ween two halves of his mind, the author appears to sweep aside
with something approaching to disdain the answers of a blindly accepted
tradition, or of a superficial optimism, e.g.--

CAIN. Then my father's God did well
When he prohibited the fatal tree.

LUCIFER. But had done better in not planting it.

Again, a kid, after suffering agonies from the sting of a reptile, is
restored by antidotes--

Behold, my son! said Adam, how from evil
Springs good!

LUCIFER. What didst thou answer?

CAIN. Nothing; for
He is my father; but I thought, that 'twere
A better portion for the animal
Never to have been stung at all.

This rebellious nature naturally yields to the arguments of Lucifer, a
spirit in which much of the grandeur of Milton's Satan is added to the
subtlety of Mephistopheles. In the first scene Cain is introduced,
rebelling against toils imposed on him by an offence committed before he
was born,--"I sought not to be born"--the answer, that toil is a good,
being precluded by its authoritative representation as a punishment; in
which mood he is confirmed by the entrance and reasonings of the Tempter,
who identifies the Deity with Seva the Destroyer, hints at the dreadful
visitation of the yet untasted death; when Adah, entering, takes him at
first for an angel, and then recognizes him as a fiend. Her invocation to
Eve, and comparison of the "heedless, harmless, wantonness of bliss" in
Eden, to the later lot of those girt about with demons from whose
fascination they cannot fly, is one of the most striking in the drama; as
is the line put into the mouth of the poet's most beautiful female
character, to show that God cannot be alone,--

What else can joy be, but diffusing joy?

Her subsequent contrast of Lucifer with the other angels is more after the
style of Shelley than anything else in Byron--

As the silent sunny moon,
All light, they look upon us. But thou seemst
Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds
Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars
Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault
With things that look as if they would be suns--
So beautiful, unnumber'd and endearing;
Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them,
They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou.

The flight with Lucifer, in the second act, in the abyss of space and
through the Hades of "uncreated night," with the vision of l