[114] {241}["I have ... supposed Cain to be shown in the _rational_ pre-Adamites, beings endowed with a higher intelligence than man, but totally unlike him in form, and with much greater strength of mind and person. You may suppose the small talk which takes place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not quite canonical."--Letter to Moore, September 19, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 368.] [115] {243}[Compare the "jingle between king and kine," in _Sardanapalus_, act v. sc. I, lines 483, 484. It is hard to say whether Byron inserted and then omitted to erase these blemishes from negligence and indifference, or whether he regarded them as permissible or even felicitous.] [116] ["_Let_ He." There is no doubt that Byron wrote, or that he should have written, "Let Him."] [ch] {246} _And being of all things the sole thing sure_.--[MS. M.] [ci] _Which seems like water and which I should deem_.--[MS. M.] [117] {247}[Lucifer's candour and disinterested advice are "after" and in the manner of Mephistopheles.] [118] {250}["If you say that God permitted sin to manifest His wisdom, which shines the more brightly by the disorders which the wickedness of men produces every day, than it would have done in a state of innocence, it may be answered that this is to compare the Deity to a father who should suffer his children to break their legs on purpose to show to all the city his great art in setting their broken bones; or to a king who should suffer seditions and factions to increase through all his kingdom, that he might purchase the glory of quelling them.... This is that doctrine of a Father of the Church who said, 'Felix culpa quæ talem Redemptorem meruit!'"--Bayle's _Dictionary_, 1737, art. "Paulicians," note B, 25, iv. 515.] [119] {251}[Lucifer does not infect Cain with his cynical theories as to the origin and endurance of love. For the antidote, compare Wordsworth's sonnet "To a Painter" (No. II), written in 1841-- "Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve, And the old day was welcome as the young, As welcome, and as beautiful--in sooth More beautiful, as being a thing more holy," etc. _Works_, 1889, p. 772.] [cj] {252} _Which my sire shrinks from--Death_----.--[MS. erased.] [120] {254}[In Byron's Diary for January 28, 1821, we find the following entry-- "_Thought for a speech of Lucifer, in the Tragedy of Cain_. "Were _Death_ an _evil_, would _I_ let thee _live_? Fool! live as I live--as thy father lives. And thy sons' sons shall live for evermore!" _Letters_, 1901, v. 191.]