That the character of Myrrha was also drawn from life, and that the Guiccioli was the model, I have no doubt.  She had, when most enchanted by her passion for Byron—­at the very time when the drama was written—­many sources of regret; and he was too keen an observer, and of too jealous a nature, not to have marked every shade of change in her appearance, and her every moment of melancholy reminiscence; so that, even though she might never have given expression to her sentiments, still such was her situation, that it could not but furnish him with fit suggestions from which to fill up the moral being of the Ionian slave.  Were the character of Myrrha scanned with this reference, while nothing could be discovered to detract from the value of the composition, a great deal would be found to lessen the merit of the poet’s invention.  He had with him the very being in person whom he has depicted in the drama, of dispositions and endowments greatly similar, and in circumstances in which she could not but feel as Myrrha is supposed to have felt—­and it must be admitted, that he has applied the good fortune of that incident to a beautiful purpose.

This, however, is not all that the tragedy possesses of the author.  The character of Zarina is, perhaps, even still more strikingly drawn from life.  There are many touches in the scene with her which he could not have imagined, without thinking of his own domestic disasters.  The first sentiment she utters is truly conceived in the very frame and temper in which Byron must have wished his lady to think of himself, and he could not embody it without feeling that—­

How many a year has pass’d,
Though we are still so young, since we have met
Which I have borne in widowhood of heart.

The following delicate expression has reference to his having left his daughter with her mother, and unfolds more of his secret feelings on the subject than anything he has expressed more ostentatiously elsewhere: 

I wish’d to thank you, that you have not divided
My heart from all that’s left it now to love.

And what Sardanapalus says of his children is not less applicable to
Byron, and is true: 

Deem not
I have not done you justice:  rather make them
Resemble your own line, than their own sire;
I trust them with you—­to you.

And when Zarina says,

They ne’er
Shall know from me aught but what may honour
Their father’s memory,

he puts in her mouth only a sentiment which he knew, if his wife never expressed to him, she profoundly acknowledged in resolution to herself.  The whole of this scene is full of the most penetrating pathos; and did the drama not contain, in every page, indubitable evidence to me, that he has shadowed out in it himself his wife, and his mistress, this little interview would prove a vast deal in confirmation of the opinion so often expressed, that where his genius was most in its element, it was when it dealt with his own sensibilities and circumstances.  It is impossible to read the following speech, without a conviction that it was written at Lady Byron: