No More Learning

He may, too, have witnessed some belated _Rappresentazione_ of
the Creation and Fall at Ravenna, or in one of the remoter towns or
villages of Italy. There is a superficial resemblance between the
treatment of the actual encounter of Cain and Abel, and the conventional
rendering of the same incident in the _Ludus Coventriae_, and in the
_Mistere du Viel Testament_; but it is unlikely that he had closely
studied any one Mystery Play at first hand. On the other hand, his
recollections of Gessner's _Death of Abel_ which "he had never read
since he was eight years old," were clearer than he imagined. Not only
in such minor matters as the destruction of Cain's altar by a whirlwind,
and the substitution of the Angel of the Lord for the _Deus_ of the
Mysteries, but in the Teutonic domesticities of Cain and Adah, and the
evangelical piety of Adam and Abel, there is a reflection, if not an
imitation, of the German idyll (see Gessner's _Death of Abel_, ed. 1797,
pp. 80, 102).

Of his indebtedness to Milton he makes no formal acknowledgment, but he
was not ashamed to shelter himself behind Milton's shield when he was
attacked on the score of blasphemy and profanity. "If _Cain_ be
blasphemous, _Paradise Lost_ is blasphemous" (letter to Murray, Pisa,
February 8, 1822), was, he would fain believe, a conclusive answer to
his accusers. But apart from verbal parallels or coincidences, there is
a genuine affinity between Byron's Lucifer and Milton's Satan. Lucifer,
like Satan, is "not less than Archangel ruined," a repulsed but
"unvanquished Titan," marred by a demonic sorrow, a confessor though a
rival of Omnipotence. He is a majestic and, as a rule, a serious and
solemn spirit, who compels the admiration and possibly the sympathy of
the reader. There is, however, another strain in his ghostly attributes,
which betrays a more recent consanguinity: now and again he gives token
that he is of the lineage of Mephistopheles. He is sometimes, though
rarely, a mocking as well as a rebellious spirit, and occasionally
indulges in a grim _persiflage_ beneath the dignity if not the capacity
of Satan. It is needless to add that Lucifer has a most lifelike
personality of his own. The conception of the spirit of evil justifying
an eternal antagonism to the Creator from the standpoint of a superior
morality, may, perhaps, be traced to a Manichean source, but it has been
touched with a new emotion.
Milton's devil is an abstraction of infernal
pride--

"Sole Positive of Night!
Antipathist of Light!
Fate's only essence! primal scorpion rod--
The one permitted opposite of God! "

Goethe's devil is an abstraction of scorn. He "maketh a mock" alike of
good and evil! But Byron's devil is a spirit, yet a mortal too--the
traducer, because he has suffered for his sins; the deceiver, because he
is self-deceived; the hoper against hope that there is a ransom for the
soul in perfect self-will and not in perfect self-sacrifice. Byron did
not uphold Lucifer, but he "had passed that way," and could imagine a
spiritual warfare not only against the _Deus_ of the Mysteries or of the
Book of Genesis, but against what he believed and acknowledged to be
the Author and Principle of good.

_Autres temps, autres moeurs! _ It is all but impossible for the modern
reader to appreciate the audacity of _Cain_, or to realize the alarm and
indignation which it aroused by its appearance. Byron knew that he was
raising a tempest, and pleads, in his Preface, "that with regard to the
language of Lucifer, it was difficult for me to make him talk like a
clergyman," and again and again he assures his correspondents (_e. g. _ to
Murray, November 23, 1821, "_Cain_ is nothing more than a drama;" to
Moore, March 4, 1822, "With respect to Religion, can I never convince
you that _I_ have no such opinions as the characters in that drama,
which seems to have frightened everybody? " _Letters_, 1901, v. 469; vi.
30) that it is Lucifer and not Byron who puts such awkward questions
with regard to the "politics of paradise" and the origin of evil.