in every page, indubitable
evidence to me, that he has shadowed out in it himself his wife, and
his mistress, this little interview would prove a vast deal in
confirmation of the opinion so often expressed, that where his genius
was most in its element, it was when it dealt with his own
sensibilities and circumstances. It is impossible to read the
following speech, without a conviction that it was written at Lady
Byron:

My gentle, wrong'd Zarina!
I am the very slave of circumstance
And impulse--borne away with every breath!
Misplaced upon the throne--misplaced in life.
I know not what I could have been, but feel
I am not what I should be--let it end.
But take this with thee: if I was not form'd
To prize a love like thine--a mind like thine--
Nor dote even on thy beauty--as I've doted
On lesser charms, for no cause save that such
Devotion was a duty, and I hated
All that look'd like a chain for me or others
(This even rebellion must avouch); yet hear
These words, perhaps among my last--that none
E'er valued more thy virtues, though he knew not
To profit by them.

At Ravenna Cain was also written; a dramatic poem, in some degree,
chiefly in its boldness, resembling the ancient mysteries of the
monasteries before the secular stage was established. This
performance, in point of conception, is of a sublime order. The
object of the poem is to illustrate the energy and the art of Lucifer
in accomplishing the ruin of the first-born. By an unfair
misconception, the arguments of Lucifer have been represented as the
sentiments of the author upon some imaginary warranty derived from
the exaggerated freedom of his life; and yet the moral tendency of
the reflections are framed in a mood of reverence as awful towards
Omnipotence as the austere divinity of Milton. It would be
presumption in me, however, to undertake the defence of any question
in theology; but I have not been sensible to the imputed impiety,
while I have felt in many passages influences that have their being
amid the shadows and twilights of "old religion";

"Stupendous spirits
That mock the pride of man, and people space
With life and mystical predominance."

The morning hymns and worship with which the mystery opens are grave,
solemn, and scriptural, and the dialogue which follows with Cain is
no less so: his opinion of the tree of life is, I believe, orthodox;
but it is daringly expressed: indeed, all the sentiments ascribed to
C