All men will recognise you-for the storm Has ceased, and the moon breaks forth in her brightness. [In going stops short, and turns to Sfero. Sfero-I had forgotten-bring the mirror. Sfero. The mirror, sire? Sard. Yes, sir, of polished brass, Brought from the spoils of India-but be speedy. This cuirass fits me well, the baldric better, [Flings away the helmet after trying it again. Passing well in these toys, and now to prove them! The rebels are at length repulsed. The king re-enters wounded, and retires to rest, after a short and very characteristic conversation between Salamenes and Myrrha, in which the two kindred spirits show their mutual understanding of each other, and the loyal warrior, postponing all the selfish domestic feelings which led him to dislike the fair Ionian, exhorts her to use her utmost power to keep her lover from relaxing into luxury. The transient effect which their whispers produce on Sardanapalus is well imagined : Sard. Myrrha! what, at whispers With my stern brother? I shall soon be jealous. Myr. (smiling.) You have cause, sire; for on the earth there breathes not A man more worthy of a woman's love A soldier's trust—a subject's reverence— A king's esteem-the whole world's admiration! Sard. Praise him, but not so warmly. I must not That throws me into shade; yet you speak truth. Sard. Yes, love! but not from pain. The fourth act opens with Myrrha watching over the slumbers of Sardanapalus. He wakens and tells a horrid dream, which we do not much admire, except that part of it which describes the form of his warlike ancestress Semiramis, with whom, and the rest of his regal predecessors, he had fancied himself at a ghostly banquet: In thy own chair-thy own place in the banquet- Her right hand-her lank bird-like right hand-stood A goblet, bubbling o'er with blood; and, on But turned from it and her. The scene which follows has been, we know not why, called 'useless,' 'unnatural,' and tediously written.' For ourselves, we are not ashamed to own that we have read it with emotion. It is an interview between Sardanapalus and his neglected wife, whom, with her children, he is about to send to a place of safety. Here, too, however, he is represented, with much poetical art and justice of delineation, as, in the midst of his deepest regrets for Zarina, chiefly engrossed with himself and his own sorrows, and inclined, immediately afterwards, to visit on poor Myrrha the painful feelings which his own reproaches of himself have occasioned. In the remainder of the play Lord Byron pretty closely follows Diodorus Siculus. Salamenes is killed. The rebels receive fresh strength from the junction of the satrap of Susa. A part of the city wall is thrown down by an inundation of the river. Sardanapalus causes a funeral pile to be built; then sends off his remaining soldiers loaded with the treasures of his ancestors, and with orders, when they are safe, to give the signal with a trumpet. At that signal he ascends the pile. His faithful Myrrha applies the torch, and the curtain falls as she springs forward to throw herself into the flames. The whole of this last scene is so exquisitely described, and the passion which pervades it is, with admirable skill, made so prominent, that the tragical catastrophe is stripped of all its horror. Myrrha enters with a lighted torch and a cup of wine : I've lit the lamp which lights us to the stars. To make libations amongst men. I've not [Sardanapalus takes the cup, and after drinking Is for the excellent Beleses. Myr And this libation Why Dwells thy mind rather upon that man's name Is a mere soldier, a mere tool, a kind Of human sword in a friend's hand; the other But I dismiss them from my mind.-Yet pause, My Myrrha dost thou truly follow me, Freely and fearlessly? A Greek girl dare not do, for love, that which An Indian widow braves for custom? Sard. We but await the signal. Myr. In sounding. Sard. Then It is long Now, farewell; one last embrace. Myr. It is that no kind hand will gather The dust of both into one urn. Sard. The better: Rather let them be borne abroad upon The winds of leaven, and scattered into air, Hath piled in her brick mountains, o'er dead kings, Myr. Then farewell, thou earth! Be thou still free and beautiful, and far Aloof from desolation! My last prayer Was for thee! my last thoughts, save one, were of thee! I loved thee well, my own, my father's land, Myr. [He mounts the pile. Now, Myrrha! Art thou ready? [Myrrha fires the pile. 'Tis fired! I come. Sard. As the torch in thy grasp. Myr. [As Myrrha springs forward to throw herself. into the flames, the curtain falls. There are some inconsistencies and anachronisms in this play, which, though of no great consequence in themselves, it is a part of our business to mention. Sardanapalus, in his dying speech, is made to boast that the monument of renown which he should leave behind would be more glorious and more lasting than Egypt Hath piled in her brick mountains, o'er dead kings So much for monuments that have forgotten These lines are in bad taste enough, from the jingle between. kings and kine, down to the absurdity of believing that Sardanapalus at such a moment would be likely to discuss a point of antiquarian curiosity. But they involve also an anachronism, inasmuch as, whatever date be assigned to the erection of the earlier pyramids, there can be no reason for apprehending that, at the fall of Nineveh, and while the kingdom and hierarchy of Egypt subsisted in their full splendour, the destination of those immense fabrics could have been a matter of doubt to any who might inquire concerning them. Herodotus, three hundred years later, may have been misinformed on these points; but, when Sardanapalus lived, the erection of pyramids must, in all probability, have not been still of unfrequent occurrence, and the nature of their contents no subject of mistake or mystery. A similar inaccuracy occurs at p. 33, where (two hundred years before Thespis) the tragic song' is spoken of as the favorite pastime of Greece. Nor could Myrrha, at so early a period of her country's history, have spoken of their national hatred of kings, or of that which was equally the growth of a later age, their contempt for ‘barbarians.' We are not sure, indeed, whether there is not a considerable violation of costume in the sense of degradation with which she seems to regard her situation in the haram, no less than in the resentment of Salamenes, and the remorse of Sardanapalus on the score of his infidelity to Zarina. Little as we know of the domestic habits of Assyria, we have reason to conclude, from the habits of contemporary nations, and from the manners of the East in every age, that polygamy was neither accounted a crime in itself, nor as a measure of which the principal wife was justified in complaining. And even in Greece, in those times when Myrrha's character must have been formed, to be a captive, and subject to the captor's pleasure, was accounted a misfortune indeed, but could hardly be regarded as an infamy. But where is the critic who would object to an inaccuracy which has given occasion to such sentiments and to such poetry' |