ce, or display. The banishment of Cain, still glorying in
his crime, follows the lamentations of Adam and Eve for the death of
Abel; and the act is closed by Adam's announcement of the birth of Seth.

The fourth act relates the deaths of Cain and Adam, and contains some of
the most eccentric, and also, some of the most elevated writing in the
play. Lamech opens the scene, candidly and methodically exposing his own
character in these lines:--

"Sure I am the first
That ever yet had two wives!
And maidens in sufficient plenty
They are to me. I am not dainty,
I can find them where I will;
Nor do I spare of them
In anywise one that is handsome.
But I am wondrous troubled,
Scarce do I see one glimpse
What the devil shall be done!"

In this vagabond frame of mind Lamech goes out hunting, with bow and
arrow, and shoots Cain, accidentally, in a bush. When Cain falls, Lamech
appeals to his servant, to know what is it that he has shot. The servant
declares that it is "hairy, rough, ugly, and a buck-goat of the night."
Cain, however, discovers himself before he dies. There is something
rudely dreary and graphic about his description of his loneliness, bare
as it is of any recommendation of metaphors or epithets:

"Deformed I am very much,
And overgrown with hair;
I do live continually in heat or cold frost,
Surely night and day;
Nor do I desire to see the son of man,
With my will at any time;
But accompany most time with all the beasts."

Lamech, discovering the fatal error that he has committed, kills his
servant in his anger; and the scene ends with "the devils carrying them
away with great noise to hell."

The second scene is between Adam and his son Seth; and here, the old
dramatist often rises to an elevation of poetical feeling, which,
judging from the preceding portions of the play, we should not have
imagined he could reach. Barbarous as his execution may be, the simple
beauty of his conception often shines through it faintly, but yet
palpably, in this part of the drama.

Adam is weary of life and weary of the world; he sends Seth to the gates
of Paradise to ask mercy and release for him, telling his son that he
will find the way thither by his father's foot-prints, burnt into the
surface of the earth which was cursed for Adam's transgression. Seth
finds and follows the supernatural marks, is welcomed by the angel at
the gate of Paradise, and is permitted to look