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CHAPTER II

BYRON'S RELIGIOUS VIEWS

(1) Superstitions: Fortune, Fate, Luck, Nemesis,

Omens

NOBODY hates bustle as much as I do; but there seems a fatality over every scene of my drama, always a row of some sort or other. No matter-Fortune is my best friend; and as I acknowledge my obligations to her, I hope she will treat me better than she treated the Athenian, who took some merit to himself on some occasion, but (after that) took no more towns. In fact, she, that exquisite goddess, has hitherto carried me through every thing, and will, I hope, now; since I own it will be all her doing.

(1814, October 7. Letter 503, to Thomas Moore, Vol. III., p. 149.)

As to her [Miss Milbanke's] virtues, etc., etc., you will hear enough of them (for she is a kind of pattern in the north), without my running into a display on the subject. It is well that one of us is of such fame, since there is sad deficit in the morale of that article

upon my part,—all owing to my "bitch of a star," as Captain Tranchemont says of his planet.

(1814, October 14. Letter 505, to Thomas Moore, Vol. III., p. 152.)

I am truly sorry to hear of your father's misfortune cruel at any time, but doubly cruel in advanced life. However, you will, at least, have the satisfaction of doing your part by him, and, depend upon it, it will not be in vain. Fortune, to be sure, is a female, but not such a b** as the rest (always excepting your wife and my sister from such sweeping terms); for she generally has some justice in the long run. I have no spite against her, though between her and Nemesis I have had some sore gauntlets to run-but then I have done my best to deserve no better. But to you, she is a good deal in arrear, and she will come round-mind if she don't: you have the vigour of life, of independence, of talent, spirit, and character all with you. What you can do for yourself, you have done and will do; and surely there are some others in the world who would not be sorry to be of use, if you would allow them to be useful, or at least attempt it.

(1817, January 28. Letter 626, to Thomas Moore, Vol. IV., p. 48.)

For myself, I have a confidence in my Fortune, which will yet bear me through. Ταὐτόματον ἡμῶν κάλλιον Bovλeveral. The reverses, which have occurred, were what I should have expected; and, in considering you and yours merely as the instruments of my more recent adversity, it would be difficult for me to blame

THE DEATH OF PRINCESS CHARLOTTE

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you, did not every thing appear to intimate a deliberate intention of as wilful malice on your part as could well be digested into a system. However, time and Nemesis will do that, which I would not, even were it in my power remote or immediate. You will smile at this piece of prophecy-do so, but recollect it: it is justified by all human experience. No one was ever even the involuntary cause of great evils to others, without a requital: I have paid and am paying for mine--so will you.

(1817, March 5. Letter 633, to Lady Byron, Vol. IV., p. 68.)

The death of the Princess Charlotte has been a shock even here, and must have been an earthquake at home. The death of this poor Girl is melancholy in every respect, dying at twenty or so, in childbed-of a boy too, a present princess and future queen, and just as she began to be happy, and to enjoy herself, and the hopes which she inspired. To be sure Providence is a fine fellow, and does wonders; "the gods take care of Cato." I think, as far as I can recollect, she is the first royal defunct in childbed upon record in our history. I feel sorry in every respect for the loss of a female reign, and a woman hitherto harmless; and all the lost rejoicings, and addresses, and drunkenness, and disbursements, of John Bull on the occasion.

(1817, December 3. Letter 680, to John Murray, Vol. IV., p. 184.)

I heard from Moore lately, and was very sorry to be made aware of his domestic loss. Thus it is

medio de fonte leporum-in the acme of his fame and of his happiness comes a drawback as usual.

(1818, February 20. Letter 687, to John Murray, Vol. IV., p. 202.)

Sir Samuel Romilly has cut his throat for the loss of his wife. It is now nearly three years since he became, in the face of his compact (by a retainer— previous, and, I believe, general), the advocate of the measures and the Approver of the proceedings, which deprived me of mine. I would not exactly, like M' Thwackum, when Philosopher Square bit his own tongue-" saddle him with a Judgement;" but

"This even-handed Justice

Commends the ingredients of our poisoned Chalice

To our own lips.'

This man little thought, when he was lacerating my heart according to law, while he was poisoning my life at its sources, aiding and abetting in the blighting, branding, and exile that was to be the result of his counsels in their indirect effects, that in less than thirty-six moons-in the pride of his triumph as the highest candidate for the representation of the Sister-City of the mightiest of Capitals [i.e. Westminster] in the fullness of his professional careerin the greenness of a healthy old age-in the radiance of fame, and the complacency of self-earned richesthat a domestic affliction would lay him in the earth, with the meanest of malefactors, in a cross-road with the stake in his body, if the verdict of insanity did not redeem his ashes from the sentence of the laws he had lived upon by interpreting or misinterpreting, and

JOHNSON'S "VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES" 75

died in violating. This man had eight children, lately deprived of their mother: could he not live? Perhaps, previous to his annihilation, he felt a portion of what he contributed his legal mite to make me feel; but I have lived-lived to see him a Sexagenary Suicide. It was not in vain that I invoked Nemesis in the midnight of Rome from the awfullest of her ruins.

(1818, November 18. Letter 720, to Lady Byron, Vol. IV., p. 268.)

Read Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes,-all the examples and mode of giving them sublime, as well as the latter part, with the exception of an occasional couplet. I remember an observation of Sharpe's, (the Conversationist, as he was called in London, and a very clever man,) that the first line of this poem was superfluous, and that Pope (the best of poets, I think,) would have begun at once, only changing the punctuation

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Survey mankind from China to Peru."

The former line, "Let observation," etc., is certainly heavy and useless. But 'tis a grand poem -and so true!-true as the 10th of Juvenal himself. The lapse of ages changes all things-time-language -the earth-the bounds of the sea-the stars of the sky, and every thing "about, around, and underneath" man, except man himself, who has always been, and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multi

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