SOURCE: “The Diabolical Discourse of Byron and Shelley,” in Philological Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 1, Winter, 1991, pp. 47-65.

In the following essay, Brewer asserts that a complimentary interest in Satan as a literary presence inspired a number of the great poetic works of Lord Byron and Percy Shelley.

1

Shelley's praise of Byron's Cain was immediate and enthusiastic. In a 12 January 1822 letter to John Gisborne, he asked: “What think you of Lord Byron now? Space wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God, when he grew weary of vacancy, than I at the late works of this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body.”¹ Elsewhere, Shelley used such terms as “apocalyptic” and “revelation” to describe Byron's mystery play.² Part of Shelley's enthusiasm for Cain could be explained by the fact that Cain treated themes he himself had explored in Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, and...