Myrrha re-enters, and a beautiful dialogue ensues, in which the king, in perfect conformity with his character, displays his ignorance of hers, even while most enslaved by her beauty; and expresses surprise at her echoing the advice, and enforcing the caution, of that Salamanes who had so lately made her "blush and weep." He at length grows angry. What follows is very beautiful :

Myr. Frown not upon me: you have smiled
Too often on me not to make those frowns

Bitterer to bear than any punishment

Which they may augur.-King, I am your subject!
Master, I am your slave! -Man, I have loved you !-

Loved you, I know not by what fatal weakness,
Although a Greek, and born a foe to monarchs-
A slave, and hating fetters-an Ionian,
And, therefore, when I love a stranger, more
Degraded by that passion than by chains!
Still I have loved you. If that love were strong
Enough to overcome all former nature,
Shall it not claim the privilege to save you?

Sard. Save me, my beauty! Thou art very fair,
And what I seek of thee is love-not safety.
Myr. And without love where dwells security?
Sard. I speak of woman's love.

Myr.
The very first
Of human life must spring from woman's breast;
Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care

Of watching the last hour of him who led them.
Sard. My eloquent Ionian! thou speak'st music,
The very chorus of the tragic song

I've heard thee talk of as the favorite pastime
Of thy far father-land. Nay, weep not-calm thee.
Myr. I weep not.-But, I pray thee, do not speak
About my fathers or their land.

Sard.

Thou speakest of them.

Yet oft

Myr.

True-true: constant thought

Will overflow in words unconsciously;

But, when another speaks of Greece, it wounds me."

She at length persuades him to give up the intended banquet ou the Euphrates, but he remains resolute to have a fête within the walls of his palace; and the act concludes with a very splendid speech of Myrrha, which, by a strange misprint, and to the grievous wounding of the head of poor old Priscian, she is made to utter "solus."

The second act is, we conceive, a failure. The conspirators have a tedious dialogue, which is interrupted by Salamenes with a guard. Salamenes is followed by the king, who reverses all his measures, pardons Arbaces because he will not believe him guilty, and Beleses in order to escape from his long speeches about the national religion. This incident only is well managed. Arbaces is a mere common-place warrior; and Beleses, on whom, we suspect, Lord Byron has bestowed more than usual pains, is a very ordinary and uninteresting villain. Sardanapalus, indeed, and Salamenes, are both made to speak of the wily Chaldean as the master-mover of the plot, as a politician in whose hands Arbaces is but a "warlike puppet ;" and Diodorus Siculus has represented him, in fact, as the first instigator of Arbaces to his treason, and as making use of his priestly character, and his supposed power of foretelling future events, to inflame the ambition, to direct the measures, to sustain the hopes, and to reprove the despondency, of his comrade. But of all this nothing appears in the tragedy. Lord Byron has been so anxious to show his own contempt for the priest, that he has not even allowed him that share of cunning and evil influence which was necessary for the part which he had to fill. Instead of being the original, the restless and unceasing prompter to bold and wicked measures, we find him, on his first appearance, hanging back from the enterprise, and chilling the energy of Arbaces by an enumeration of the real or possible difficulties which might yet impede its execution. Instead of exercising that power over the mind of his comrade which a religious impostor may well possess over better and more magnanimous souls than his own, Beleses is made to pour his predictions into incredulous ears, and Arbaces is as mere an epicurean in his creed as Sardanapalus. When we might have expected to find him gazing with hope and reverence on the star which the Chaldean points out as his natal planet, the Median warrior speaks, in the language of Mezentius, of the sword on which his confidence depends; and, instead of being a tool in the hand of the pontiff, he says almost

every thing which is likely to affront him. Though Beleses is introduced to us as engaged in devotion, and as a fervent worshipper of the sun, he is no where made either to feel or to counterfeit that professional zeal against Sardanapalus which his open contempt of the gods would naturally call for; and no reason appears throughout the play why Arbaces should follow, against his own conscience and opinion, the counsels of a man of whom he speaks with dislike and disgust, and whose pretences to inspiration and sanctity he treats with unmingled ridicule. But we must not lose the thread of the fable. Sardanapalus, though he grants the conspirators their lives, is induced by Salamenes to banish them to their respective satrapies; and by the offence and suspicion which this half-measure inspires, as well as by the insinuations and persuasions of Beleses, Arbaces is confirmed in that treason out of which he had nearly been shamed by the recent mercy of his sovereign.

In the next act Sardanapalus and his courtiers are disturbed at their banquet by the breaking out of the conspiracy. The battle which follows-if we overlook the absurdity which occurs during one part of it, of hostile armies drawn up against each other in a dining-room-is extremely well told; and Sardanapalus displays the precise mixture of effeminacy and courage, levity and talent, which belongs to his character:

"Sard. (arming himself.) Give me the cuirass-so: my
baldric; now

My sword: I had forgot the helm, where is it?
That's well-no, 'tis too heavy: you mistake, too-

It was not this I meant, but that which bears

That too conspicuous from the precious stones

To risk your sacred brow beneath-and, trust me,

This is of better metal, though less rich.

Sard. You deemed! Are you too turned a rebel? Fellow!

Your part is to obey return, and-no

It is too late-I will go forth without it.

Sfero. At least wear this.

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-ny 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 Salameues 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.

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.

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 :