Are in my heart. My best-beloved, Abel! A mother's sin, to take him from me! Who Or what hath done this deed ?-speak, Cain, since Wert present; was it some more hostile angel, Eve. Ah! a livid light As he did by his brother! May the swords Breaks through, as from a thunder-cloud! yon brand, Adam. Speak, and assure us, wretched as we are, Adah. Speak, Cain! and say it was not thou! It was. I see it now-he hangs his guilty head, Bve. Hold! Eve. Thy natural grief, lead to impiety! A heavy doom was long forespoken to us; In such sort as may show our God that we Eve (pointing to Cain). His will! the will of Of death, whom I have brought upon the earth Drive him forth o'er the wilderness, like us (1) (1) In the MS. "Drive him forth o'er the world, as we were driven."-E. (2) The last three lines were not in the original MS. In forwarding them to Mr. Murray, to be added to Eve's speech, Lord Byron says "There's as pretty a piece of imprecation for you, Adam. Cain! get thee forth: we dwell no more Depart! and leave the dead to me-I am [together. Henceforth alone-we never must meet more. Adah. Oh, part not with him thus, my father: do Zillah. I must watch my husband's corse. Zillah. Yet one kiss on yon pale clay, The Voice within. Cain! Cain! That which I am, I am; 1 did not seek It soundeth like an angel's tone. For life, nor did I make myself; but could I Enter the ANGEL of the Lord. My brother's keeper? Am I then Cain! what hast thou done? Adah. This punishment is more than he can bear. Cain. Would they could! but who are they Angel. To him thou now see'st so besmear'd with blood? Cain. Wouldst thou with me? Angel. What To mark upon thy brow Exemption from such deeds as thou hast done. Cain. No; let me die! Angel. It must not be. With my own death redeem him from the dust- And I lie ghastly! so shall be restored Go forth! fulfil thy days! and be thy deeds I hear our little Enoch cry within No, No more of threats: we have had too many of them: Adah. I will not leave thee lonely with the dead: Cain. I think thou wilt forgive him, whom his God Can never meet thee more, nor even dare But who hath dug that grave? Oh, earth! Oh, earth! [The ANGEL sels the mark on CAIN's brow. the womb, As the ground thou must henceforth till; but he (1) The four rivers" which flowed round Eden, and consequently the only waters with which Cain was acquainted upon earth. Cain. Eastward from Eden will we take our way; Be thine! Now let us carry forth our children. (2) "The catastrophe is brought about with great dramatic skill and effect" Jeffrey. Have dried the fountain of a gentle race, And might have temper'd this stern blood of mine, Adah. Peace be with him! Cain. APPENDIX. the nest. I clomb a tree yesterday at noon, O my father, that I might play with them; but they leap! away from the branches, even to the slender twigs did they leap, and in a moment I beheld them on another tree. Why, O my father, would they not play with me? Is it because we are not so happy as they? Is it because I groan sometimes even as But with me!- thou groanest?" Then Cain stopped, and stifling [Exeunt. (1) his groans, he sank to the earth, and the child Enos stood in the darkness beside him, and Cain lifted his voice, and cried bitterly, and said, "The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like the wind, like the sandblast he passeth through me; he is around me even as the air; O that I might be utterly no more! I desire to die!-yea, the things that never had life, neither move they upon the earth-behold they seem precious to mine eyes. O that a man might live without the breath of his nostrils, so I might “A LITTLE further, O my father, yet a little abide in darkness, and blackness, and an empty further, and we shall come into the open moon-space! Yea I would lie down, I would not rise, light!" Their road was through a forest of fir-trees, neither would I stir my limbs till I became as the at its entrance the trees stood at distances from rock in the den of the lion, on which the young each other, and the path was broad, and the moon-lion resteth his head whilst he sleepeth. For the light and the moonlight shadows reposed upon it, and appeared quietly to inhabit that solitude. But Soon the path winded and became narrow; the sun at high noon sometimes speckled but never illumined it, and now it was dark as a cavern. THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN. A FRAGMENT. BY S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. "It is dark, O my father!" said Enos, "but the path under our feet is smooth and soft, and we shall soon come out into the open moonlight. Ah! why dost thou groan so deeply?" "Lead on, my child," said Cain; "guide me, little child." And the innocent little child clasped a finger of the hand which had murdered the righteous Abel; and he guided his father. "The fir branches drop upon thee, my son.”—“ "Yea, pleasantly, father, for I ran fast and eagerly to bring thee the pitcher and the cake, and my body is not yet cool. How happy the squirrels are that feed on these fir-trees! they leap from bough to bough, and the old squirrels play round their young ones in (1) The reader has seen what Sir Walter Scott's general opinion of Cain was, in the letter relative to the dedication, ante, p 571. Mr. Moore's was conveyed to Lord Byron in these words: "I have read Foscari and Cain. The former does not please me so highly as Sardanapalus. It has the fault of all those violent Venetian stories; being unnatural and improbable, and therefore, in spite of all your fine management of them, appealing but remotely to one's sympathies. But Cain is wonderful-terrible -never to be forgotten. If I am not mistaken, it will sink deep into the world's heat; and while many will shudder at its blasphemy, all must fall prostrate before its grandeur. Talk of Eschylus and his Prometheus!-here is the true spirit both of the Poet-and the Devil." Lord B.'s answer to Mr. Moore on this occasion contains the substance of all that he ever thought fit to advance in defence of the assaulted points in his Mystery:— torrent that roareth far off hath a voice; and the clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty One who is against me speaketh in the wind of the cedar-tree; and in silence am I dried up." Then Enos spake to his father.-"Arise, my father, arise; we are but a little way from the place where I found the cake and the pitcher." And Cain said, "How knowest thou?" and the child answered“Behold, the bare rocks are a few of thy strides distant from the forest; and while even now thou wert lifting up thy voice, I heard the echo." Then the child took hold of his father, as if he would raise him; and Cain, being faint and feeble, rose slowly on his knees and pressed himself against the trunk of a fir, and stood upright and followed the child. The path was dark till within three strides' length of its termination, when it turned suddenly: the thick black trees formed a low arch, and the moonlight appeared for a moment like a dazzling portal. "With respect to religion," he says, "can I never convince you that I hold no such opinions as the characters in that drama. which seems to have frightened every body? My ideas of a character may run away with me: like all imaginative men, I, of course, embody myself with the character while I draw it, but not a moment after the pen is from off the paper." He thus alludes to the effects of the critical tempest excited by Cain, in the eleventh canto of Don Juan :— Enos ran before and stood in the open air ; and when Cain, his father, emerged from the darkness, the child was affrighted, for the mighty limbs of Cain were wasted as by fire; his hair was black, and matted into loathly curls, and his countenance was dark and wild, and told, in a strange and terrible language, of agonies that had been, and were, and were still to continue to be. himself from the tumult of his agitation, the Shape fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, and cried out with a bitter outcry, "Thou eldest-born of Adam, whom Eve my mother brought forth, cease to torment me! I was feeding my flocks in green pastures by the side of quiet rivers, and thou killedst me; and now I am in misery." Then Cain closed his eyes, and hid them with his hands-and again The scene around was desolate; as far as the eye he opened his eyes, and looked around him, and could reach, it was desolate; the bare rocks faced said to Enos, "What beholdest thou? Didst thou each other, and left a long and wide interval of their hear a voice, my son ?"-"Yes, my father, I beheld white sand. You might wander on and look round a man in unclean garments, and he uttered a sweet and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks, voice full of lamentation." Then Cain raised up and discover nothing that acknowledged the in- the shape that was like Abel, and said, “The Creator fluence of the seasons. There was no spring, no of our father, who had respect unto thee, and unto summer, no autumn; and the winter's snow, that thy offering, wherefore hath he forsaken thee?" would have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks Then the Shape shrieked a second time, and rent and scorching sands. Never morning lark had his garment, and his naked skin was like the white poised himself over this desert; but the huge ser- sands beneath their feet; and he shrieked yet a pent often hissed there beneath the talons of the third time, and threw himself on his face upon the vulture, and the vulture screamed, his wings impri- sand that was black with the shadow of the rock, soned within the coils of the serpent. The pointed and Cain and Enos sate beside him; the child by and shattered summits of the ridges of the rocks his right hand, and Cain by his left. They were all made a rude mimicry of human concerns, and three under the rock, and within the shadow. The seemed to prophesy mutely of things that then were Shape that was like Abel raised himself up, and not; steeples, and battlements, and ships with spake to the child. "I know where the cold waters naked masts. As far from the wood as a boy might are, but I may not drink; wherefore didst thou sling a pebble of the brook, there was one rock by then take away my pitcher?" But Cain said, itself at a small distance from the main ridge. It"Didst thou not find favour in the sight of the Lord had been precipitated there, perhaps by the terrible thy God?" The Shape answered, "The Lord is groan the earth gave when our first father fell. God of the living only, the dead have another God." Before you approached, it appeared to lie flat on Then the child Enos lifted up his eyes and prayed; the ground, but its base started from its point, and but Cain rejoiced secretly in his heart. "Wretched between its point and the sands a tall man might shall they be all the days of their mortal life," stand upright. It was here that Enos had found the exclaimed the Shape, "who sacrifice worthy and pitcher and cake, and to this place he led his father; acceptable sacrifices to the God of the dead; but but, ere they arrived there, they beheld a human after death their toil ceaseth. Woe is me, for I was shape; his back was towards them, and they were well beloved by the God of the living, and cruel coming up unperceived when they heard him smite wert thou, O my brother, who didst snatch me away his breast, and cry aloud, "Woe is me! woe is me! from his power and his dominion!" Having utI must never die again, and yet I am perishing with tered these words, he rose suddenly, and fled over thirst and hunger." the sands; and Cain said in his heart, "The curse of the Lord is on me-but who is the God of the dead ?" and he ran after the Shape, and the Shape fled shrieking over the sands, and the sands rose like white mists behind the steps of Cain, but the feet of him that was like Abel disturbed not the sands. He greatly outran Cain; and turning short, he wheeled round, and came again to the rock where they had been sitting, and where Enos still stood; and the child caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and he fell upon the ground; and Cain stopped, and beholding him not, said, "he has passed into the dark woods," and walked slowly back to the rock; and when he reached it, the child told him that he had caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and that the man had fallen upon the ground; and The face of Cain turned pale; but Enos said, "Ere yet I could speak, I am sure, O my father, that I heard that voice. Have not I often said that I remembered a sweet voice? O my father! this is it;" and Cain trembled exceedingly. The voice was sweet indeed, but it was thin and querulous like that of a feeble slave in misery, who despairs altogether, yet cannot refrain himself from weeping and lamentation. Enos crept softly round the base of the rock, and stood before the stranger, and looked up into his face. And the Shape shrieked, and turned round, and Cain beheld him, that his limbs and his face were those of his brother Abel whom he had killed; and Cain stood like one who struggles in his sleep, because of the exceeding terribleness of a dream; and ere he had recovered Cain once more sat beside him, and said "Abel, my brother, I would lament for thee, but that the spirit within me is withered and burnt up with extreme agony. Now, I pray thee, by the flocks and by thy pastures, and by the quiet rivers which thou lovedst, that thou tell me all that thou knowest. Who is the God of the dead? where doth he make his dwelling? what sacrifices are acceptable unto him? for I have offered, but have not been received; I have prayed, and have not been heard; and how can I be afflicted more than I already am?" The Shape arose and answered-"O that thou hadst had pity on me, as I will have pity on thee. Follow me, son of Adam! and bring thy child with thee:" and they then passed over the white sands between the rocks, silent as their shadows. Werner, or the Inheritance; PREFACE. BY A TRAGEDY. (1) TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS GOETHE, ONE OF HIS HUMBLEST ADMIRERS, THE following drama is taken entirely from the German's Tale, Kruitzner, published many years ago in Lee's Canterbury Tales; written (I believe) by two sisters, of whom one furnished only this (1) The tragedy of Werner was begun at Pisa, December the 18th, 1821, completed January the 20th, 1822, and published in London in the November after. The reviews of Werner were, we believe, without exception, unfavourable. One critique of the time thus opens: "Who could be so absurd as to think that a dramatist has no right to make free with other people's fables? On the contrary, we are quite aware that that particular species of genius which is exhibited in the construction of plots never at any period flourished in England. We all know that Shakspeare himself took his stories from Italian novels, Danish sagas, English chronicles, Plutarch's Lives-from any where rather than from his own invention. But did he take the whole of Hamlet, or Juliet, or Richard the Third, or Antony and Cleopatra, from any of these foreign sources? Did he not invent, in the noblest sense of the word, all the characters of his pieces? Who dreams that any old Italian novelist, or ballad-maker, could have formed the imagination of such a creature as Juliet? Who dreams that the Hamlet of Shakspeare, the princely enthusiast, the melancholy philosopher, that spirit refined even to pain, that most incomprehensible and unapproachable of all the creations of human genius, is the same being, in any thing but the name, with the rough, strong-hearted, bloody-handed Amlett of the north? Who is there that supposes Goethe to have taken the character of his Faust from the nursery rhymes and penny pamphlets about the Devil and Dr. Faustus? Or who, to come nearer home, imagines that Lord Byron himself found his Sardanapalus in Dionysius of Halicarnassus? "But here Lord Byron has invented nothing-absolutely NOTHING. There is not one incident in his play-not even the most trivial,that is not to be found in Miss Lee's novel, occurring exactly in the same manner, brought about by exactly the same agents, and producing exactly the same effects on the plot. And then as to the characters,-not only is every one of them to be found in Kruilsner, but every one is to be found there more fully and Dowerfully developed. Indeed, but for the preparation which we had received from our familiarity with Miss Lee's own admirable story and another, both of which are considered superior to the remainder of the collection. (2) 1 have adopted the characters, plan, and even the language, of many parts of this story. Some of the characters are modified or altered, a few of the names changed, and one character (Ida of Stra work, we rather incline to think that we should have been unable to comprehend the gist of her noble imitator, or rather copier, in several of what seem to be meant for his most elaborate delineations. The fact is, that this undeviating closeness, this humble fidelity of imitation, is a thing so perfectly new in any thing worthy of the name of literature, that we are sure no one who has not read the Canterbury Tales will be able to form the least conception of what it amounts to. "Those who have never read Miss Lee's book will, however, be pleased with this production; for, in truth, the story is one of the most powerfully conceived, one of the most picturesque and at the same time instructive stories, that we are acquainted with. Indeed, thus led as we are to name Harriet Lee, we cannot allow the opportunity to pass without saying, that we have always considered her works as standing upon the verge of the very first rank of excellence; that is to say, as inferior to no English novels whatever, excepting those of Fielding, Sterne, Smollett, Richardson, Defoe, Radcliffe, Godwin, Edgeworth, and the Author of Waverley. It would not, perhaps, be going too far to say, that the Canterbury Tales exhibit more of that species of invention which, as we have already remarked, was never common in English literature, than any of the works even of those first-rate novelists we have named, with the single exception of Fielding. “Kruilzner, or the German's Tale, possesses mystery, and yet clearness, as to its structure, strength of characters, and admirable contrast of characters; and, above all, the most lively interest, blended with and subservient to the most affecting of moral lessons. The main idea which lies at the root of it is the horror of an erring father, who, having been detected in vice by his own son, has dared to defend his own sin, and so to perplex the son's notions of moral rectitude, on finding that the son, in his turn, has pushed the false principles thus instilled, to the last and worst extreme-on hearing his own sophistries flung in his face by a murderer." The reader will find a minute analysis, introduced by the above remarks, in Blackwood, vol. xii. p. 710 —E. (2) This is not correct. The Young Lady's Tale, or the Two |