[91] {209}[The words enclosed in brackets are taken from an original draft of the Preface.]
[92] [The Manichæans (the disciples of Mani or Manes, third century A.D.) held that there were two co-eternal Creators—a God of Darkness who made the body, and a God of Light who was responsible for the soul—and that it was the aim and function of the good spirit to rescue the soul, the spiritual part of man, from the possession and grasp of the body, which had been created by and was in the possession of the spirit of evil. St. Augustine passed through a stage of Manicheism, and in after-life exposed and refuted the heretical tenets which he had advocated, and with which he was familiar. See, for instance, his account of the Manichæan heresy "de duplici terrâ, de regno lucis et regno tenebrarum" (Opera, 1700, viii. 484, c; vide ibid., i. 693, 717; x. 893, d. etc.).]
[93] [Conan the Jester, a character in the Irish ballads, was "a kind of Thersites, but brave and daring even to rashness. He had made a vow that he would never take a blow without returning it; and having ... descended to the infernal regions, he received a cuff from the arch-fiend, which he instantly returned, using the expression in the text ('blow for blow')." Sometimes the proverb is worded thus: "'Claw for claw, and the devil take the shortest nails,' as Conan said to the devil."—Waverley Novels, 1829 (notes to chap. xxii. of Waverley), i. 241, note 1; see, too, ibid., p. 229.]
[94] [The full title of Warburton's book runs thus: The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist; from the omission of the Doctrine of a Future State of Reward and Punishment in the Jewish Dispensation. (See, more particularly (ed. 1741), Vol. II. pt. ii. bk. v. sect. 5, pp. 449-461, and bk. vi. pp. 569-678.) Compare the following passage from Dieu et les Hommes (Œuvres, etc., de Voltaire, 1837, vi. 236, chap. xx.): "Notre Warburton s'est épuisé a ramasser dans son fatras de la Divine légation, toutes les preuves que l'auteur du Pentateuque, n'a jamais parlé d'une vie a venir, et il n'a pas eu grande peine; mais il en tire une plaisante conclusion, et digne d'un esprit aussi faux que le sien.">[
[95] {210}[See Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles, par M. le Bon G. Cuvier, Paris, 1821, i., "Discours Préliminaire," pp. iv., vii; and for the thesis, "Il n'y a point d'os humaines fossiles," see p. lxiv.; see, too, Cuvier's Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe, ed. 1825, p. 282: "Si l'on peut en juger par les differens ordres d'animaux dont on y trouve les dépouilles, ils avaient peut-être subi jusqu' á deux ou trois irruptions de la mer." It is curious to note that Moore thought that Cuvier's book was "a most desolating one in the conclusions to which it may lead some minds" (Life, p. 554).]
[96] {211}[Alfieri's Abele was included in his Opere inediti, published by the Countess of Albany and the Abbé Calma in 1804.
"In a long Preface ... dated April 25, 1796, Alfieri gives a curious account of the reasons which induced him to call it ... 'Tramelogedy.' He says that Abel is neither a tragedy, a comedy, a drama, a tragi-comedy, nor a Greek tragedy, which last would, he thinks, be correctly described as melo-tragedy. Opera-tragedy would, in his opinion, be a fitting name for it; but he prefers interpolating the word 'melo' into the middle of the word 'tragedy,' so as not to spoil the ending, although by so doing he has cut in two ... the root of the word—τραγος—The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, edited by E. A. Bowring, C. B., 1876, ii. 472.
There is no resemblance whatever between Byron's Cain and Alfieri's Abele.]
[97] {216}[Compare—
" ... his form had not yet lost