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ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and in the third act he is found by his attendants dying in a tower where he had studied his art." It appeared in print in 1817. "Manfred" is often performed in the theatres of Germany, and has been set to music by Schumann.

Select Passages.

Manfred and Astarte, act. ii., sc. 2.

His Confession-" From my youth upward," etc., act ii., sc. 2.
Invocation to the Sun, act iii., sc. 2.

A Night in Rome, act iii., sc. 4.

Death of Manfred, act iii., sc. 4.

QUOTATIONS.

"They who know the most

Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life."

"From my youth upward

My spirit walked not with the souls of men,
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh."

"Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die."*

Emilio Castelar's Comparison of "Manfred" and Goethe's "Faust." - Byron's grandest poem is "Manfred." Henri Taine compares it with "Faust," and says that "Manfred" is the poem of individuality, and "Faust" the poem of humanity. I should call "Manfred" the poem of sentiment, and "Faust" the poem of ideas; "Manfred" the poem of nature, and "Faust" the poem of history. Both poems represent the disenchantment which is produced within the limits of human existence. Faust himself is weary after having thought, and Manfred after having lived. The one dies as becomes a German doctor after having studied medicine, alchemy, the theological sciences, and philosophy, and having found them but ashes. The other expires after having felt, struggled, and loved in vain; after having ascended the gigantic ladder formed by the Alps without finding anything more than the piercing wind eternally moaning, the white frost falling, the pines amid the snowflakes, the cold desert of crystal fatal to life, the profound abyss where light is extinguished; beneath, men are like insects; above, the eagles fly in endless circles, breaking the immensity and the silence by their cries of hunger-a spectacle which reminds him of another desolation-the moonlight night in which he trod the ground of the Colosseum, the ruins overgrown with nettles, and heard nothing but owls, whose melancholy cries were an elegy over the ashes of the martyrs and gladiators of the past. To dissuade Faust from suicide came the sound of the Gothic bell celebrating the morning of the Resurrection, mingled with the voices of the Ecclesiastical choir; but to save Manfred there was needed the real and powerful hand of a deer-hunter, seizing him upon the verge of a precipice. The one, after having proved the emptiness of real love, invokes Helen, the classic beauty for whom lovely Greece was deluged in blood and proud Troy was burned; from whence sprung the refinement of Art, eternal mother of gods and men! The other, after having also tasted the nothingness of loves and ambitions, longed to behold the nymphs of nature-she who sleeps in everlasting snows, she who wears her hair in the cataract, she who sighs in the movement of the pine-trees, she who possesses above the clouds a palace of opal created by the uncertain reflections of the day-dawn, and she who bathes her fair form in the limpid bosom of the ocean, and whose long hair of seaweed, interlaced with pearls, reposes on pillows of shells and corals. So Faust went over the East with its theogonies, saluted the classic statues of antiquity, descended the abyss of human thought, in which the web of material life is woven by original or mother ideas, mounted the cupola of the Gothic church, which sends to the heavens the aroma of incense, the hymn of the organ, the vibrating echoes of supplication, and Manfred has passed from the feudal castle to the mountain, from the mountain to the war, from the war to the chase-for Faust is the thought of universal history, and Manfred is the action of universal life. In the poem of the one all ages speak, in that of the other all beings. In the one poem all writings are glanced at, from the creation of light in the Bible to the making of papermoney in the coffers of the Jews; in the other poem we find the essence of all elements, from that which raises the waters to that which draws tears. Between these two poems, the one of which embraces thought and history while the other comprises life and nature, there should be a third to comprehend society and its struggles. Perhaps the age has reserved this great glory to my country at least I almost gathered this from the magnificent vestibule designed by the hands of Esproceda, and which is called "El Diablo Mundo," a work not perfect nor finished, as the construction of our society is still imperfect and incomplete.

* The most horrible line in the drama.

CRITICISMS.

...

In "Manfred" especially Byron has arrayed the Satanic aspect of life in a gloomy majesty, which makes it act powerfully on the imagination. A kind of shuddering sympathy is awakened forth for the hero. "Manfred" represents a man of superhuman pride and superhuman ambition, bound by no moral laws, which yet have the power to scourge him, hating the world and his kind, and seemingly fated to be a curse to himself and to all who met him, either in love or hate. In his confession to the Witch of the Alps we have a most distinct statement of that disgust for mankind, that yearning after superhuman knowledge, that wild search in the loneliest and most tempestuous aspects of nature for sympathy with inward emotions, with which the writings of Byron teem.-Е. Р. WHIPPLE.

"Manfred," twin-brother of the greatest poem of the age, Goethe's "Faust." - H. A. TAINE.

Byron's tragedy, "Manfred," was to me a wonderful phenomenon, and one that closely touched me. This singular intellectual poet has taken my "Faustus" to himself, and extracted from it the strongest nourishment for his hypochondriac humor. 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. The whole is in this way so completely formed anew that it would be an interesting task for the critic to point out, not only the alterations he has made, but their degree of resemblance with, or dissimilarity to, the original; in the course of which I cannot deny that the gloomy heat of an unbounded and exuberant despair becomes at last oppressive to us. Yet is the dissatisfaction we feel always connected with esteem and admiration.... We recommend it (Manfred's soliloquy, act i., sc. 2, beginning "We are the fools of time and terror") as an exercise to all friends of declamation. Hamlet's soliloquy appears improved upon here. -GOETHE: Kunst und Alterthum.

"Manfred" is a chaos of pictures, suggested by the scenery of Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, half animated by vague personifications and sensational narrative. Like "Harold" and Scott's "Marmion," it just misses being a great poem. The Colosseum is its masterpiece of description; the appeal, "Astarte, my beloved, speak to me," its nearest approach to pathos. The lonely death of the hero makes an effective close to the moral tumult of the preceding scenes. But the reflections, often striking, are seldom absolutely fresh; that beginning,

"The mind, which is immortal, makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts,
Is its own origin of ill and end,
And its own place and time,"

is transplanted from Milton with as little change as Milton made in transplanting it from Marlowe. The author's own favorite passage, the invocation to the sun (act iii., sc. 2), has some sublimity, marred by lapses. The lyrics scattered through the poem sometimes open well, but they cannot sustain themselves like true song-birds, and fall to the ground like spent rockets.-PROFESSOR NICHOL.

STUDY OF "CAIN: A MYSTERY."

This boldest of Byron's dramatic productions was written at Ravenna in 1821, and dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. Its appearance was greeted with howls and hisses. English indignation against this open display of scepticism rose to such an extent that Byron wrote to his publisher of his readiness to take the entire responsibility of the piece upon himself, to redeem the money which he had received for the work, and to go to England, if necessary, to plead his cause. "Cain" has always been popular in Germany. Max Zenger converted it into an oratorio a few years ago, and as such has been often performed at Frankfort. Select Passages.

Cain's Soliloquy, act i., sc. 1.

Cain's Flight with Lucifer, act ii., sc. I.

Conversation of Cain and Adah, act iii., sc. I.

Death of Abel, act iii., sc. I.

Eve's Curse, act iii., sc. I.

QUOTATIONS.

"One good gift has the fatal apple given-
Your reason."

"May the grass wither from thy feet! the woods
Deny thee shelter! earth a home! the dust

A grave! the sun his light! and heaven her God!"

"And this should be the human sum

Of knowledge, to know mortal nature's nothingness;
Bequeath that science to thy children, and
'Twill spare them many tortures."

CRITICISMS.

In my opinion "Cain" contains finer poetry than has appeared in England since "Paradise Lost." "Cain" is apocalyptic; it is a revelation not before communicated to man.-SHELLEY.

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