1811.]

A SICK HOUSEHOLD.

31

neighbours, for I neither ride or shoot or move over my Garden walls, but I fence and box and swim and run a good deal to keep me in exercise and get me to sleep. Poor Murray is ill again, and one of my Greek servants is ill too, and my valet has got a pestilent cough, so that we are in a peck of troubles; my family Surgeon sent an Emetic this morning for one of them, I did not very well know which, but I swore Somebody should take it, so after a deal of discussion the Greek swallowed it with tears in his eyes, and by the blessing of it, and the Virgin whom he invoked to assist it and him, I suppose he'll be well tomorrow, if not, another shall have the next. So your Spouse likes children, that is lucky as he will have to bring them up; for my part (since I lost my Newfoundland dog,) I like nobody except his successor a Dutch Mastiff and three land Tortoises brought with me from Greece.

I thank you for your letters and am always glad to hear from you, but if you won't come here before Xmas, I very much fear we shall not meet here at all, for I shall be off somewhere or other very soon out of this land of Paper credit (or rather no credit at all, for every body seems on the high road to Bankruptcy), and if I quit it again I shall not be back in a hurry.

However, I shall endeavour to see you somewhere, and make my bow with decorum before I return to the Ottomans, I believe I shall turn Mussulman in the end.

You ask after my health; I am in tolerable leanness, which I promote by exercise and abstinence. I don't know that I have acquired any thing by my travels but a smattering of two languages and a habit of chewing Tobacco.1

Yours ever,
B.

1. To appease the pangs

of hunger, and keep down his fat, Byron

182.-To Francis Hodgson.

Newstead Abbey, Sept. 9, 1811.

DEAR HODGSON,-I have been good deal in your company lately, for I have been reading Juvenal and Lady Jane, etc., for the first time since my return. The Tenth Sat has always been my favourite, as I suppose indeed of everybody's. It is the finest recipe for making one miserable with his life, and content to walk out of it, in any language. I should think it might be redde with great effect to a man dying without much pain, in preference to all the stuff that ever was said or sung in churches. But you are a deacon, and I say no more. Ah! you will marry and become lethargic, like poor Hal of Harrow,' who yawns at 10 o' nights, and orders caudle annually.

I wrote an answer to yours fully some days ago, and, being quite alone and able to frank, you must excuse this subsequent epistle, which will cost nothing but the trouble of deciphering. I am expectant of agents to accompany me to Rochdale, a journey not to be anticipated with pleasure; though I feel very restless where I am, and shall probably ship off for Greece again; what nonsense it is to talk of Soul, when a cloud makes it melancholy and wine makes it mad.

Collet of Staines, your "most kind host," has lost that girl you saw of his. She grew to five feet eleven, and might have been God knows how high if it had pleased

was in the habit of chewing gum-mastic and tobacco. For the same reason, at a later date, he took opium. The mistake which he makes in his letter to Hodgson (December 8, 1811), "I do nothing but eschew "tobacco," is repeated in Don Juan (Canto XII. stanza xliii.)—

"In fact, there's nothing makes me so much grieve,
As that abominable tittle-tattle,

Which is the cud eschewed by human cattle."

1. See Letters, vol. i. p. 195, note 1.

2. For Henry Drury, see Letters, vol. i. p. 41, note 2.

1811.]

WOMAN IN HER PROPER SPHERE.

33

Him to renew the race of Anak; but she fell by a ptisick, a fresh proof of the folly of begetting children. You knew Matthews. Was he not an intellectual giant ? I knew few better or more intimately, and none who deserved more admiration in point of ability.

1

Scrope Davies has been here on his way to Harrowgate; I am his guest in October at King's, where we will "drink deep ere we depart." "Won't you, won't you, "won't you, won't you come, Mr. Mug?" We did not amalgamate properly at Harrow; it was somehow rainy, and then a wife makes such a damp; but in a seat of celibacy I will have revenge. Don't you hate helping first, and losing the wings of chicken? And then, conversation is always flabby. Oh! in the East women are in their proper sphere, and one has no conversation at all. My house here is a delightful matrimonial mansion. When I wed, my spouse and I will be so happy!-one in each wing.

2

I presume you are in motion from your Herefordshire station, and Drury must be gone back to Gerund Grinding. I have not been at Cambridge since I took my M.A. degree in 1808. Eheu fugaces! I look forward to meeting you and Scrope there with the feelings. of other times. Capt. Hobhouse is at Enniscorthy in Juverna. I wish he was in England.

Yours ever,

B.

1. Byron may possibly allude to "Matthew Mug," a character in Foote's Mayor of Garratt, said to be intended for the Duke of Newcastle. In act ii. sc. 2 of the comedy occurs this passage

"Heel-Tap. Now, neighbours, have a good caution that this "Master Mug does not cajole you; he is a damn'd palavering fellow." But there is no passage in the play which exactly corresponds with Byron's quotation.

2. Hodgson was staying with his uncle, the Rev. Richard Coke, of Lower Moor, Herefordshire.

D

183.-To R. C. Dallas,

Newstead Abbey, Sept. 10, 1811.

DEAR SIR, I rather think in one of the opening stanzas of Childe Harold there is this line

'Tis said at times the sullen tear would start.

Now, a line or two after, I have a repetition of the epithet "sullen reverie;" so (if it be so) let us have "speechless "reverie," or "silent reverie;" but, at all events, do away the recurrence.

Yours ever,

B.

184.-To Francis Hodgson.

Newstead Abbey, September 13, 1811.

MY DEAR HODGSON,-I thank you for your song, or, rather, your two songs,-your new song on love, and your old song on religion. I admire the first sincerely, and in turn call upon you to admire the following on Anacreon Moore's new operatic farce,2 or farcical opera -call it which you will :

Good plays are scarce,

So Moore writes Farce;

Is Fame like his so brittle?

We knew before

That "Little's" Moore,

But now 'tis Moore that's Little.

1. The lines in which Hodgson answered Byron's letter on his religious opinions are quoted in the Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson, vol. i. pp. 199, 200.

2. Moore's M.P., or The Bluestocking, was played at the Lyceum, September 9, 1811, but was soon withdrawn.

1811.]

VIEWS ON CHRISTIANITY.

35

I won't dispute with you on the Arcana of your new calling; they are Bagatelles like the King of Poland's rosary. One remark, and I have done; the basis of your religion is injustice; the Son of God, the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the Guilty. This proves His heroism; but no more does away man's guilt than a schoolboy's volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate the dunce from negligence, or preserve him from the Rod. You degrade the Creator, in the first place, by making Him a begetter of children; and in the next you convert Him into a Tyrant over an immaculate and injured Being, who is sent into existence to suffer death for the benefit of some millions of Scoundrels, who, after all, seem as likely to be damned as ever. As to miracles, I agree with Hume that it is more probable men should lie or be deceived, than that things out of the course of Nature should so happen. Mahomet wrought miracles, Brothers the prophet had proselytes, and so would Breslaw the conjuror, had he lived in the time of Tiberius.

Besides I trust that God is not a Jew, but the God of all Mankind; and as you allow that a virtuous Gentile may be saved, you do away the necessity of being a Jew or a Christian.

I do not believe in any revealed religion, because no religion is revealed: and if it pleases the Church to damn

1. Richard Brothers (1757-1824) believed that, in 1795, he was to be revealed as Prince of the Hebrews and ruler of the world. In that year he was arrested, and confined first as a criminal lunatic, afterwards in a private asylum, where he remained till 1806. A portrait of "Richard Brothers, Prince of the Hebrews," was engraved, April, 1795, by William Sharp, with the following inscription: "Fully believing this to be the Man whom God has "appointed, I engrave this likeness. William Sharp."

2. See Breslaw's Last Legacy; or, the Magical Companion. Including the various exhibitions of those wonderful Artists, Breslaw, Sieur Comus, Jonas, etc. (1784).