tus_ to himself, and extracted from it the strangest nourishment
for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the impelling
principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no one of them
remains the same; and it is particularly on this account that I cannot
enough admire his genius." Afterwards (see record of a conversation with
Herman Fuerst von Pueckler, September 14, 1826, _Letters_, v. 511) Goethe
somewhat modified his views, but even then it interested him to trace
the unconscious transformation which Byron had made of his
Mephistopheles. It is, perhaps, enough to say that the link between
_Manfred_ and _Faust_ is formal, not spiritual. The problem which Goethe
raised but did not solve, his counterfeit presentment of the eternal
issue between soul and sense, between innocence and renunciation on the
one side, and achievement and satisfaction on the other, was not the
struggle which Byron experienced in himself or desired to depict in his
mysterious hierarch of the powers of nature. "It was the _Staubach_ and
the _Jungfrau_, and something else," not the influence of _Faust_ on a
receptive listener, which called up a new theme, and struck out a fresh
well-spring of the imagination. The _motif_ of _Manfred_ is
remorse--eternal suffering for inexpiable crime. The sufferer is for
ever buoyed up with the hope that there is relief somewhere in nature,
beyond nature, above nature, and experience replies with an everlasting
No! As the sunshine enhances sorrow, so Nature, by the force of
contrast, reveals and enhances guilt. _Manfred_ is no echo of another's
questioning, no expression of a general world-weariness on the part of
the time-spirit, but a personal outcry: "De profundis clamavi!"

No doubt, apart from this main purport and essence of his song, his
sensitive spirit responded to other and fainter influences. There are
"points of resemblance," as Jeffrey pointed out and Byron proudly
admitted, between _Manfred_ and the _Prometheus_ of AEschylus. Plainly,
here and there, "the tone and pitch of the composition," and "the victim
in the more solemn parts," are AEschylean. Again, with regard to the
supernatural, there was the stimulus of the conversation of the Shelleys
and of Lewis, brimful of magic and ghost-lore; and lastly, there was the
glamour of _Christabel_, "the wild and original" poem which had taken
Byron captive, and was often in his thoughts and on his lips. It was no
wonder that the fuel kindled