There is one passage, however, which calls for a severer censure, inasmuch as it involves a point of morals as well as historical correctness. The general tone of Myrrha's charaeter (in perfect consistency with the manners of her age and nation, and with her own elevated but pure and feminine spirit) is that of a devout worshipper of her country's gods. She reproves, with dignity, the impious flattery of the Assyrian courtiers and the libertine scoffs of the king. She does not forget, while preparing for death, that libation which was the latest and most solemn act of Grecian piety; and she, more particularly, expresses, at p. 89, her belief in a future state of existence. Yet this very Myrrha, when Sardanapalus is agitated by his evil dream, and by the natural doubt as to what worse visions death may bring, is made to console him, in the strain of his own Epicurean philosophy, with the doctrine that death is really nothing, except

Unto the timid, who anticipate

That which may never be ;'

and with the insinuation that all which remains of the dead is the dust we tread upon.' We do not wish to ask, we do not like to conjecture, whose sentiments these are; but they are certainly not the sentiments of an ancient Grecian heroine. They are not the sentiments which Myrrha might have learned from the heroes of her native land, or from the poems whence those heroes derived their heroism, their contempt of death, and their love of virtue.' Myrrha would rather have told her lover of those happy islands where the benevolent and the brave reposed after the toils of their mortal existence; of that venerable society of departed warriors and sages, to which, if he renounced his sloth, and lived for his people and for glory, he might yet expect admission. She would have told him of that joy with which his warlike ancestors would move along their meads of asphodel, when the news reached them of their descendant's prowess; she would have anticipated those songs which denied that Harmodius was dead,' however he might be removed from the sphere of mortality; which told her countrymen of the roses and the goldenfruited bowers, where, beneath the light of a lower sun, departed warriors reined their shadowy cars, or struck their harps amid altars steaming with frankincense.' Such were the doctrines which naturally led men to a contempt for life and a thirst for glory: but the opposite opinions were the doubts of a later day; and of those sophists under whose influence Greece soon ceased to be free, or valiant, or virtuous.

With all its faults it may, however, be fairly characterized as worthy of Lord Byron, and as one of the best tragedies that has been produced in Europe for the last century.

The history of the last of the Assyrian kings is at once sufficiently well known to awaken that previous interest which belongs to illustrious names and early associations, and sufficiently remote and obscure to admit of any modification of incident or character which a poet may find convenient. All that we know of Nineveh and its sovereigns is majestic, indistinct, and mysterious. We read of an extensive and civilized monarchy erected in the ages immediately succeeding the deluge, and existing in full might and majesty while the shores of Greece and Italy were unoccupied, except by roving savages. We read of an empire whose influence extended from Samarcand to Troy, and from the mountains of Judah to those of Caucasus, subverted, after a continuance of thirteen hundred years, and a dynasty of thirty generations, in an almost incredibly short space of time, less by the revolt of two provinces than by the anger of Heaven and the predicted fury of natural and inanimate agents. And the influence which both the conquests and the misfortunes of Assyria appear to have exerted over the fates of the people for whom, of all others in ancient history, our strongest feelings are (from religious motives) interested, throws a sort of sacred pomp over the greatness and the crimes of the descendants of Nimrod, and a reverence which no other equally remote portion of profane history is likely to obtain with us. At the same time all which we know is so brief, so general, and so disjointed, that we have few of those preconceived notions of the persons and facts represented, which in classical dramas, if servilely followed, destroy the interest, and, if rashly departed from, offend the prejudices of the reader or the auditor. An outline is given of the most majestic kind; but it is an outline only, which the poet may fill up at pleasure; and in ascribing, as Lord Byron has done for the sake of his favorite unities, the destruction of the Assyrian empire to the treason of one night, instead of the war of several years, he has neither shocked our better knowledge, nor incurred any conspicuous improbability.

It is, indeed, a distinction which those who, for whatever reason, adhere to what is called the classical model of tragedy, will always find their interest in recollecting, that the subjects which suffer least by the fetters of rule are those where the catastrophe is occasioned by external causes only; by the wrath of the gods, the decrees of fate, the violence of a tyrant, or an overwhelming enemy; reverses or dangers

in which the hero is not so much the agent as the patient, and which, though undoubtedly borne differently by different characters, yet hap< pen alike to all men, and are neither accelerated nor retarded by any peculiarities in the person who is the principal object of the drame. Thus the dissipation and effeminacy of Sardanapalus (however they may be alluded to as the original cause of the revolt) in no way, throughout the drama now before us, can be said to accelerate his end, or materially to influence his fortunes. He is offered to our attentior as a young king, fighting gallantly in his first battle, erring (if he errs) from excess of courage, not of carelessness, and overpowered by irres sistible violence and treachery. The peculiarities of his character are, so far as the plot is concerned, incidental and ornamental only; and, it Cyrus or Charles the Twelfth had been thrown into similar difficulties, it is apparent that either of those hardy and martial monarchs would have fallen like the silken prince of Nineveh.

Still, however, though the development of Sardanapalus's character is incidental only to the plot of Lord Byron's drama, and though the unities have confined his "picture within far narrower limits than he might otherwise have thought advisable, the character is admirably sketched; nor is there any one of the portraits of this great master which gives us a more favorable opinion of his talents, his force of conception, his delicacy and vigour of touch, or the richness and harmony of his colouring. He had indeed, no unfavorable groundwork, even in the few hints supplied by the ancient historians, as to the conduct and history of the last and most unfortunate of the line of Belus. Though accused, (whether truly or falsely,) by his triumphant enemies, of the most revolting vices, and an effeminacy even beyond what might be expected from the last dregs of Asiatic despotism, we find Sardanapalus, when roused by the approach of danger, conducting his armies with a courage, a skill, and, for some time at least, with a success, not inferior to those of his most warlike ancestors. We find him retaining to the last the fidelity of his most trusted servants, his nearest kindred, and no small proportion of his hardiest subjects. We see him providing for the safety of his wife, his children, and his capital city, with all the calmness and prudence of an experienced captain. We see him at length subdued, not by man, but by Heaven and the elements, and seeking his death with a mixture of heroism and ferocity which little accords with our notions of a weak or utterly degraded character. And even the strange story, variously told, and without further ex

planation scarcely intelligible, which represents him as building (or fortifying) two cities in a single day, and then deforming his exploits with an indecent image and inscription, would seem to imply a mixture of energy with his folly not impossible, perhaps, to the madness of absolute power, and which may lead us to impute his fall less to weakness than to an injudicious and ostentatious contempt of the opinions and prejudices of mankind. Such a character, luxurious, energetic, misanthropical, affords, beyond a doubt, no common advantages to the work of poetic delineation; and it is precisely the character which Lord Byron most delights to draw, and which he has succeeded best in drawing.

Accordingly his Sardanapalus is pretty nearly such a person as the Sardanapalus of history may be supposed to have been, making due allowance for the calumnies to which an unfortunate prince is liable from his revolted subjects. Young, thoughtless, spoiled by flattery and unbounded self-indulgence, but with a temper naturally amiable, and abilities of a superior order, he affects to undervalue the sanguinary renown of his ancestors as an excuse for inattention to the most necessary duties of his rank; and flatters himself, while he is indulging his own slotb, that he is making his people happy. Yet, even in his fondness for pleasure, there lurks a love of contradiction. It is because he is schooled by Salamenes and his queen that he runs with more eagerness to dissipation: and he enjoys his follies the more from a sense of the witty and eloquent sophistry with which he is able to defend them. He feels that his character is under-rated; he suspects that he is himself the cause of this degradation; but he is elevated by the knowledge that he understands himself better than those around him. He has been so gorged with flattery that he rates it at its true value; yet his social hours are passed with flatterers, and he is not displeased with flattery the wildest and most impious, because he derives a satisfaction from knowing that he is not deceived by it.

The same peculiarity runs throughout his character. He forgives the disaffected satraps, though internally convinced of their guilt, with a frankness which would have been generosity, if it were not that he is too indolent to inquire, and too proud to condemn them on the mere authority of Salamenes. He professes to have slighted his queen for no other reason than because his love was there a duty; and even his passion for Myrrha is a feeling of superiority and possession, not of admiration and service. It is made up of kisses and compliments,

He keeps her by him as a child does a plaything; and is interested and amused by her eloquence, her courage, and her powerful understanding, as with a plaything more singular and attractive than any he has enjoyed before. But he mocks her touching piety; he rallies her just apprehensions and manly counsels; he is less unwilling than he ought to be to admit her as a sharer in his funeral pile; he speaks of her as a slave who loves from passion; and he, perhaps, speaks the truth when he says that he should love her more if she were something less heroic.

With all this, sufficient elevation of courage and sentiment is mingled to prove the natural strength of his mind, and just sufficient warmth of feeling to evince his natural kindliness of disposition. Though he shrinks from the ordinary exertions of a sovereigu, he feels a delightful stimulus in the novelty and dignity of danger. With Salamenes, with his soldiers, with the herald of the rebel host, his demeanour is magnanimous and kingly. Except in the too great cagerness which prompts his nocturnal sally, he discharges, with coolness and ability, the duties not only of a warrior, but a general. He exults, when alone and expecting the fatal torch, in that ancestry which he had before affected to despise, but whose martial fame his own end is not to detract from; and in his interview with Zarina, in his expressions of tenderness by the dead body of his brother-in-law, and when receiving the last homage of his faithful guard, he betrays in a natural and touching manner the knowledge that his estimate of life and of mankind has been wrong, and abundantly redeems himself from that contempt to which an unqualified selfishness would have consigned him.

Yet, of the whole picture, selfishness is the prevailing featureselfishness admirably drawn indeed, apologized for by every palliating circumstance of education and habit, and clothed in the brightest colours of which it is susceptible from youth, talents, and placability. But it is selfishness still; and we should have been tempted to quarrel with the art which made vice and frivolity thus amiable, if Lord Byron had not at the same time pointed out with much skill the bitterness and weariness of spirit which inevitably wait on such a character, and if he had not given a fine contrast to the picture in the accompanying portraits of Salamenes and of Myrrha.

Salamenes is the direct opposite to selfishness; and the character, though slightly sketched, displays little less ability than that which we have just been reviewing. He is a stern, loyal, plain-spoken