Anybody who reads the tragedy of ‘Manfred’ with this story in his mind will see that it is true.

The hero is represented as a gloomy misanthrope, dwelling with impenitent remorse on the memory of an incestuous passion which has been the destruction of his sister for this life and the life to come, but which, to the very last gasp, he despairingly refuses to repent of, even while he sees the fiends of darkness rising to take possession of his departing soul.  That Byron knew his own guilt well, and judged himself severely, may be gathered from passages in this poem, which are as powerful as human language can be made; for instance this part of the ‘incantation,’ which Moore says was written at this time:—­

   ’Though thy slumber may be deep,
   Yet thy spirit shall not sleep: 
   There are shades which will not vanish;
   There are thoughts thou canst not banish. 
   By a power to thee unknown,
   Thou canst never be alone: 
   Thou art wrapt as with a shroud;
   Thou art gathered in a cloud;
   And for ever shalt thou dwell
   In the spirit of this spell.

. . . .

   From thy false tears I did distil
   An essence which had strength to kill;
   From thy own heart I then did wring
   The black blood in its blackest spring;
   From thy own smile I snatched the snake,
   For there it coiled as in a brake;
   From thy own lips I drew the charm
   Which gave all these their chiefest harm: 
   In proving every poison known,
   I found the strongest was thine own.

   By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
   By thy unfathomed gulfs of guile,
   By that most seeming virtuous eye,
   By thy shut soul’s hypocrisy,
   By the perfection of thine art
   Which passed for human thine own heart,
   By thy delight in other’s pain,
   And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
   I call upon thee, and compel
   Thyself to be thy proper hell!’

Again:  he represents Manfred as saying to the old abbot, who seeks to bring him to repentance,—­

   ’Old man, there is no power in holy men,
   Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form
   Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,
   Nor agony, nor greater than all these,
   The innate tortures of that deep despair,
   Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
   But, all in all sufficient to itself,
   Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise
   From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense
   Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
   Upon itself:  there is no future pang
   Can deal that justice on the self-condemned
   He deals on his own soul.’

And when the abbot tells him,

      ’All this is well;
   For this will pass away, and be succeeded
   By an auspicious hope, which shall look up
   With calm assurance to that blessed place
   Which all who seek may win, whatever be
   Their earthly errors,’