66 Seth. cause man storm Seth says, son thers of the family of the created man, A girdle of the brightest fires of heaven, njoying the beauty of the morning on To keep all evil thing from its pure gales ; heir own beautiful mountain. Divine And this will last until its withering heat iusic is heard in heaven, and Seth ex Shall blast its richness, and deface its charms. laims, Oft have I mark'd it, in the heavy night, On my soul it falls ; With tearful eye, with more than usual t is the song of angels which we hear, Iingled with motion's harmonies,-they Light'ning up all the air, and then I glow praise deem'd "heir loved Creator, and so near to heaven Some cursed spirit near its sacred bounds This mountain's height, that the sweet With unbless'à feet, and evil longing eye, strains come down Was wandering. Such think I now the Lo charm our mortal ears, and tell fall'n Of yonder splendid light. Vhat happiness awaits him. Once before Seth. Che father heard that sound, it was when Mingling with the loud wind a human Methought I heard fell groan. into his early grave the virtuous slain ; And then he deem'd the stars of heaven Again---hark !---Sure it is the voice of pain ! sung And see where comes Mahalaleel; the Iis welcome to their glories. I, nor hope, Nor fear, such is this hour, the cause, that Hath pal’d his glowing cheek, and dimm’d swells the light To melody the air,—the will of Heaven, Of his young joyous eye. May nought Howe'er it fall, be done !” but fear Cain very poetically replies, and Have wrought upon thee thus ! Unharm'd thou com'st From the death-dealing tempest ! “ But let us on, for, see Mahalaleel. Not the storm, Where slowly comes the Father, the great Though terrible it be, could shake me thus, But that which rideth on it. There is one Of God himself, the holiest of our clay ; Wrapp'd in wild horror, who should ra. For, unbegotten in the dark gross bond ther seem Of sad mortality, he sprung to life, Its sport and victim than its governor, Fashion’d and form'd by an Almighty For his unearthly shrieks are loud and hand, shrill, cHis soul breath'd from th' Eternal's own, And speak of pain, not triumph. I did a part mark Of his transcendant spirit. Bow ye down, How in his frenzy he did rend the locks My sons, to earth, the image of your God, From his distracted head, and on the earth His own reflected likeness, steps among ye, Roll'd in delirious agony. The heaven-born child of earth, bow lowly Seth. Oh, sire down, Of men, shall we descend the steep, and In him respect his Master !” heal Adam appears, and the sire of man- The wounds of the grief-bruised ? It may kind expresses himself in the same or- be snate style with his son Seth. But we Some wretched mortal, who, by sin opthink that what follows is eminently press'd, beautiful. Needeth our help and comfort. Thy soft voice 16 Seth. Through the gloom, Would yield it best, thou mild appointed, O father, look, there shines a wond'rous but light, We will assist thee in the task, for be As if a band of suns above that spot The sufferer what he may, from me he Did shed their radiance down :- from hea. springs, ven or earth And still must claim my pity.” Gleameth that light ? It is Cain; and Adam, Seth, and Adam. It is the wall of flame, the others, descend to the foot of the The fiery circle which doth circumscribe The hallow'd Garden, from whose sacred mountain, to know what wretched bemould ing wanders through the thundering I took my frame,-—it is the will of Heaven and stormy solitude. Before they reach That holy earth should still be consecrate him, Cain thus speaks ; but we quote To that sole purpose, nor e'er be profaned with pleasure great part of the interTo other uses. When from out its bounds view, which is admirably done. He drove us weeping, round its airs he So there comes drew Nor help nor pity to me. I am driven 16 Cain. I am me I am -0 I am Before despair, as was the rebel chief, Cain. Methought I heard From God's wide scattering thunder ! Soft. The voices of my youth; and that I saw The forms of early days, the mountain's Alone ! I see him not, though, through the side, night, And the young family of earth, the pride Close in pursuit, I saw his glaring eyes, And joy of their Creator. 'Twas a dream!... Gleaming'with fires of the nether world, Or am I dead, and, expiation done, Lighting him to the chace !-Here will I Have waken'd to new life ? ---He was with breathe A moment ;—but, where am I ? Driven on But now, and I am still upon the spot, Thus madly, nought I knew of the drear Where he did grasp me with the might path Death, My goaded step was seeking. Let me look And plunged with me in darkness. Soft, Abroad upon these objects. My strain'd eyes Still in the world of living things, as yet Are dim,-or I am mad,mor doth the fiend Not blotted from its face ;-but who are Present illusions to my tortured sense, these ? To wound me with new mockeries ?_If And who is he that cometh, terrible In his majestic calmness ? I behold Myself, and this be no delusion, then Not the grieved father, but the accuser stern My wretched flight hath borne me to the Of my remember'd crime! 0, mountain, spot fall ! I should haveshunn’d forever. Oh, I know Open, O earth ; and, ocean, pour thy That giant tree, and those cloud soaring waves, hills, And hide me from his glance ! And---God of vengeance, hast thou drawn ADAM enters. me here, Adam. Yea, let me hope To make my doom more bitter, to assist I gaze upon a vision,---that the breath The malice of the fiend ? ---It is ---it is, Of the blasphemer doth not file the air, The crimson spot of earth, the wither'd So near the courts of Eden ; that the foot bound, Of the manslayer doth not press the soil Where first into her sick’ning breast was Red with his victim's gore. Oh, righteous pour'd Heaven, The draught of her son's blood. It is the Before thee I have sinn'd; I would not then spot, Curse the destroyer, but, I pray thee, send Where these fell hands griped his implo. Him back unto his land, ere other sons ring throat, Glut his revengeful malice. And smote upon his brain ! He riseth !--- Cain. Misery see, Is humble ! Father of mankind, behold Up from the earth he comes, a blackend The wretched, prostrate Cain. The earthcorse, abhorr'd; To drag me to his grave, ---to bid me share The horror-struck---the wand'rer---demonHis deep and bloody bed !---Oh, agony,-- scourged ; We sink !---together,---down, ---down,-- Of God and man abandon'd. I have worn deeper yet,-- Long on this aching brow the burning seal The earth is closing o'er me. Of the Creator's vengeance. Now, I come SETH and MAHALALEEL enter. Unto my father's hand, to raze the stamp, Mahalaleel. See, my father, and take the malediction from my soul. Where, on the earth, unto the tempest's Stárt not, Oh brethren! bither not my will, wrath, But the Eternal's, bore me ; for I knew Insensible the wretch extended lies. Nought of the path o'er which my frenzied Wounded he is, and speechless, let us raise speed His head from that sad pillow. Drove furiously along. O Father, chief Sath. Sorrowing man, of the earth's thousands, 'neath thy holy Look up. Thy wounded head reclines rule, upon Within these sacred valleys, let my head A pitying bosom, open to the light Lie down in peace! I ask a tranquil spot Of this world's kindliness, thy sleeping Where I may die. I would not live among sense, Mine own all sinful race, whose hands are That o'er its darkness soft compassion may arm'd Throw her sun-tinted hues. Against their father's life, who struck the Mahalaleel. Thy gentle tones head Father, can this be The conversation between Adam bling heart and Cain becomes, after this, very dull Shrinks from bis fiery glance. and unexpressive-indeed painful and out eemingly unnatural; so we pass it Find favour in thy sight. O Lord, come ver, and give the conclusion of the down, trama. Burn, and consume the victim. Cain, after a long life of agony and [Darkness, thunders, and lightnings. uilt, lies stretched at last on the very Oh may these horrors spare thee! Seth. Brother_Cainrave of the murdered Abel; his fa Adam. Sullen shades her is beside him, and God is thun- of darkness veil the earth ; thou righteous lering in the sky. The situation is Heaven, grandly, and sublimely, and terribly From thy avenging bolt the sufferer magined; and though the execution is Guard in thy mercy,---thou most awful scarcely equal to the design, it certain- night, uy exhibits Mr Lyndsay's power in the That circletłu thus our world, and blotteth nost favourable light, and justifies fully all that we have now ventured to say The glories of the day! Th’ unhappyin his praise. where ! I hear no more the anguish of his cries, 66 Cain. My brother's grave The thunderbolt hath still’d them. Mercy, Is now my place of rest, for never more Heaven, Shall I forsake that home. This is the bed Have mercy on the fallen. ----Soft, the day Where I shall sleep for ever. Hark! there Breaketh above the darkness. O my son, is Mine elder born, where art thou? Gone --A voice which whispers to my soul, and behold cries, The Eternal hath accorded his sad prayer, • Thy wanderings are past, here lie thee And with the lightning is his being gone. down He came in misery into the world, For thy last expiation.' God, I pray thee, In darkness hath departed. Lo! a heap Let not this be a mockery, for thou see'st Of smoking ashes, on the mouldering bunes How all reject me. It is thy decree, Of the first sleeper lies ; it is the last And now I murmur not; but, if thy will Sad remnant of the slayer ; the grieved Summon me not, I shall devoted stand earth Alone again, the outcast of the earth, The loathed of all her sons. My strength Devours the murderer, he is entomb'd Refuseth him a grave, the fiery doom And the dark fiend that doth beset my soul By that which hath consumed him; he hath been Whispers me of despair. Oh, help me, Still sacred to his God, and sacredly God ! The wrath-devoted dies. May we to dust The spurn'd of all, I turn me back to thee! Commit those ashes ? No! the winds of Give me not up to hell. My punishment Heaven, Hath mighty been, and mightily I have The breath of the Almighty stirs them 6- Borne the severe decree. My bloody hands, from Now purified by suff'ring, I upraise Their resting-place, and scatters them 2* From that deep bed where the slain victim abroad. lies, Cain's atoms rise, no more a heap of Unto thine eye,---avert it not, O God ! dust, The red stain is effaced! Oh, look down, But mingled with creation. Air, earth, Look down with mercy on me ;---if my water, pangs Take each your several offerings !” Have been an expiation,---if my soul We have given copious quotations • Be scourged not as my body, but may rest from this poem, that our readers might * Cured of its wounds, upon thy healing have before them enough of Mr Lynd breast, Then call me from this earth ---arm thy say to decide on his merits. We do not right hand fear to say, that he is a poet with much With thy tremendous bolt, and strike me feeling and no little imagination. His dead ! chief fault is a dim and misty splenCome, vivid lightning, spare no more this dour indiscriminately flung over all his head, conceptions, by which the very eye of But crumble it to cinders, and upon the mind is dazzled, and from which Thy wing of glory, bear my mounting it would fain seek relief. There is no soul, To seek for pardon at th’Almighty's less touches at once awaken the heart; simplicity; for soft, tender, and carethrone. Come, God of justice---God of mercy, now and nothing like delineation of chaAccept the sacrifice I place upon racter ;-neither is there much curious This grave become thine altar; thou didst or profound knowledge of passion; and spurn the poet is sometimes weakest when The first I offer'd, let this one, this last, he ought to be most strong. But Mr is gone, Lyndsay conceives situations very fine- Deluge is conceived in a very awful ly' and originally; his diction is often mood of the imagination ;-vast and magnificent, and his imagery striking dark images of horror and crime, like and appropriate ; he seems to write in the shadows and the gloom of storms, a sort of tumult and hurry of young move around the scene, and suggest delight, and therefore is often insensi- associations of terror, far more thrilling ble to the monotony and even dulness than the most distinct portraiture of of long passages, which sorely try the individual character. The Plague of reader in a calm and composed peru- Darkness, and the Last Plague, have sal ; he pitches his tone too high, and already adorned our pages. Rizpah, walks too much on stilts ; his bad pas- as a delineation of the craze of grief, sages, accordingly, are extravagant, is full of strong and affecting touches bombastical, and not to be read at all; of pathos. The description of the but when the situation of his person- silent spirit of Saul hovering round ages is pathetic or sublime, Mr Lynd- the bodies of his sacrificed children, say is often most effective; and we cannot be thought on without painful have no doubt that we have quoted sentiments of sympathy and sorrow. enough to prove, that if a young wri- In Sardanapalus, the author will ter, which can scarcely be doubted, again be brought into comparison with high hopes may be justly formed of Byron. In his conception of the situhim who, in a first attempt, has pro- ation, we doubt if the noble poet will duced so much poetry true to nature, be found to have surpassed him. In the and belonging to the highest province appropriate expression of passion, Mr of imagination. Lyndsay is not so successful, though Prefixed to this volume, we find the here and there he darts gleams of the following Advertisement: intensest feeling, and at times puts such energy into the kindled heroism “ It may be necessary for me to say of Sardanapalus, that his soul appears something respecting the singular coincidence of my having chosen the same sub- sparkling and glowing beneath the jects as Lord Byron for two of my Dramas. falling of his fortunes like the thunI entreat permission to assert, and credit derbolts under the hammers of the when I do assert, that it is entirely acci- Cyclops. dental : that my Dramas were written long But Sardanapalus is here a full before Lord Byron's were announced, formed bero,--already he has been the before I could have had any idea that his Hector of battles, and the young brilliant pen was engaged upon the Drama voluptuary is almost forgotten in the at all. The inferiority of the execution of stern and gallant soldier. The inmine may perhaps lead me to regret that I terest is in consequence weakened have selected the same subjects, otherwise can anticipate from the first, I never can lament any coincidence with the admired Author of Manfred and Childe is introduced to us as claiming and that he will perish gloriously; and he Harolde.” The coincidence certainly is very meriting our sympathy. What a triumph of dramatic art it singular ; and the overpowering influ- would have been to have shewn him ence of ron's name may prevent full in his state of abasement, and to have justice being done to Mr Lyndsay. But exhibited the first stirrings of his lawe are greatly mistaken if his Lord- tent energy, gradually developing all ship himself will not admire many his powers, till the whole splendeur things in these first productions of a and pride of his nature had burst out youthful muse, at once modest and into that conflagration of spirit, with ambitious. Our extracts have been which he at once met and avenged his wholly from one Drama—not because doom. We know not, indeed, in the we think it absolutely the best, but whole range of human passion, any that the public might judge of the incident so calculated to produce the force of the poet's mind in its conti- noblest stage-effect, than the moment nuous flow. The conception of the when Sardanapalus, awakened to the state of Cain is beyond doubt very ter, danger and greatness of his situation, rible and poetical, and has occupied roused himself, and bade the writer's mind almost to the exclusion of all other permanent thoughts - The weak wanton Cupid or feelings. But perhaps readers, ac- Unloose his amorous fold, cording to their peculiar tastes, will And, like a dew.drop from the lion's mane, prefer some of the other pieces. The Be shook to air." -we 1 CAPTAIN COCHRANE, AND THE NORTH-EAST CAPE OF ABIA. In a late number of the Quarterly Re- On the 6th of May, 1820, he adview, we were informed that Henry dressed the Russian Government on Dundas Cochrane, a commander in the the subject of his intended journey, British Navy, had set out from St Pe- stating that he wished to travel in the tersburgh, under the auspices of the Im- eastern parts of the Empire ;-his atio perial Government, to proceed through tempt to be considered as that of an the interior of Russia to the East of individual unauthorised by his own Asia, with the view of ascertaining Government, and requesting, whether the “ North East Cape” was 1st, Not to be molested on his jourreally a Cape, or part of a continuous ney. neck of land, by many supposed to 2d, Assistance and protection if reunite the two Continents of Asia and quired, and general facilities to be afAmerica. All this we knew, as well forded. as the journal in question; and being 3d, Permission to join the Russian aware of the sources from which the Polar Expedition if he should fall in Reviewer was accustomed to draw his with it, and to accompany it as far as information on all matters connected he might be inclined. with Russian discoveries, we should ne- The Russian Government having, ver have expected anything in the shape in the handsomest manner, granted of a hoax. The “ respectable corres- him all he asked, the traveller immepondent,” however, succeeded in ma- diately set out, making the best of his king the Quarterly believe that Cap- way to the Ouralian mountains, which tain Cochrane was to perform his jour- our readers will be pleased to cross ney (only 11,000 miles,) on foot ! Yes, along with him, and accompany him to gentle readers, on foot ! and the worthy Tobolsk the capital of Siberia. Reviewer, in the simplicity of his heart, In order more easily to follow him announces it to the world, and is be- in his route from thence, we request lieved by all but the readers of our the reader to sit down with a map of journal, who, as we formerly announ- Asia before him, (Arrowsmith's, pubced, are, fortunately for themselves, lished in 1818, for instance,) and the somewhere under 9-10ths of the read- Magazine in his left hand. ing population of these realms. This Instead of keeping the high road to threw such an air of doubt and ridi- Irkutzk, along the Irtysh as far as cule over the whole matter, that we Tara, Captain C. struck off soon after really began to think the Quarterly leaving Tobolsk, and making the string had condescended to be facetious with of the bow, reached (msk, where he his readers, or in plain terms, was trot- again fell in with the river. From ting them. However, we should not thence he ascended the line of the Irhave thought more of it, but that we tysh for 2000 versts, passing to the were personally and intimately ac- westward of lake Tchany; and skirtquainted with Captain Cochrane, ad- ing the famous country of Gog and mired his spirit of enterprize, and wish- Magog, arrived at Narym, a little viled to rescue his character from a charge lage and rivulet forming at this point of Quixotism ; we therefore resolved the line of demarkation between the to make proper inquiry, availing our- empires of Russia and China. Captain selves of that extreme facility we en- C. describes the country around Najoy through the popularity of our rym as being of the most romantic journal, for acquiring information on beauty, and equal, in his opinion, to every subject of interest, foreign or Switzerland. He particularly mentions domestic. Indeed, our readers must the situation of the Fortress Bouchtarhave perceived of late, that, like the minskoi, as of uncommon grandeur. Quarterly Review, and the Steward in Here he embarked, and dropping down the play of the “ Stranger," we the rapid Irtysh to the town of Ubinsk, have our correspondents in the princi- proceeded to view the mines of Izmapal cities of Europe, Asia, Africa, and ova and the wor of Barnahoole, with America,” although, hitherto, on ac- which he was much gratified. At this count of our greater modesty (the place he met with his Excellency the usual accompaniment of true desert,) Governor General Speransky, from we have not chosen like them to say so. whom he experienced the most friend The following may be regarded as a ly reception. Leaving Barnahoole, he short, but authentic account of Cap- rejoined the high road to Irkutzk at tain Cochrane’s proceedings : Tomsk, along which he held till he VOL. X. 5 A |
