" Byron welcomed such a "Defender
of the Faith," and was anxious that Murray should print the letter
together with the poem. But Murray belittled the "defender," and was
upbraided in turn for his slowness of heart (letter to Murray, June 6,
1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 76).

Fresh combatants rushed into the fray: "Philo-Milton," with a
_Vindication of the "Paradise Lost" from the charge of exculpating
"Cain: A Mystery_," London, 1822; "Britannicus," with a pamphlet
entitled, _Revolutionary Causes, etc., and A Postscript containing
Strictures on "Cain," etc._, London, 1822, etc.; but their works, which
hardly deserve to be catalogued, have perished with them. Finally, in
1830, a barrister named Harding Grant, author of _Chancery Practice_,
compiled a work (_Lord Byron's "Cain," etc., with Notes_) of more than
four hundred pages, in which he treats "the proceedings and speeches of
Lucifer with the same earnestness as if they were existing and earthly
personages." But it was "a week too late." The "Coryphaeus of the Satanic
School" had passed away, and the tumult had "dwindled to a calm."

_Cain_ "appeared in conjunction with" _Sardanapalus_ and _The Two
Foscari_, December 19, 1821. Last but not least of the three plays, it
had been announced "by a separate advertisement (_Morning Chronicle_,
November 24, 1821), for the purpose of exciting the greater curiosity"
(_Memoirs of the Life, etc._ [by John Watkins], 1822, p. 383), and it
was no sooner published than it was pirated. In the following January,
"_Cain: A Mystery_, by the author of _Don Juan_," was issued by W.
Benbow, at Castle Street, Leicester Square (the notorious "Byron Head,"
which Southey described as "one of those preparatory schools for the
brothel and the gallows, where obscenity, sedition, and blasphemy are
retailed in drams for the vulgar"!).

Murray had paid Byron L2710 for the three tragedies, and in order to
protect the copyright, he applied, through counsel (Lancelot Shadwell,
afterwards Vice-Chancellor), for an injunction in Chancery to stop the
sale of piratical editions of _Cain_. In delivering judgment (February
12, 1822), the Chancellor, Lord Eldon (see _Courier_, Wednesday,
February 13), replying to Shadwell, drew a comparison between _Cain_ and
_Paradise Lost_, "which he had read from beginning to end during the
course of the last Long Vacation--_solicitae jucunda oblivia vitae_." No
one, he argued, could deny that the object and effects of _Par