CHAPTER XIV.

Marloe and Lord Byron compared.-Account of the dramatic Poem of "Manfred."-Origin and tendency of that Piece.-Ferrara.-The "Lament of Tasso."

WERE we disposed to select a parallel to Lord Byron from among our old English writers, we know not one so exactly suited in all points to our purpose, as Christopher Marloe, the contemporary of Shakspeare; and who is thus characterised by Michael Drayton :

"Next Marloe, bathed in Thespian springs,

Had in him those brave translunary things

That first poets

your

had; his raptures were

All air and fire, which made his verses clear:

For that fine madness still he did retain

Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."

To the most daring scepticism and licentiousness of principles, were added in him a fertile genius and great originality of conception; but he delighted in drawing characters which, for the honour of human nature, it is to be hoped had rarely if ever any prototypes; and though Marloe was himself a professed unbeliever to the widest extent, he encumbered his pieces with all the dreadful machinery of superstitious credulity. But his main power lay in representing villany; and in doing this, no one ever exceeded him; for all the personages of his dramas, upon whom he has heaped the load of guilt, are criminal without any motive except that of vice, and this deadly innate obliquity of mind they retain without compunction or repentance to the last moment of existence. It is, therefore, not to be wondered that the works of Marloe should have long since sunk into oblivion'; for where no moral end is answered by such representations, the effect must be mischievous. reproach which Æschylus, according to Aristophanes, brings against Euripides, is that he exhibited the vilest characters in his pieces. What," said the great tragedian, "am I the inventor of those personages?"—"No," answers Eschylus, "their ad

The

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ventures were known long before; but a poet, whose business it is to instruct mankind, ought not to choose for his subjects, historical adventures the recital of which may have a pernicious influence."

But if this be wrong in regard to the exhibition of real events, and the delineation of characters that have actually lived in the world; how much more improper is it to imagine new scenes of iniquity, and to bring before the public, either on the stage, or in print, creatures whose sole pleasure is wickedness? Such, however, are the dramatic personages of Marloe, and such are the prominent ones in the poems of Lord Byron. After carrying the idea of human depravity to a depth of degradation as far as imagination seemed capable of going, the noble author resolved to make another effort, and to embody a being that should outdo all his former doings. It is curious that he should have been tempted to this strange trial of his creative powers, by the sublime scenery which excited his astonishment among the icy mountains of Switzerland; and that the contemplation of objects calculated to raise the mind to noble thoughts, should have inspired him with the notion of forming a hideous

moral contrast to those wonders. Such, however, is the fact; and it was the Jungfraw, of which he sketched so fine an outline, that suggested to him the idea of pourtraying a character no less gigantic in wickedness, than that mountain appeared terrible in the awful magnificence of nature. This may be poetical, but it is not consistent, and such a manner of studying the grand appearances of the external world, differs in sentiment and utility from that mentioned by our immortal dramatic writer, who could

Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

The poem of "Manfred," though called a drama,

has nothing more of that species of composition, than what arises from the circumstance of its being divided into acts and scenes, with machinery drawn from mythology, and the chimeras of magical superstition. The piece opens with the appearance of Manfred soliloquizing, at midnight, in his Gothic gallery, upon the wretchedness of his situation, though the particulars and causes of his misery are left to be conjectured. After a long preamble, he ven

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tures to call to his aid the ministers of darkness; who, being disobedient to the first summons, are invocated by a more potent spell, the like of which will not easily be found in any of the demonologists from Jamblichus down to Cornelius Agrippa:

Deeper than all yet urged, a tyrant spell
Which had its birth-place in a star condemn'd,
The burning wreck of a demolish'd world,
A wandering hell in the eternal space;

By the strong curse which is upon my soul,

The thought which is within me and around me,
I do compel ye to my will."

There was no standing against this terrible conjuration, and accordingly forth issue the trembling inhabitants of the deep, "black spirits and white, blue spirits and grey," anxious to know the wish of the necromancer. Manfred, in reply, demands the boon of " forgetfulness of that which is within him." This, however, is more than they have the power of granting; on which the enchanter commands them to assume the human form, and accordingly one of them takes the appearance of his deceased sister, with