The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 5

As to revealed religion, Christ came to save men; but a good Pagan will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to h.e.l.l; "Argal" (I argue like the gravedigger) why are not all men Christians? or why are any? If mankind may be saved who never heard or dreamt, at Timbuctoo, Otaheite, Terra Incognita, etc., of Galilee and its Prophet, Christianity is of no avail: if they cannot be saved without, why are not all orthodox? It is a little hard to send a man preaching to Judaea, and leave the rest of the world--Negers and what not--_dark_ as their complexions, without a ray of light for so many years to lead them on high; and who will believe that G.o.d will d.a.m.n men for not knowing what they were never taught? I hope I am sincere; I was so at least on a bed of sickness in a far-distant country, when I had neither friend, nor comforter, nor hope, to sustain me. I looked to death as a relief from pain, without a wish for an after-life, but a confidence that the G.o.d who punishes in this existence had left that last asylum for the weary.

[Greek: Hon ho thes agapaei apothnaeskei neos.] [3]

I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other. Talk of Galileeism? Show me the effects--are you better, wiser, kinder by your precepts? I will bring you ten Mussulmans shall shame you in all goodwill towards men, prayer to G.o.d, and duty to their neighbours. And is there a Talapoin, [4] or a Bonze, who is not superior to a fox-hunting curate? But I will say no more on this endless theme; let me live, well if possible, and die without pain. The rest is with G.o.d, who a.s.suredly, had He _come_ or _sent_, would have made Himself manifest to nations, and intelligible to all.

I shall rejoice to see you. My present intention is to accept Scrope Davies's invitation; and then, if you accept mine, we shall meet _here_ and _there_. Did you know poor Matthews? I shall miss him much at Cambridge.

[Footnote 1: The religious discussion arose out of the opening stanzas of 'Childe Harold', Canto II., which Hodgson was helping to correct for the press.

Byron's opinions were not newly formed, as is shown by the following letter to Ensign Long (see 'Letters', vol. i. p. 73, 'note 2' [Footnote 2 of Letter 31]), which reached the Editor too late for insertion in its proper place:

Southwell, Ap: 16th, 1807.

"Your Epistle, my dear Standard Bearer, augurs not much in favour of your new life, particularly the latter part, where you say your happiest Days are over. I most sincerely hope not. The past has certainly in some parts been pleasant, but I trust will be equalled, if not exceeded by the future. You hope it is not so with me.

"To be plain with Regard to myself. Nature stampt me in the Die of Indifference. I consider myself as destined never to be happy, although in some instances fortunate. I am an isolated Being on the Earth, without a Tie to attach me to life, except a few School-fellows, and a 'score of females.' Let me but 'hear my fame on the winds' and the song of the Bards in my Norman house, I ask no more and don't expect so much. Of Religion I know nothing, at least in its 'favour'. We have 'fools' in all sects and Impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one understands, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for Inspiration, and style themselves 'Evangelicals?' However enough on this subject. Your 'piety' will be 'aghast,' and I wish for no proselytes. This much I will venture to affirm, that all the virtues and pious 'Deeds' performed on Earth can never ent.i.tle a man to Everlasting happiness in a future State; nor on the other hand can such a Scene as a Seat of eternal punishment exist, it is incompatible with the benign attributes of a Deity to suppose so.

"I am surrounded here by parsons and methodists, but, as you will see, not infected with the mania. I have lived a 'Deist', what I shall die I know not; however, come what may, 'ridens moriar'.

"Nothing detains me here but the publication, which will not be complete till June. About 20 of the present pieces will be cut out, and a number of new things added. Amongst them a complete Episode of Nisus and Euryalus from Virgil, some Odes from Anacreon, and several original Odes, the whole will cover 170 pages. My last production has been a poem in imitation of Ossian, which I shall not publish, having enough without it. Many of the present poems are enlarged and altered, in short you will behold an 'Old friend with a new face.' Were I to publish all I have written in Rhyme, I should fill a decent Quarto; however, half is quite enough at present. You shall have 'all' when we meet.

"I grow thin daily; since the commencement of my System I have lost 23 lbs. in my weight '(i.e.)' 1 st. and 9 lbs. When I began I weighed 14 st. 6 lbs., and on Tuesday I found myself reduced to 12 st. 11 lb.

What sayest thou, Ned? do you not envy? I shall still proceed till I arrive at 12 st. and then stop, at least if I am not too fat, but shall always live temperately and take much exercise.

"If there is a possibility we shall meet in June. I shall be in Town, before I proceed to Granta, and if the 'mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the mountain.' I don't mean, by comparing you to the mountain, to insinuate anything on the Subject of your Size. Xerxes, it is said, formed Mount Athos into the Shape of a Woman; had he lived now, and taken a peep at Chatham, he would have spared himself the trouble and made it unnecessary by finding a 'Hill'

ready cut to his wishes.

"Adieu, dear Mont Blanc, or rather 'Mont Rouge'; don't, for Heaven's sake, turn Volcanic, at least roll the Lava of your indignation in any other Channel, and not consume Your's ever,

"BYRON.

"_Write Immediately_."

Byron lived to modify these opinions, as is shown by the following pa.s.sages from his 'Detached Thoughts':

"If I were to live over again, I do not know what I would change in my life, unless it were 'for--not to have lived at all'. All history and experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be desired is an easy pa.s.sage out of it. What can it give us but years?

and those have little of good but their ending.

"Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me that there can be little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind; it is in perpetual activity. I used to doubt of it, but reflection has taught me better. It acts also so very independent of body--in dreams, for instance;--incoherently and 'madly', I grant you, but still it is mind, and much more mind than when we are awake. Now that this should not act 'separately', as well as jointly, who can p.r.o.nounce? The stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call the present state 'a soul which drags a carca.s.s,'--a heavy chain, to be sure; but all chains being material may be shaken off. How far our future life will be 'individual', or, rather, how far it will at all resemble our 'present' existence, is another question; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so. Of course I here venture upon the question without recurring to Revelation, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of it as any other. A 'material'

resurrection seems strange, and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all punishment which is to 'revenge' rather than 'correct' must be 'morally wrong'; and 'when the world is at an end', what moral or warning purpose 'can' eternal tortures answer? Human pa.s.sions have probably disfigured the divine doctrines here;--but the whole thing is inscrutable."

"It is useless to tell me 'not' to 'reason', but to 'believe'. You might as well tell a man not to wake, but 'sleep'. And then to 'bully'

with torments, and all that! I cannot help thinking that the 'menace'

of h.e.l.l makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains."

"Man is born 'pa.s.sionate' of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But, G.o.d help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms."]

[Footnote 2: The lines are quoted from Seneca's 'Troades' (act ii. et seqq.):

"Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.

Quaeris, quo jaceas post obitum loco?

Quo non nata jacent."]

[Footnote 3: The sentiment is found in one of the [Greek: monostichoi]

of Menander ('Menandri et Philemonis reliquiae,' edidit Augustus Meineke, p. 48). It is thus quoted by Stobaeus ('Florilegium', cxx. 8) as an iambic:

[Greek: Hon oi theo philousin apothnaeskei neos.]

In the 'Comicorum Graecorum Sententiae, id est' [Greek: gnomai](p. 219, ed, Henricus Stepha.n.u.s, MDLXIX.) it is quoted as a leonine verse:

[Greek: Hon gar philei thes apothnaeskei neos.]

Plautus gives it thus ('Bacchides', iv. 7):

"Quem di diligunt adolescens moritur."]

[Footnote 4: The word is said to be illegible, and the conclusion of the letter to be lost ('Memoir of the Rev. Francis Hodgson', vol. i. p.

196). Only the latter statement is correct. The word is perfectly legible. Talapoin (Yule's 'Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words, sub voce') is the name used by the Portuguese, and after them by the French writers, and by English travellers of the seventeenth century (Hakluyt, ed. 1807, vol. ii. p. 93; and Purchas, ed. 1645, vol. ii. p. 1747), to designate the Buddhist monks of Ceylon and the Indo-Chinese countries. Pallegoix ('Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam', vol. ii. p. 23) says,

"Les Europeens les ont appeles 'talapoins', probablement du nom de l'eventail qu'ils tiennent a la main, lequel s'appelle 'talapat', qui signifie 'feuille de palmier'."

Possibly Byron knew the word through Voltaire ('Dial.' xxii., 'Andre des Couches a Siam');

"'A. des C.': Combien avez-vous de soldats?

'Croutef.': Quatre-vingt mille, fort mediocrement payes.

'A. des C.': Et de talapoins?

'Cr.': Cent vingt-mille, tous faineans et tres riches," etc.]