first, the cry for vengeance--the feeling of affronted or unsatiated pride,--that runs through so much of the author's writing, and second, the enthusiasm for public ends, which was beginning to possess him. The following lines have been pointed out as embodying some of Byron's spirit of protest against the more selfish "greasy domesticity" of the Georgian era:-- I. BER. Such ties are not For those who are called to the high destinies Which purify corrupted commonwealths: We must forget all feelings save the one, We must resign all passions save our purpose, We must behold no object save our country, And only look on death as beautiful So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven, And draw down freedom on her evermore. CAL. But if we fail--? I. BER. They never fail who die In a great cause: the block may soak their gore; Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs Be strung to city gates and castle walls, But still their spirit walks abroad. --a passage which, after his wont, he spoils by platitudes about the precisian Brutus, who certainly did not give Rome liberty. Byron's other Venetian Drama, the _Two Foscari_, composed at Ravenna, between the 11th of June and the 10th of July, 1821, and published in the following December, is another record of the same failure and the same mortification, due to the same causes. In this play, as Jeffrey points out, the preservation of the unities had a still more disastrous effect. The author's determination to avoid rant did not hinder his frequently adopting an inflated style; while professing to follow the ancient rules, he forgets the warning of Horace so far as to permit the groans of the tortured Foscari to be heard on the stage. The declamations of Marina produce no effect on the action, and the vindictiveness of Loridano, though effectively pointed in the closing words, "He has paid me," is not rendered interesting, either by a well established injury, or by any trace of Iago's subtle genius. In the same volume appeared _Sardanapalus_, written in the previous May, and dedicated to Goethe. In this play, which marks the author's last reversion to the East, we are more arrested by the majesty of the theme-- Thirteen hundred years Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale,