d the monster are placed side by side,
without affecting, without combating each other. Now there
is nothing less natural, and nothing less dramatic than this
mutual toleration. Characters wherein good and evil are
mixed together, are dramatic, only because the conflict of
opposite sentiments which takes place in the mind, is
brought before the view of the spectator. But where, in
Lucretia, is the struggle between good and evil? At what
moment does the maternal virtue enlighten and purify this
soul lost in darkness? When does this transfiguration take
place, so marvellous and yet so natural? * * *

It is singular, and marks the change which has taken place
in our moral notions. Formerly poets gave to their
personages one only vice or passion, taking care in other
respects to render them virtuous, in order that they should
be worthy of interest; at the present day, our poets give
their personages I know not how many passions and vices,
with one only virtue as a counterpoise. And this virtue,
weak and solitary, is by no means charged with the task of
purifying the corrupted mind in which it has by chance been
preserved. It carefully respects the independence of those
vices which permit it to dwell with them. Neither is it
commissioned to inspire an interest in the spectator;
because it is vice which now inspires all our interest,
thanks to a certain noble and proud bearing which has been
assigned to it, and which has been imitated from the heroes
of Lord Byron.

M. Girardin, it will have been remarked from the above extract, is
disposed to reproach our Lord Byron as the source from which some of his
countrymen have drawn their dark inspiration. This may be true. But
without defending our Byron from charges to which he is manifestly
exposed, let us say thus much for him, that in his poetry he was still
too much a classic not to be a worshipper of the beautiful; that he did
not court for itself the monstrous, the ugly; his mind did not willingly
associate with what was revolting in outward form or human passion. If
there was any thing Satanic, as some were pleased to express it, in his
poetry, he was not, at all events, of the hobgoblin or demoniac school.
It was the Satan of Milton, with its ruined beauty and clouded dignity,
that had taken possession of his imagination. He delighted to depic