ed with the Marino Faliero, has been treated by the
anonymous author of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord Byron.

Of The Prophecy of Dante I am no particular admirer. It contains,
unquestionably, stanzas of resounding energy, but the general verse
of the poem is as harsh and abrupt as the clink and clang of the
cymbal; moreover, even for a prophecy, it is too obscure, and though
it possesses abstractedly too many fine thoughts, and too much of the
combustion of heroic passion to be regarded as a failure, yet it will
never be popular. It is a quarry, however, of very precious poetical
expression.

It was written at Ravenna, and at the suggestion of the Guiccioli, to
whom it is dedicated in a sonnet, prettily but inharmoniously turned.
Like all his other best performances, this rugged but masterly
composition draws its highest interest from himself and his own
feelings, and can only be rightly appreciated by observing how fitly
many of the bitter breathings of Dante apply to his own exiled and
outcast condition. For, however much he was himself the author of
his own banishment, he felt when he wrote these haughty verses that
he had been sometimes shunned.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The Tragedy of "Sardanapalus" considered, with Reference to Lord
Byron's own Circumstances--"Cain"

Among the mental enjoyments which endeared Ravenna to Lord Byron, the
composition of Sardanapalus may be reckoned the chief. It seems to
have been conceived in a happier mood than any of all his other
works; for, even while it inculcates the dangers of voluptuous
indulgence, it breathes the very essence of benevolence and
philosophy. Pleasure takes so much of the character of virtue in it,
that but for the moral taught by the consequences, enjoyment might be
mistaken for duty. I have never been able to satisfy myself in what
the resemblance consists, but from the first reading it has always
appeared to me that there was some elegant similarity between the
characters of Sardanapalus and Hamlet, and my inclination has
sometimes led me to imagine that the former was the nobler conception
of the two.

The Assyrian monarch, like the Prince of Denmark, is highly endowed,
capable of the greatest undertakings; he is yet softened by a
philosophic indolence of nature that makes him undervalue the
enterprises of ambition, and all those objects in the attainment of
which so much of glory is supposed to consist. They are both alike
incapab