The first murder is familiar to you all. As the inventor of murder, and the
father of the art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius. All the
Cains were men of genius. Tubal Cain invented tubes, I think, or some such
thing. But, whatever were the originality and genius of the artist, every
art was then in its infancy, and the works must be criticised with a
recollection of that fact. Even Tubal's work would probably be little
approved at this day in Sheffield; and therefore of Cain (Cain senior, I
mean,) it is no disparagement to say, that his performance was but so so.
Milton, however, is supposed to have thought differently. By his way of
relating the case, it should seem to have been rather a pet murder with
him, for he retouches it with an apparent anxiety for its picturesque
effect:

Whereat he inly raged; and, as they talk'd,
Smote him into the midriff with a stone
That beat out life: he fell; and, deadly pale,
Groan'd out his soul _with gushing blood effus'd_.
_Par. Lost, B. XI_.

Upon this, Richardson, the painter, who had an eye for effect, remarks as
follows, in his Notes on Paradise Lost, p. 497: "It has been thought,"
says he, "that Cain beat (as the common saying is) the breath out of his
brother's body with a great stone; Milton gives in to this, with the
addition, however, of a large wound." In this place it was a judicious
addition; for the rudeness of the weapon, unless raised and enriched by
a warm, sanguinary coloring, has too much of the naked air of the savage
school; as if the deed were perpetrated by a Polypheme without science,
premeditation, or anything but a mutton bone. However, I am chiefly pleased
with the improvement, as it implies that Milton was an amateur. As to
Shakspeare, there never was a better; as his description of the murdered