manifest: Myrrha is only another Gulnare, Medora, or Zuleika. In the
domestic play of _Werner_--completed at Pisa in January, 1822, and
published in November, there is no merit either of plan or execution; for
the plot is taken, with little change, from "The German's Tale," written
by Harriet Lee, and the treatment is throughout prosaic. Byron was never a
master of blank verse; but _Werner_, his solo success on the modern
British stage, is written in a style fairly parodied by Campbell, when he
cut part of the author's preface into lines, and pronounced them as good
as any in the play.

The _Deformed Transformed_, another adaptation, suggested by a forgotten
novel called _The Three Brothers_, with reminiscences of _Faust_, and
possibly of Scott's _Black Dwarf_, was begun at Pisa in 1821, but not
published till January, 1824. This fragment owes its interest to the
bitter infusion of personal feeling in the first scene, and its occasional
charm to the march of some of the lines, especially those describing the
Bourbon's advance on Rome; but the effect of the magical element is killed
by previous parallels, while the story is chaotic and absurd. The
_Deformed Transformed_ bears somewhat the same relation to _Manfred as
Heaven and Earth_--an occasionally graphic dream of the world before the
Deluge, written October, 1821, and issued about the same time as Moore's
_Loves of the Angels_, on a similar theme--does to _Cain_. The last named,
begun in July, and finished at Ravenna in September, is the author's
highest contribution to the metaphysical poetry of the century. In _Cain_
Byron grapples with the perplexities of a belief which he never either
accepted or rejected, and with the yet deeper problems of life and death,
of good and ill. In dealing with these his position is not that of one
justifying the ways of God to man--though he somewhat disingenuously
appeals to Milton in his defence--nor that of the definite antagonism of
_Queen Mab_. The distinction in this respect between Byron and Shelley
cannot be over-emphasized. The latter had a firm faith other than that
commonly called Christian. The former was, in the proper sense of the
word, a sceptic, beset with doubts, and seeking for a solution which he
never found, shifting in his expression of them with every change of a
fickle and inconsistent temperament. The atmosphere of _Cain_ is almost
wholly negative; for under the guise of a drama, which is mainly a
dialogue bet