Aesthetics

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 takl’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.

Thomas De Quincey, On murder considered as one of the fine arts, Blackwood's Magazine, 1827, p. 202