ain are but the questions of the sceptics. His description of the
approach of Lucifer would have shone in the Paradise Lost.

A shape like to the angels,
Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect,
Of spiritual essence. Why do I quake?
Why should I fear him more than other spirits
Whom I see daily wave their fiery swords
Before the gates round which I linger oft
In twilight's hour, to catch a glimpse of those
Gardens which are my just inheritance,
Ere the night closes o'er the inhibited walls,
And the immortal trees which overtop
The cherubim-defended battlements?
I shrink not from these, the fire-arm'd angels;
Why should I quail from him who now approaches?
Yet he seems mightier far than them, nor less
Beauteous; and yet not all as beautiful
As he hath been, or might be: sorrow seems
Half of his immortality.

There is something spiritually fine in this conception of the terror
or presentiment of coming evil. The poet rises to the sublime in
making Lucifer first inspire Cain with the knowledge of his
immortality--a portion of truth which hath the efficacy of falsehood
upon the victim; for Cain, feeling himself already unhappy, knowing
that his being cannot be abridged, has the less scruple to desire to
be as Lucifer, "mighty." The whole speech of Lucifer, beginning,

Souls who dare use their immortality,

is truly satanic; a daring and dreadful description given by
everlasting despair of the Deity.

But, notwithstanding its manifold immeasurable imaginations, Cain is
only a polemical controversy, the doctrines of which might have been
better discussed in the pulpit of a college chapel. As a poem it is
greatly unequal; many passages consist of mere metaphysical
disquisition, but there are others of wonderful scope and energy. It
is a thing of doubts and dreams and reveries--dim and beautiful, yet
withal full of terrors. The understanding finds nothing tangible;
but amid dread and solemnity, sees only a shapen darkness with
eloquent gestures. It is an argument invested with the language of
oracles and omens, conceived in some religious trance, and addressed
to spirits.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Removal to Pisa--The Lanfranchi Palace--Affair with the Guard at
Pisa--Removal to Monte Nero--Junction with Mr Hunt--Mr Shelley's
Letter

The unhappy distrusts and political jealousies of the times obliged
Lord Byron, with the Gambas, the family of the Guiccioli, to remove
from Ravenna to Pisa. In thi