The Deformed Transformed, another adaptation, suggested by a forgotten novel called The Three Brothers, with reminiscences of Faust, and possibly of Scott’s Black Dwarf, was begun at Pisa in 1821, but not published till January, 1824.  This fragment owes its interest to the bitter infusion of personal feeling in the first scene, and its occasional charm to the march of some of the lines, especially those describing the Bourbon’s advance on Rome; but the effect of the magical element is killed by previous parallels, while the story is chaotic and absurd.  The Deformed Transformed bears somewhat the same relation to Manfred as Heaven and Earth—­an occasionally graphic dream of the world before the Deluge, written October, 1821, and issued about the same time as Moore’s Loves of the Angels, on a similar theme—­does to Cain.  The last named, begun in July, and finished at Ravenna in September, is the author’s highest contribution to the metaphysical poetry of the century.  In Cain Byron grapples with the perplexities of a belief which he never either accepted or rejected, and with the yet deeper problems of life and death, of good and ill.  In dealing with these his position is not that of one justifying the ways of God to man—­though he somewhat disingenuously appeals to Milton in his defence—­nor that of the definite antagonism of Queen Mab.  The distinction in this respect between Byron and Shelley cannot be over-emphasized.  The latter had a firm faith other than that commonly called Christian.  The former was, in the proper sense of the word, a sceptic, beset with doubts, and seeking for a solution which he never found, shifting in his expression of them with every change of a fickle and inconsistent temperament.  The atmosphere of Cain is almost wholly negative; for under the guise of a drama, which is mainly a dialogue between two halves of his mind, the author appears to sweep aside with something approaching to disdain the answers of a blindly accepted tradition, or of a superficial optimism, e.g.—­

  CAIN.  Then my father’s God did well
        When he prohibited the fatal tree.

  LUCIFER.  But had done better in not planting it.

Again, a kid, after suffering agonies from the sting of a reptile, is restored by antidotes—­

        Behold, my son! said Adam, how from evil
        Springs good!

  LUCIFER.  What didst thou answer?

  CAIN.  Nothing; for
        He is my father; but I thought, that ’twere
        A better portion for the animal
        Never to have been stung at all.