Among the mental enjoyments which endeared Ravenna to Lord Byron, the composition of Sardanapalus may be reckoned the chief.  It seems to have been conceived in a happier mood than any of all his other works; for, even while it inculcates the dangers of voluptuous indulgence, it breathes the very essence of benevolence and philosophy.  Pleasure takes so much of the character of virtue in it, that but for the moral taught by the consequences, enjoyment might be mistaken for duty.  I have never been able to satisfy myself in what the resemblance consists, but from the first reading it has always appeared to me that there was some elegant similarity between the characters of Sardanapalus and Hamlet, and my inclination has sometimes led me to imagine that the former was the nobler conception of the two.

The Assyrian monarch, like the Prince of Denmark, is highly endowed, capable of the greatest undertakings; he is yet softened by a philosophic indolence of nature that makes him undervalue the enterprises of ambition, and all those objects in the attainment of which so much of glory is supposed to consist.  They are both alike incapable of rousing themselves from the fond reveries of moral theory, even when the strongest motives are presented to them.  Hamlet hesitates to act, though his father’s spirit hath come from death to incite him; and Sardanapalus derides the achievements that had raised his ancestors to an equality with the gods.

Thou wouldst have me go
Forth as a conqueror.—­By all the stars
Which the Chaldeans read! the restless slaves
Deserve that I should curse them with their wishes
And lead them forth to glory.

Again: 

The ungrateful and ungracious slaves! they murmur
Because I have not shed their blood, nor led them
To dry into the deserts’ dust by myriads,
Or whiten with their bones the banks of Ganges,
Nor decimated them with savage laws,
Nor sweated them to build up pyramids
Or Babylonian walls.

The nothingness of kingly greatness and national pride were never before so finely contemned as by the voluptuous Assyrian, and were the scorn not mitigated by the skilful intermixture of mercifulness and philanthropy, the character would not be endurable.  But when the same voice which pronounced contempt on the toils of honour says,

Enough
For me if I can make my subjects feel
The weight of human misery less,

it is impossible to repress the liking which the humane spirit of that thought is calculated to inspire.  Nor is there any want of dignity in Sardanapalus, even when lolling softest in his luxury.

Must I consume my life—­this little life—­
In guarding against all may make it less! 
It is not worth so much—­It were to die
Before my hour to live in dread of death. . . . 
Till now no drop of an Assyrian vein
Hath flow’d for me, nor hath the smallest coin
Of Nineveh’s vast treasure e’er been lavish’d
On objects which could cost her sons a tear. 
If then they hate me ’tis because I hate not,
If they rebel ’tis because I oppress not.