es are not
For those who are called to the high destinies
Which purify corrupted commonwealths:
We must forget all feelings save the one,
We must resign all passions save our purpose,
We must behold no object save our country,
And only look on death as beautiful
So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven,
And draw down freedom on her evermore.

CAL. But if we fail--?

I. BER. They never fail who die
In a great cause: the block may soak their gore;
Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls,
But still their spirit walks abroad.

--a passage which, after his wont, he spoils by platitudes about the
precisian Brutus, who certainly did not give Rome liberty.

Byron's other Venetian Drama, the _Two Foscari_, composed at Ravenna,
between the 11th of June and the 10th of July, 1821, and published in the
following December, is another record of the same failure and the same
mortification, due to the same causes. In this play, as Jeffrey points
out, the preservation of the unities had a still more disastrous effect.
The author's determination to avoid rant did not hinder his frequently
adopting an inflated style; while professing to follow the ancient rules,
he forgets the warning of Horace so far as to permit the groans of the
tortured Foscari to be heard on the stage. The declamations of Marina
produce no effect on the action, and the vindictiveness of Loridano,
though effectively pointed in the closing words, "He has paid me," is not
rendered interesting, either by a well established injury, or by any trace
of Iago's subtle genius.

In the same volume appeared _Sardanapalus_, written in the previous May,
and dedicated to Goethe. In this play, which marks the author's last
reversion to the East, we are more arrested by the majesty of the theme--

Thirteen hundred years
Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale,

by the grandeur of some of the passages, and by the development of the
chief character, made more vivid by its being distinctly autobiographical.
Sardanapalus himself is Harold, raised "high on a throne," and rousing
himself at the close from a life of effeminate lethargy. Myrrha has been
often identified with La Guiccioli, and the hero's relation to his Queen
Zarina compared with that of the poet to his wife; but in his portrait of
the former the author's defective capacity to represent national character
is