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him to seek intercourse with the Prince of the Air, witches, demons, destinies, spirits, and all the tribes of immaterial existences. From them he tries to discover those secrets into which his reason cannot penetrate. He commands them to tell him the mystery of the grave. The only being he ever loved has by his means been destroyed. Is all her beauty gone for ever—annihilated—and with it has her spirit faded into nonentity? or is she lost, miserably lost, and suffering the punishment brought on her by his own sin? We believe, that by carrying in the mind a knowledge of this one horrid event—and along with that, those ideas of Manfred's character, which, by the extracts we have given, better than any words of our own, the reader may be enabled to acquire,—the conduct of the drama, though certainly imperfectly and obscurely managed, may be understood, as well as its chief end and object.
At the opening of the drama, we find Manfred alone, at midnight, in a Gothic gallery of his castle, in possession of a mighty spell, by which he can master the seven spirits of Earth, Ocean, Air, Night, the Mountains, the Winds, and the Star of his nativity. These spirits all appear before him, and tell him their names and employment. The Mountain Spirit thus speaks:
"Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains,
They crowned him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow.
Around his waist are forest braced,
The Avalanche in his hand;
But ere it fall, that thundering ball
Must pause for my command.
The Glacier's cold and restless mass
Moves onward day by day;
But I am he who bids it pass,
Or with its ice delay.
I am the spirit of the place,
Could make the mountain bow
And quiver to its caverned base—
And what with me wouldst Thou?"
The Storm Spirit says, with equal energy,
"I am the Rider of the Wind,
The Stirrer of the Storm;
The hurricane I left behind
Is yet with lightning warm.
To speed to thee o'er shore and sea
I swept upon the blast;
The fleet I met sailed well, and yet
'Twill sink ere night be past."
These may be considered fair specimens of the general character of the language of his supernatural beings, which is, upon the whole, very wild and spirit-like. From these Powers he requests that they will wring out, from the hidden realms, forgetfumess and self-oblivion. This, we find, is beyond their power. He then says,
"I hear
Your voices, sweet and melancholy sounds,
As music on the waters—and I see
The steady aspect of a clear large star,
But nothing more."
The spirit of this star (the star of his nativity) appears in the shape of a beautiful female figure; and Manfred exclaims,
"Oh God! if it be thus, and Thou
Art not a madness and a mockery,
I yet might be most happy I will clasp thee,
And we again will be—[The figure vanishes.]
My heart is crushed.
[Manfred falls senseless."
A voice is then heard singing an incantation and a curse, stanzas which were published in the noble Lord's last volume, and full of a wild and unearthly energy.
In the second scene, Manfred is standing alone on a cliff on the mighty mountain Jungfrau, at sunrise; and this is part of his morning soliloquy.
"Man.My mother Earth!
And thou fresh-breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.
And thou, the bright eye of the universe,
That openest over all, and unto all
Art a delight thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye Crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance ; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest for ever—wherefore do I pause?
I feel the impulse—yet I do not plunge;
I see the peril—yet do not recede;
And my brain reels—and yet my foot is firm.
There is a power upon me which withholds
And makes it my tatality to live;
If it be life to wear within myself
This barrenness of spirit, and to be
My own soul's sepulchre, for I have ceased
To justify my deeds unto myself—
The last infirmity of evil. Ay,
Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister,
[An eagle passes
Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well may'st thou swoop so near me—I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone