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All men will recognise you-for the storm

Has ceased, and the moon breaks forth in her brightness.
Sard. I go forth to be recognised, and thus
Shall be so sooner. Now-my spear! I'm armed.

[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,
And the helm not at all. Methinks I seem

[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
Hear those sweet lips grow eloquent in aught

That throws me into shade; yet you speak truth.
Myr. And now retire, to have your wound looked to.
Pray, lean on me.

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-
I sought thy sweet face in the circle-but
Instead a grey-haired, withered, bloody-eyed,
And bloody-handed, ghastly, ghostly thing,
Female in garb, and crowned upon the brow,
Furrowed with years, yet sneering with the passion
Of vengeance, leering too with that of lust,
Sate-my veins curdled.

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Her right hand-her lank bird-like right hand-stood

A goblet, bubbling o'er with blood; and, on
Her left, another, filled with-what I saw not,

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 :

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I've lit the lamp which lights us to the stars.

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To make libations amongst men. I've not
Forgot the custom; and, although alone,
Will drain one draught in memory of many
A joyous banquet past.

[Sardanapalus takes the cup, and after drinking
and tinkling the reversed cup, as a drop falls,
exclaims-

Is for the excellent Beleses.

Myr

And this libation

Why

Dwells thy mind rather upon that man's name
Than on his mate's in villainy?

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Is a mere soldier, a mere tool, a kind

Of human sword in a friend's hand; the other
Is master-mover of his warlike puppet:

But I dismiss them from my mind.-Yet pause,

My Myrrha dost thou truly follow me,

Freely and fearlessly?

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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. Embrace, but not the last; there is one more.
Sard. True, the commingling fire will mix our ashes.
Myr. And pure as is my love to thee shall they,
Purged from the dross of earth, and earthly passion,
Mix pale with thine. A single thought yet irks me,
Sard. Say it.

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,
Than be polluted more by human hands
Of slaves and traitors; in this blazing palace,
And its enormous walls of reeking ruin,
We leave a nobler monument than Egypt

Hath piled in her brick mountains, o'er dead kings,
Or kine, for none know whether those proud piles
Be for their monarch, or their ox-god Apis:
So much for monuments that have forgotten
Their very record!

Myr.

Then farewell, thou earth!
And loveliest spot of earth! farewell Ionia!

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!
Surd. And that?

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I loved thee well, my own, my father's land,
And better as my country than my kingdom.
I satiated thee with peace and joys; and this
Is my reward! and now I owe thee nothing,
Not even a grave.

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
Or kine, for none know whether those proud piles
Be for their monarch, or their ox-god Apis:

So much for monuments that have forgotten
Their very record!-

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'

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