that reached his
ears as to characterise (in his review of _Manfred_) as "extremely
probable" the foolish tale of Byron's doings in Florence--where, as
a matter of fact, he spent one afternoon. The story reported him to
have had an intrigue there with a young married woman, who was, in
consequence, killed by her husband--the husband in his turn being
killed by Byron. Just as the public of that day saw evidence of Byron's
murderous deeds in Lara's tragic mien, the public of our day have seen
evidence of his incest in Manfred's despair and Cain's marriage with
his sister. It is not surprising that Byron and Moore should have
meditated writing an imaginary biography of Lord Byron, in which he
was to seduce so many members of the one sex and murder so many of the
other, that the scandal-mongers would be outbid and possibly silenced.
The project was only relinquished from fear that the public might take
the jest as sober earnest.
It is probable that the subject of love between brother and sister
was one often discussed by Shelley and Byron in the course of their
conversations, all the more probable from the circumstance that the
younger poet's mind was also exercised by the unprofitable question.
What incensed Byron more than anything else was the pious horror
displayed by the orthodox Bible Christians, one article of whose
faith it is that the human race, as descended from one man and woman,
multiplied by means of marriage between brother and sister. Hence
he lays emphasis in _Cain_ on the circumstance that Cain and Adah
are brother and sister, and makes Lucifer explain to Adah that _her_
love for her brother is not a sin, though the same passion in her
descendants will be; to which Adah very logically replies:
"What is the sin which is not
Sin in itself? Can circumstance make sin
Or virtue?"
_Manfred_ and _Cain_ were the products of all the psychological
elements which have now been indicated. _Manfred_ is the less important
of the two works. It does not bear the comparison with Goethe's _Faust_
which it invites and which has been so often instituted. Goethe himself
said that an interesting lecture might be given on the subject. They
have since been given in abundance; there is more originality and
talent in Taine's than in any other known to me.
At only one point does _Manfred_ rise superior to _Faust_. To the
critic there is no surer criterion of the value of the different parts
of a work than the circumstance that, after a certain length of time,
he remembers this or that part and has forgotten the rest. I know
with certainty that, a year after I had read _Manfred_, all that I
remembered of it was the scene in which, in the hour of his death, the
hero, who has judged himself so severely, first repulses the Abbot
and such comfort as he would fain give, and then with proud contempt
dismisses from his presence the evil spirits with whom he has nothing
in common, and to whom he has never given the slightest power over
him. The difference between this man and Faust, who sells himself to
Mephistopheles and falls on his knees before the Earth Spirit, is very
striking. The English poet has had before his eyes a higher ideal of
independent manhood than has the German; Byron's hero is a typical man,
Goethe's a typical human being. Alone in death as in life, Manfred has
no more communion with hell than he has with heaven. He is his own
accuser and his own judge. This is Byron's manly ethical standpoint.
Not till he reaches the lonely heights above the snow-line, where human
weakness and pliability do not thrive, does his soul breathe freely.
And the Alpine landscape is the natural, inevitable background for his
hero whose stern wildness is akin to such scenes.
But in _Manfred_ only the egoistic side of Byron's nature reveals
itself. His wide human sympathies find full expression for the first
time in _Cain_. _Cain_ is Byron's confession of faith--that is to
say, the confession of all his doubts and all his criticism. When we
remember that he had neither, like Shelley and the great poets of
Germany, attained by dint of thought to an emancipated, humanistic view
of the world and life, nor, like the authors of our own days, had the
advantage of being able to base his ideas and imaginings on the subject
of the beliefs of the past and the present upon a groundwork of facts
established by natural science and scientific Biblical criticism, we
cannot but marvel at the intellectual power and earnestness which he in
this work brings to bear on the most vital problems of life.
As a private personage Byron was, undoubtedly, as much of the
dilettante in his free-thought as in his politics. His admirable
reasoning power revolted against belief in what was contrary to reason;
but, like most of the great men at the beginning of the century--that
is to say, before the remarkable development of religion and science
which has taken place during its progress--he was sceptical and
superstitious at one and the same time. As a child, religion had been
made a weariness to him; his mother dragged him regularly to church,
and he revenged himself when he was bored beyond all measure by
pricking her with a pin. As a youth, he was roused to revolt by the
rigid literal beliefs of the Church of England, as contained in its
thirty-nine Articles; he wrote in his memorandum-book: "It is useless
to tell me _not_ to _reason_, but to _believe_. You might as well tell
a man not to wake, but _sleep_." The belief in eternal hell-fire was
a subject of eternal merriment with him. He writes to Moore in 1822:
"Do you remember Frederick the Great's answer to the remonstrance of
the villagers whose curate preached against the eternity of hell's
torments? It was thus:--'If my faithful subjects of Schrausenhaussen
prefer being eternally damned, let them.'" And he horrified his
fellow-countrymen by writing in _Don Juan_:
"There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms
As rum and true religion."[2]
He disliked the clergy. Trelawny reports him to have said: "When did
parsons patronise genius? If one of their black band dares to think
for himself, he is drummed out or cast aside, like Sterne and Swift";
and Moore gives as one of his ejaculations: "These rascals of priests
have done more harm to religion than all the unbelievers." But, in
spite of all his jests and jeers, his feeling was one of uncertainty.
He dared not endorse the conclusions to which Shelley was led by his
reflections; and he sent his little daughter to be educated in a
convent, to withdraw her from the influence of the sceptical talk of
Shelley and his wife. A beautiful and very characteristic letter from
Shelley gives decisive evidence on the subject of Byron's uncertainty.
"Lord Byron," he writes, "has read me one or two letters of Moore to
him, in which Moore speaks with great kindness of me; and of course I
cannot but feel flattered by the approbation of a man, my inferiority
to whom I am proud to acknowledge(!) Amongst other things, however,
Moore seems to deprecate my influence on Lord Byron's mind on the
subject of religion, and to attribute the tone assumed in _Cain_ to my
suggestion.... I think you know Moore. Pray assure him that I have
not the smallest influence over Lord Byron in this particular; if I
had, I certainly should employ it to eradicate from his great mind
the delusions of Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem
perpetually to recur, and to lie in ambush for the hours of sickness
and distress. _Cain_ was _conceived_ many years ago, and begun before I
saw him last year at Ravenna. How happy should I not be to attribute to
myself, however indirectly, any participation in that immortal work!"
Thus we see that Byron, the private individual, had by no means arrived
at any definite conclusions on the great subjects which engage the
mind of man. And we are consequently all the more impressed by the
manner in which, in his poetry, his genius takes possession of him, and
makes him great and victorious in his argument, directing his aim with
absolute certainty to the vital points. In European literature, which
in 1821 lay stifling in the clutches of orthodoxy, there was a perfect
revolution when _Cain_ appeared, like a herald of revolt; the only
comparison possible is with the impression produced in the scientific
world fourteen years later by Strauss's _Life of Jesus_. The great
German poets had, in their liberal Hellenism, left the orthodox belief
untouched. This less emancipated poet was confined in the cage of
dogma, but was uneasily pacing round and round in it like an imprisoned
wild animal, shaking at its bars.
_Cain_ is not written with the haste of inspiration--is not a work
that storms and thunders. In it Byron has succeeded in accomplishing
what for passionate natures is the most difficult of all tasks--the
accomplishment of which is, indeed, the supreme triumph of morality--he
has _canalised_ his passion, that is to say, caused its wild currents
to fertilise. The play is a product of reflection--of the thought
that burrows and mines, the acuteness that splits, the reasoning
power that shivers. Here more than anywhere else is what Goethe makes
Byron say of himself (as Euphorion in the Second Part of _Faust_)
applicable--namely, that he has a distaste for what is easily won,
and delights only in what he takes by force. But the whole hammering,
crushing, intellectual machinery, which to all appearance works
under such complete control, is set in movement by an enkindled,
glowing imagination; and at the very centre of everything there is a
panting, sobbing heart. Byron's faith helped him as much as did his
scepticism. With perfect simplicity he takes the Old Testament story
as he finds it. He treats its characters, not as symbolic figures, but
as realities; and he does it in all sincerity--his scepticism attacks
traditions; it accepts tradition. Besides, was he not himself, both in
his intellect and his emotions, a man of the Old Testament type? In his
soul resounded lamentations like those of Job when he was comforted
and reproved by his friends, and cries for vengeance like those in the
Psalms. The _Hebrew Melodies_ prove how naturally the Jewish garment
accommodated itself to the forms of his feeling.
In all sincerity, then, Byron for the time being acknowledges the
claims of tradition and bows the neck of his reason to its yoke; but
in _Cain_ we see human reason writhing under this yoke, rebelling
against it--tortured by its pricks and kicking against them. And what
lends special attraction to the spectacle is, that the human reason
in this case is a young, newborn one. On the true poet the rising of
the sun makes as powerful an impression as if he were beholding it
rise on the first day of creation; to Byron, all doubts and questions
were so fresh that they could be put into the mouth of the first
questioner and doubter. The formation of the doubts and complaints
had demanded nothing less than the whole long succession of the human
generations who had sighed and groaned over the cruelty of life and the
irrationality of tradition. But although they are the accumulated woes
of many thousand years--the ever increasing sufferings of thousands
of generations of free human spirits in the torture-chambers of
orthodoxy--which are here voiced by the first rebel, he expresses it
all with as much originality and simplicity as if the thought-task of
millions had at once been accomplished by the first thinking brain.
This is the first of those contradictions in the poem which are so
effective.
The part of the drama in which all the discrepancies in the
Jewish-Christian tradition are laid bare, and its incompatibility as
a whole with reason is proved--the veiled attack on orthodoxy, in
short--possesses tolerably little interest for us nowadays; the human
race has progressed so far since 1821 that all the subtlety displayed
in refuting the theology of the Book of Genesis affects us much in
the same manner as a disputation on the belief in werewolves. Nor are
these attacks intended to be taken literally; Byron had, of course,
no intention of writing blasphemously, of scoffing at a being whom he
himself regarded as the supreme, the all-embracing being. What Cain
combats is in reality only the belief that the order of nature is a
moral order and that goodness, instead of being one of the aims of
human life, is its postulate. It must be remembered that the language
of human beings is full of words which were formed in ages past, and
which we are obliged to use because the language owns no others, but
the interpretation of which has changed many times in the course of
centuries. Such words are, for example, soul and body, eternity,
salvation, Paradise, the first temptation, the first curse. Byron
has retained in his poem all the expressions of the Book of Genesis.
The second suggestive contradiction in the drama is, therefore, the
constant inward disagreement between the spirit of the poem and its
letter. This second contradiction thoroughly arouses the readers who
have been startled by the first.[3]
Side by side in this drama with the exposure of the hollowness of the
general orthodox belief in God, we have a passionate representation
of the infinite misery of human existence. To what underlies this,
the empty, unmeaning name of _pessimism_ has been given; the true
definition is, a profound compassion for the undeniable sufferings of
humanity. Far deeper down in Byron's soul than wrath with the power
which creates only to destroy, lies the feeling of the obligatory
sympathy of all with all--sympathy with all the suffering which it is
impossible to relieve, but equally impossible not to be conscious of.
_Cain_ is a tragedy dealing with the source of all tragedy--the fact
that man is born, suffers, sins, and dies.
Byron revolves in his mind the Bible legend: Adam has been tamed;
Eve has been cowed; Abel is a gentle, submissive boy; Cain is young
humanity--pondering, questioning, desiring, demanding. He is to take
part in the general thanksgiving. Praise and give thanks for what? For
life? Am I not to die? For life? Did I ask to live? Am I still in the
garden of Eden? Why should I suffer? For Adam's transgression?
"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?
The tree was planted, and why not for him?
If not, why place him near it, where it grew,
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?"
Goodness would not create evil, and what hath He created but evil? And
even supposing evil leads to good?--why not create good at once? He has
"multiplied himself in misery," and yet He is happy. Who could be happy
alone, happy in being the only happy one? And that is what He is--the
"indefinite, indissoluble tyrant."
We are nothing in His sight. "Well," says Cain, "if I am nothing, for
nothing shall I be an hypocrite, and seem well-pleased with pain?"
War of all with all, and death for all, and disease for nearly all,
and suffering, and bitterness; these were the fruits of the forbidden
tree. Is not man's lot a miserable one? One good gift the fatal apple
has given--reason. But who could be proud of a mind which is chained
to an enslaving body, "to the most gross and petty paltry wants, all
foul and fulsome, the very best of its enjoyments a sweet degradation,
a most enervating and filthy cheat!" Not Paradise, but death, is our
inheritance on this wretched little earth, the abode of beings "whose
enjoyment was to be in blindness--a Paradise of Ignorance, from which
knowledge was barred as poison." And oh! the thought that all this
misery is to be propagated and inherited!--to see the first tears shed
and shudderingly anticipate the oceans that will flow! Would it not
be better to snatch the infant in his sleep and dash him against the
rocks, and thus choke the spring of misery at its source? Were it not
infinitely better that the child had never been born? How dare any one
bring children into such a world? And this is the existence for which I
am to offer thanks and praise!
Such is Cain's mood at the moment when he is compelled to offer
sacrifice; and it is largely due to the suggestions of Lucifer. For
Lucifer prefers torment to "the smooth agonies of adulation, in hymns
and harpings, and self-seeking prayers." This Lucifer is no devil. He
says himself:
"_Who_ covets evil
For its own bitter sake?--_None_--nothing! 'tis
The leaven of all life, and lifelessness."
Nor is he a Mephistopheles. Except for one faint jest, he is severely
earnest. No! this Lucifer is really the bringer of light, the genius
of science, the proud and defiant spirit of criticism, the best friend
of man, overthrown because he would not cringe or lie, but inflexible,
because, like his enemy, he is eternal. He is the spirit of freedom.
But it is significant that what he represents is not the frank,
open, struggle for liberty, but the feeling which inspires gloomy
conspirators, who seek their aim by forbidden ways--the feeling which
prevailed among the despairing young friends of liberty in Europe in
the year 1821.
In his work, _Justice in the Revolution and the Church_, Proudhon,
addressing the Archbishop of Besançon, exclaims: "Liberty is your
Antichrist. Come, then, O Satan! thou maligned of priests and kings,
let me embrace thee, let me clasp thee to my heart! Thy works, thou
blessed one, are not always fair and good, but they alone give meaning
to the universe. What would justice be without thee? An instinct.
Reason? A habit. Man? An animal." Satan, thus understood, is simply
the spirit of free criticism; and if Byron's poetry had been named
"Satanic" after him, it might have borne the name without shame.
With the assistance of Lucifer, part of the action of _Cain_ takes
place in the region of the supernatural; for that spirit conveys
his pupil through the abyss of space, shows him all the worlds with
their inhabitants, the realms of death, and, through the mist of the
future, the generations yet unborn. He demands from Cain neither blind
faith nor blind submission. He does not say: "Believe--and sink not!
Doubt--and perish!" He does not make belief in him the condition of
Cain's salvation; he requires neither homage nor gratitude; he opens
Cain's eyes.
Cain returns to earth; and the first rebel leaves the first murderer
alone, a prey to his consuming doubt. Sacrifices are to be offered, and
he has to choose an altar. What are altars to him? So much turf and
stone. Abhorring suffering, he will not slaughter innocent animals in
honour of a bloodthirsty God; on his altar he lays the fruits of the
earth.[4] Abel prays in correctly pious fashion. Cain, too, must pray.
What shall he say?
"If thou must be induced with altars
And softened with a sacrifice, receive them!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If thou lov'st blood, the shepherd's shrine, which smokes
On my right hand, hath shed it for thy service;
. . . . If a shrine without victim,
An altar without gore, may win thy favour,
Look on it! and for him who dresseth it,
He is--such as thou mad'st him; and seeks nothing
Which must be won by kneeling."
Fire comes down from heaven and consumes Abel's sacrifice, the flames
greedily licking up the blood on the altar. But a whirlwind throws
down Cain's altar and scatters the fruits upon the earth. Did God,
then, rejoice in the pain of the bleating mothers when their lambs
were taken from them to be slaughtered? and in "the pangs of the sad
ignorant victims under the pious knife"? Cain's blood boils; he begins
to demolish the offending altar. Abel opposes him. "Beware!" cries
Cain; "thy God loves blood!" And, driven by his wrath, his misery, his
fate, into the snare spread for him by the Lord, he commits the first
murder, without knowing what it means to kill, and thus himself brings
death to his kind--death, the very name of which, when the future of
humanity was revealed to him, had filled him with horror. The deed is
repented of before it is done; for Cain, who loves all men, is tenderly
attached to Abel. There follow, nevertheless, the curse, the sentence,
the banishment, and the mark of Cain.
This mark of Cain is the mark of humanity--the sign of suffering and
immortality. Byron's drama represents the struggle between suffering,
searching, striving humanity and that God of hosts, of lightnings, and
of storms, whose weakened arms are forced to let go a world which is
writhing itself free from his embrace. To exterminate this world which
denies him, he causes rivers of blood to flow, and hundreds of martyr
fires to be kindled by his priests; but Cain rises unscathed from the
ashes of the fire, and flagellates the priests with undying scorn. Cain
is thinking humanity, which with its thought cleaves the old "firmament
of heaven," and beholds millions of spheres rolling in freedom, high
above Jehovah's rattling thunder-chariot. Cain is working humanity,
which is striving in the sweat of its brow to produce a new and better
Eden--not the Eden of ignorance, but an Eden of knowledge and harmony;
a humanity which, long after Jehovah has been sewn into His shroud,
will be alive, pressing to its breast Abel, who has been restored from
the dead.[5]
_Cain_ was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott, who gave it as his opinion
that Byron's Muse had never before taken so lofty a flight, and who
answered in advance the attacks that were likely to be made on the
author. But this did not prevent the appearance of the work being
regarded and lamented as a positive national calamity. Before it went
to press, Murray was anxious that Byron should make some alterations.
But Byron wrote: "The two passages cannot be altered without making
Lucifer talk like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the
character of the former." Immediately after publication the play was
pirated, and Murray applied to Lord Eldon for an injunction to protect
his property in the work. The Lord Chancellor refused it in terms
which may be epitomised thus: "This court, like the other courts of
justice in this country, acknowledges Christianity as part of the
law of the land. Its jurisdiction in protecting literary property is
founded on this. The publication in question being intended to bring
into discredit that portion of Scripture history to which it relates,
no damages can be recovered in respect of a piracy of it." Thus
_Cain_--like Southey's _Wat Tyler_--was regarded as such a criminal
work that the law refused even to vindicate the right of property in it.
Meanwhile, Moore was writing to Byron: "_Cain_ is wonderful, terrible,
never to be forgotten. If I am not mistaken, it will sink deep into the
world's heart." History has endorsed this verdict.
[1] _Quarterly Review_, October 1869. Compare with Karl Elze's
admirable work: _Lord Byron_, p. 179.
[2] What Byron refers to in his anecdote of Frederick the Great must
be a story I find told in D'Alembert's _Éloge de Milord Maréchal_:
Les pasteurs de Neufchâtel, attachés encore à l'ancienne doctrine,
ou voulant seulement le paraître, osèrent déclarer au roi de Prusse,
suivant le style ordinaire, _que leur conscience ne leur permettait
pas_ de souffrir l'hérétique Petit-Pierre au milieu d'eux, malgré
la protection dont ce grand prince l'honorait. Le roi répondit _que
puisqu'ils avaient si fort à cœur d'être damnés éternellement, il y
donnait volontiers les mains, et trouvait très-bon que le diable ne
s'en fît faute_."
See _Gespräche Friedricks des Grossen mit H. de Catt und dem Marchese
Lucchesini_, herausgegeben von Dr. Fritz Bischoff; Leipzig, 1885.
[3] Renan writes on this subject: "Supposez même que, pour nous
philosophes, un autre mot fût préférable, outre que les mots abstraits
n'expriment pas assez clairement la réelle existence, il y aurait un
immense inconvénient à nous couper ainsi toutes les sources poétiques
du passé, et à nous séparer par notre langage des simples qui adorent
si bien de leur manière; Le mot _Dieu_ étant en possession des respects
de l'humanité, ce mot ayant pour lui une longue prescription et ayant
été employé dans les belles poésies, ce serait renverser toutes les
habitudes du langage que de l'abandonner. Dites aux simples de vivre
d'aspiration à la vérité, à la beauté, à la bonté morale, ces mots
n'auront pour eux aucun sens. Dites-leur d'aimer Dieu, de ne pas
offenser Dieu, ils vous comprendront à merveille. Dieu, Providence,
immortalité, autant de bons vieux mots, un peu lourds peut-être, que
la philosophie interprétera dans les sens de plus en plus raffinés,
mais qu'elle ne remplacera jamais avec avantage.--_Études d'Histoire
religieuse_, p. 418.
[4] Here the influence of Shelley is apparent.
[5] Compare Leconte de Lisle: _Poèmes barbares. Kain_.