The Life of Lord Byron by John Galt — Read

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.