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1811.]

IMMORTALITY.

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without the absurdity of speculating upon another. If men are to live, why die at all? and if they die, why

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), 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.

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"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 $6 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 entitle a 66 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.

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"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; how66 ever, half is quite enough at present. You shall have all when 66 we meet.

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"I grow thin daily; since the commencement of my System I "have lost 23 lbs. in my weight (i.e.) I st. and 9 lbs. When I

disturb the sweet and sound sleep that "knows no "waking "?" Post Mortem nihil est, ipsaque Mors nihil

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.

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"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.

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

"Write Immediately."

"Your's ever,

"BYRON.

Byron lived to modify these opinions, as is shown by the following passages 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 passage out of it. What can it give us but "years? and those have little of good but their ending."

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"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 pronounce? The stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call "the present state a soul which drags a carcass,'-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 66 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

1811.]

REVEALED RELIGION.

21

"... quæris quo jaceas post obitum loco? Quo non "Nata jacent." 1

As to revealed religion, Christ came to save men; but a good Pagan will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell; "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 Judæa, 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 God will damn 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 fardistant 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 God who punishes in this existence had left that last asylum for the weary.

66 can eternal tortures answer? Human passions have probably "disfigured the divine doctrines here ;-but the whole thing is "inscrutable."

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"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 hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman "humanity make villains."

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"Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But, God help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms."

1. The lines are quoted from Seneca's Troades (act ii. line 397,

et seqq.)—

"Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.

Quæris, quo jaceas post obitum loco?
Quo non nata jacent."

A

Ον ὁ θεὸς ἀγαπάει ἀποθνήσκει νέος.

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 God, and duty to their neighbours. And is there a Talapoin,2 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 God, who assuredly, had

1. The sentiment is found in one of the μovóσTIXO of Menander (Menandri et Philemonis reliquiæ, edidit Augustus Meineke, p. 48). It is thus quoted by Stobæus (Florilegium, cxx. 8) as an iambicΟν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνήσκει νέος.

In the Comicorum Græcorum Sententia, id est yváμai (p. 219, ed. Henricus Stephanus, MDLXIX.) it is quoted as a leonine verse— Ον γὰρ φιλεῖ θεὸς ἀποθνήσκει νέος,

Plautus gives it thus (Bacchides, iv. 7)—

"Quem di diligunt adolescens moritur."

2. 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 Européens les ont appelés talapoins, probablement du nom de l'éventail qu'ils tiennent à la main, lequel s'appelle talapat, “qui signifie feuille de palmier." Possibly Byron knew the word through Voltaire (Dial. xxii., André des Couches à Siam); "A. des C. "Combien avez-vous de soldats? Croutef. Quatre-vingt mille, fort "médiocrement payés. A. des C. Et de talapoins? Cr. Cent vingt"mille, tous fainéans et trés riches," etc.

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1811.]

HINTS FROM HORACE.

133

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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.

178.-To R. C. Dallas.

Newstead Abbey, September 4th, 1811.

MY DEAR SIR,-I am at present anxious, as Cawthorn seems to wish it, to have a small edition of the Hints from Horace1 published immediately: but the Latin

1. Hints from Horace, written during Byron's second stay at Athens, March 11-14, 1811, and subsequently added to, had been placed in the hands of Cawthorn, the publisher of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, for publication. Byron afterwards changed his mind, and the poem remained unpublished till after his death.

The following letter from Cawthorn shows that considerable progress had been made with the printing of the poem, and that Byron also contemplated another edition of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. The advice of his friends led him to abandon both plans; but his letter to Cawthorn, printed below, is evidence that in September he was still at work on Hints from Horace :

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"24, Cockspur Street, Aug. 22a, 1811. "MY LORD,-Mr. Green the Amanuensis has finished the Latin "of the Horace, and I shall be happy to do with it as your Lordship 66 may direct, either to forward it to Newstead, or keep it in Town. "Would it not be better to print a small edition seperate (sic), and "afterwards print the two satires together? This I leave to your "Lordship's consideration. Four Sheets of the Travels are already "printed, and one of the plates (Albanian Solain) is executed. I sent it Capt. H[obhouse] yesterday to Cork, to see if it meets his "approbation. The work is printed in quarto, for which I may be "in some measure indebted to your Lordship, as I urged it so "strongly. I shall be extremely sorry if Capt. H. is not pleased "with it, but I think he will. Your Lordship's goodness will excuse me for saying how much the very sudden and melancholy events "that have lately transpired-I regret-Capt. Hobhouse has written 66 Ime since the decease of Mr. Mathews. I am told Capt. H. is "very much affected at it. I have received some drawings of

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