m high estate as an interpreter of the soul,
the critics might have seen here nothing more to condemn than in some of
the Grecian tragedies, many passages in the "Paradise Lost," and in the
general spirit of "Faust." It is no proof that he was a blasphemer in
his heart because he painted blasphemy. To describe a wanderer on the
face of the earth, driven hither and thither by pursuing vengeance as
the first recorded murderer, the poet was obliged by all the rules of
art to put such sentiments into his mouth as accorded with his
unrepented crime and his dreadful agonies of mind and soul. Where is the
proof that they were _his own_ agonies, remorse, despair? Surely, we may
pardon in Byron what we excuse in Goethe in the delineation of unique
characters,--the great creations which belong to the realm of the
imagination alone. The imputation that the sayings of his fallen fiends
were the cherished sentiments of the poet himself, may have been one
cause of his contempt for the average intelligence of his countrymen,
and for their inveterate and incurable prejudices. Nothing in Dante is
more intense and concentrated in language than the malediction of Eve
upon her fratricidal son:--

"May the grass wither from thy feet! the woods
Deny thee shelter! earth a home! the dust
A gravel the Sun his light! and Heaven her God!"

Yet the reader feels the naturalness of this bitter cursing of her own
son by the frenzied mother. How could a great artist like Byron put
sentiments into the mouth of Cain such as would be harmless in the
essays of a country parson? If he painted Lucifer, he must make him
speak like Lucifer, not like a theological professor. Nothing could be
more ungenerous and narrow than to abuse Byron for a dramatic poem in
which some of his characters were fiends rather than men. We have no
more right to say that he was an infidel because Cain or Lucifer
blasphemed, than to say that Goethe was an atheist because
Mephistopheles denied God.

If Byron had avowed atheistical opinions in letters or conversations,
that would be another thing; but there is no evidence that he did, and
much to the contrary. A few months before he died he was visited by a
pious crank, who out of curiosity or Christian zeal sought to know his
theological views. Byron treated him with the greatest courtesy, and
freely communicated his opinions on religious subjects,--from which it
would appear that he differed from church people g