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SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.,

THIS MYSTERY OF CAIN

IS INSCRIBED,

BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND

AND FAITHFUL SERVANT,

THE AUTHOR.'

1. [On the 13th December [1821] Sir Walter received a copy of Cain, as yet unpublished, from Murray, who had been instructed to ask whether he had any objection to having the "Mystery" dedicated to him. He replied in these words

"Edinburgh, 4th December, 1821. "MY DEAR SIR, --I accept, with feelings of great obligation, the flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and tremendous drama of 'Cain.'* I may be partial to it, and you will

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["However, the praise often given to Byron has been so exaggerated as to provoke, perhaps, a reaction in which he is unduly disparaged. As various in composition as Shakespeare himself, Lord Byron has embraced,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'every topic of human life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones. the very grand and tremendous drama of Cain,' etc. Byron has done all this,' Scott adds, while managing his pen with the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality."-Poetry of Byron, chosen and arranged by Matthew Arnold, 1881, p. xiii.

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In 'And Lord

Scott does not add anything of the kind. The comparison with Shakespeare was written after Byron's death in May, 1824; the appreciation of Cain in December, 1821 (vide supra); while the allusion to "a man of quality" is to be found in an article contributed to the Quarterly Review in 1816!]

allow I have cause; but I do not know that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose line will be adopted by others out of affectation or envy. But then they must condemn the ' Paradise Lost, if they have a mind to be consistent. The fiend-like reasoning and bold blasphemy of the fiend and of his pupil lead exactly to the point which was to be expected, -the commission of the first murder, and the ruin and despair of the perpetrator.

"I do not see how any one can accuse the author himself of Manicheism. The Devil talks the language of that sect, doubtless; because, not being able to deny the existence of the Good Principle, he endeavours to exalt himself-the Evil Principle-to a seeming equality with the Good; but such arguments, in the mouth of such a being, can only be used to deceive and to betray. Lord Byron might have made this more evident, by placing in the mouth of Adam, or of some good and protecting spirit, the reasons which render the existence of moral evil consistent with the general benevolence of the Deity. The great key to the mystery is, perhaps, the imperfection of our own faculties, which see and feel strongly the partial evils which press upon us, but know too little of the general system of the universe, to be aware how the existence of these is to be reconciled with the benevolence of the great Creator.

To drop these speculations, you have much occasion for some mighty spirit, like Lord Byron, to come down and trouble the waters; for, excepting 'The John Bull,' you seem stagnating strangely in London.

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"Yours, my dear Sir,

"Very truly,

WALTER SCOTT.

"To John Murray, Esq."-Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, by J. G. Lockhart, Esq., 1838, iii. 92, 93.]

* [The first number of John Bull, "For God, the King, and the People," was published Sunday, December 17, 1820. Theodore Hook was the editor, and it is supposed that he owed his appointment to the intervention of Sir Walter Scott. The raison d'être of John Bull was to write up George IV., and to write down Queen Caroline. "The national movement (in favour of the Queen) was arrested; and George IV. had mainly John Bull to thank for that result."—A Sketch, [by J. G. Lockhart], 1852, p. 45.]

PREFACE.

THE following scenes are entitled "A Mystery," in conformity with the ancient title annexed to dramas upon similar subjects, which were styled "Mysteries, or Moralities." The author has by no means taken the same liberties with his subject which were common formerly, as may be seen by any reader curious enough to refer to those very profane productions, whether in English, French, Italian, or Spanish. The author has endeavoured to preserve the language adapted to his characters; and where it is (and this is but rarely) taken from actual Scripture, he has made as little alteration, even of words, as the rhythm would permit. The reader will recollect that the book of Genesis does not state

1. ["Mysteries," or Mystery Plays, were prior to and distinct from "Moralities." Byron seems to have had some acquaintance with the archæology of the drama, but it is not easy to divine the source or extent of his knowledge. He may have received and read the Roxburghe reprint of the Chester Plays, published in 1818; but it is most probable that he had read the pages devoted to mystery plays in Warton's History of Poetry, or that he had met with a version of the Ludus Coventria (reprinted by J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, in 1841), printed in Stevens's continuation of Dugdale's Monasticon, 1722, i. 139–153. There is a sixteenth-century edition of Le Mistère du Viel Testament, which was reprinted by the Baron James de Rothschild, in 1878 (see for "De la Mort d'Abel et de la Malediction_Cayn," pp. 103-113); but it is improbable that it had come under Byron's notice. For a quotation from an Italian Mystery Play, vide post, p. 264; and for Spanish "Mystery Plays," see Teatro Completo de Juan del Encina, "Proemio," Madrid, 1893, and History of Spanish Literature, by George Ticknor, 1888, i. 257. For instances of the profanity of Mystery Plays, see the Towneley Plays ("Mactacio Abel," p. 7), first published by the Surtees Society in 1836, and republished by the Early English Text Society, 1897, E.S. No. lxxi.]

that Eve was tempted by a demon, but by "the Serpent; " and that only because he was "the most subtil of all the beasts of the field." Whatever interpretation the Rabbins and the Fathers may have put upon this, I take the words as I find them, and reply, with Bishop Watson 2 upon similar occasions, when the Fathers were quoted to him as Moderator in the schools of Cambridge, "Behold the Book!"-holding up the Scripture. It is to be recollected, that my present subject has nothing to do with the New Testament, to which no reference can be here made without anachronism.3 With the poems upon similar topics I have not been recently familiar. Since I was twenty I have never read Milton; but I had read him so frequently before, that this may make little difference. Gesner's "Death of Abel" I have never read since I was eight years of age, at Aberdeen.

The

1. [For the contention that "the snake was the snake"-no more (vide post, p. 211), see La Bible enfin Expliquée, etc.; Euvres Complètes de Voltaire, Paris, 1837, vi. 338, note. "La conversation de la femme et du serpent n'est point racontée comme une chose surnaturelle et incroyable, comme un miracle, ou comme une allégorie." See, too, Bayle (Hist. and Crit. Dictionary, 1735, ii. 851, art. "Eve," note A), who quotes Josephus, Paracelsus, and some Rabbins," to the effect that it was an actual serpent which tempted Eve; and compare Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures, by the Rev. Alexander Geddes, LL.D., 1800, p. 42.]

2. [Richard Watson (1737-1816), Bishop of Llandaff, 1782, was appointed Moderator of the Schools in 1762, and Regius Professor of Divinity October 31, 1771. According to his own story (Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson, 1817, p. 39), "I determined to study nothing but my Bible. . I had no prejudice against, no predilection for, the Church of England, but a sincere regard for the Church of Christ, and an insuperable objection to every degree of dogmatical intolerance. I never troubled myself with answering any arguments which the opponents in the Divinity Schools brought against the articles of the Church, but I used on such occasions to say to them, holding the New Testament in my hand, 'En sacrum codicem! Here is the foundation of truth! Why do you follow the streams derived from it by the sophistry, or polluted by the passions, of man?'" It may be conceived that Watson's appeal to "Scripture" was against the sentence of orthodoxy. His authority as "a school Divine" is on a par with that of the author of Cain, or of an earlier theologian who 'quoted Genesis like a very learned clerk " !]

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3. [Byron breaks through his self-imposed canon with regard to the New Testament. There are allusions to the doctrine of the Atonement, act i. sc. 1, lines 163-166: act iii. sc. 1, lines 85-88; to the descent into Hades, act i. sc. 1, lines 541, 542; and to the miraculous walking on the Sea of Galilee, act ii. sc. 1, lines 16-20.]

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general impression of my recollection is delight; but of the contents I remember only that Cain's wife was called Mahala, and Abel's Thirza; in the following pages I have called them "Adah" and "Zillah," the earliest female names which occur in Genesis. They were those of Lamech's wives: those of Cain and Abel are not called by their names. Whether, then, a coincidence of subject may have caused the same in expression, I know nothing, and care as little. [I1am prepared to be accused of Manicheism, or some other hard name ending in ism, which makes a formidable figure and awful sound in the eyes and ears of those who would be as much puzzled to explain the terms so bandied about, as the liberal and pious indulgers in such epithets. Against such I can defend myself, or, if necessary, I can attack in turn. "Claw for claw, as Conan said to Satan and the deevil take the shortest nails" (Waverley).3]

The reader will please to bear in mind (what few choose to recollect), that there is no allusion to a future state in any of the books of Moses, nor indeed in the Old Testament. For a reason for this extraordinary omission he may cons'ilt Warburton's "Divine Legation;'

"4

1. [The words enclosed in brackets are taken from an original draft of the Preface.]

2. [The Manichæans (the disciples of Mani or Manes, third century A.D.) held that there were two co-eternal Creators-a God of Darkness who made the body, and a God of Light who was responsible for the soul-and that it was the aim and function of the good spirit to rescue the soul, the spiritual part of man, from the possession and grasp of the body, which had been created by and was in the possession of the spirit of evil. St. Augustine passed through a stage of Manicheism, and in after-life exposed and refuted the heretical tenets which he had advocated, and with which he was familiar. See, for instance, his account of the Manichæan heresy "de duplici terrâ, de regno lucis et regno tenebrarum" (Opera, 1700, viii. 484, c; vide ibid., i. 693, 717; x. 893, d. etc.).]

3. Conan the Jester, a character in the Irish ballads, was “a kind of Thersites, but brave and daring even to rashness. He had made a vow that he would never take a blow without returning it; and having ... descended to the infernal regions, he received a cuff from the arch-fiend, which he instantly returned, using the expression in the text ('blow for blow')." Sometimes the proverb is worded thus: ***Claw for claw, and the devil take the shortest nails,' as Conan said to the devil."-Waverley Novels, 1829 (notes to chap. xxii. of Waverley), i. 241, note 1; see, too, ibid., p. 229.]

4 [The full title of Warburton's book runs thus: The Divine VOL. V.

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