Conversations on Religion, with Lord ByronEdinburgh Literary JournalAnonymous Markup and editing by David H. Radcliffe Completed August 2010 EdinLitJour.1830.Kennedy Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities Virginia Tech
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Conversations on Religion, with Lord ByronEdinburgh Literary JournalEdinburgh10 July 183048721-23
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THE EDINBURGH LITERARY JOURNAL; OR WEEKLY REGISTER OF CRITICISM AND BELLES LETTRES.
No. 87SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1830.Price. 6d.
Conversations on Religion,
with Lord Byron and others; held in Cephalonia, a short time previous to his Lordship's
Death. By the late James Kennedy, M. D. One volume,
8vo. London. John Murray. 1830. Pp. 461.
We entertain all possible respect for the precept,
“de mortuis nil nisi bonum;” only we do not think that any
man is entitled to its protection, when, like the late James
Kennedy, he carefully prepares a large work for publication, and then, just in
order to muzzle the critics, and out of sheer malice to them, dies before it is printed. We
think, moreover, that, independent of this circumstance, we have a good plea in law for
treating the Doctor's work as if it were the product of a living author—and we will be
judged by the Dean of Faculty, or by Lord Gillies
himself, that model of a painstaking judge. Husband and wife are one—such a unity in the
moral, as the Siamese youths in the physical, world. Now, putting the case that these
interesting foreigners had perpetrated a burglary, and that one of them died before they could
be ap-prehended,—would it be any sufficient reason why the survivor
should not be arraigned at the Old Bailey, that his umbilically-attached brother had to be
trundled thither in a wheelbarrow alongside of him, like a lump of carrion? Assuredly no.
Mr Justice Best would in all probability tell
him—and tell him truly—that he might esteem himself happy that he had a natural
make-weight to break his neck the sooner. Now this case is entirely in point. A husband and
wife—who have been established to be exactly pari
passu with the Siamese twins—meditate and carry into execution a dirty
and catchpenny publication. The husband dies when the job is just all but completed, and his
better half finishes it off. Shall she not be
arraigned at the bar of public opinion? And shall not the corpus
delicti, and the merits of the dear deceased, who had a finger in the
pie, be thoroughly sifted? The point is clear as the sun at noonday. We move for judgment.
We have called the “Conversations on Religion” a dirty publication; and we do so on the ground
that the same designation has already been most justly awarded to all its noble
compeers—the books of Gamba, Parry, Blaquiere,
Dallas, Beloe, Medwyn, Hunt, and their innumerable anonymous fellow-criminals. They are one and all of
them guilty of prostituting their pens to the gratification of an idle and impertinent
curiosity. They retail, for the gratification of the great and small vulgar, anecdotes, which
the said vulgar have no right to know, and which every person, with the feelings of a
gentleman, would have felt himself bound to conceal. Stray jokes, (bad as they generally are,)
the free ebullitions of the social board, exclamations prompted by sickness, bodily or
mental—all these are foisted in without any connexion among themselves, or any reference
to the general habits andstate of health of the individual, that could make them useful, as
illustrative of Lord Byron's character. If we were to single
out the late Dr Kennedy, or his disconsolate helpmate, and tell all the little details of their domestic
menage, the curtain lectures the gentleman had to undergo, the lady's despair when a candle-end
was wasted, or the Doctor (before his conversion) chanced to visit a pretty patient after her
health was restored—God help us, what a hubbaboo would be raised!
“Calumnies”—“Fiendlike intrusion upon domestic
privacy”—these are sugar-sops to the delicate rebukes we should have to encounter.
And yet we would just be doing to them what they have done to one worth ten times themselves,
and all their generations; and doing it too with much less chance of annoying them, for who the
devil would care to read about them? We hold that every man, high or low, has a right to pass
his private hours free from the espionage of panders to a vulgar curiosity, and a man is not to
be put under the ban of society, and denied this right, because he is one of those gifted
beings whose works can instruct or delight the nations.
We have called the “Conversations on Religion” a catchpenny publication. Had Dr Kennedy lived to complete it, and had he published it under
its present designation, the work would have most eminently deserved this title; for in that
case Lord Byron's conversations would have constituted but a
small portion of his intended book, and his lordship's name would have been hung out on the
title-page, to lead the unwary to purchase. As it is, it stands upon a grade of the catchpenny
scale not much lower. Mrs Kennedy found among her
husband's papers the sketch of a work, with an outline of which we here present our readers.
The work was to consist of four parts: In the first, he was to give a series of conversations,
held with some friends in the island of Cephalonia, on the subject of religion; in the second,
a condensed view of the external and internal evidences of Christianity; in the third, an
account of his conversations with Lord Byron on religious topics; and in
the fourth, an examination of the extent to which real Christian principles appear to pervade
and influence the different ranks of society; of the causes which have hitherto retarded,
and the means which may in future promote, its progress. Now the first question that occurs is,
what has Lord Byron done to be pilloried in this manner between the second
and the fourth head of discourse? Or, supposing that the Doctor was entitled to dissect him
in terrorem, and to take his back-bone, as
some wag proposed of old Morton of Milnwood, to make a
bridge from the one section to the other, would any man of correct feelings take advantage for
this purpose of openings and weaknesses which he had spied out, in the confident intercourse of
private life? Indeed, Kennedy seems himself to had had some misgivings on
the subject; and he admits, in a letter to a friend, printed at the end of the volume now
before us, that he was mainly determined to publish, from the circumstance of reports having
gone abroad respecting his conferences with Lord Byron, in which he did
not cut exactly the figure he wished. Well, at the Doctor's death, his relict found only that
part of the work which related to Lord Byron ready for the press; and this
was exactly the portion best fitted for the market; so published it must be. It contained,
indeed, besides her husband's four conversations with Lord Byron, a great
many small anecdotes, collected from all quarters, which had no reference to the subject of
religion. But even this was not enough; for the lady, in her zeal to complete the charm, has
thrown into her cauldron letters from Lord Byron about shoeing
horses—from Colonel Stanhope about Lancasterian
schools—from Dr Meyer about communications to a
Greek newspaper; and, though last not least, not an account of her own school, for the
education of Greek females, or of its success, but of the compliments paid to her on account of
it. The lady's friends got alarmed. One of them wrote her a letter, (printed the last in her
volume,) praying her in the most soothing terms to desist from her nefarious purpose. She
received it (the late Doctor admired Shakspeare)
“ere yet these shoes were old,” in which, “with most wicked
speed,” she carried the “sheets” to her publisher; but the cry was
still of Mr Moore'ssecond volume—“It comes!” There was no
time to be lost, so out starts her book; and thus we bid it welcome.
Since the book, however, is here, and what is done cannot be undone, we may as
well enquire into its merits. It is no true wisdom that would reject a pearl because of its
being found in an unsavoury local. But, on the present occasion, a short
preliminary disquisition will materially alleviate the difficulties of our task of criticism.
We forget the name of the reverend divine, who, on being petulantly told by some
fanatic of his day, that “God had no need of human learning,” calmly replied, that
“he had still less need of human ignorance.” The class is not yet by any means
extinct to which this monition was applicable; on the contrary, its numbers have, of late
years, materially increased. These persons seem to be of opinion that religion is of no avail,
so long as it is not purified from the smallest admixture of talent. Speak to them of Taylor, Barrow,
Tillotson, they turn up their noses, and refer you
to the edifying lucubrations of “Boston's
Fourfold State,” and the savoury pages of the Tract Society's publications.
They have the text, “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” continually in
their months; forgetful that our divine Saviour only meant to direct our attention to the
lessons which a well regulated mind might draw from the naïve remarks of the least
instructed—from the stammerings of an unperverted, though half-awakened consciousness. We
do not deny that true religion can diffuse its benign influence through the breasts of the most
illiterate. We merely say that all things else—good faith, conviction, and earnest
zeal—being equal, a man of native genius and learning is a preferable guide to a
naturally coarse and uneducated mind—that a Hoadley is likely to prove a more trustworthy instructor than a Whitfield. The time has not long passed when the fear of
misconstruction might have made us hesitate to avow these opinions. In the revival of religious
ardour which characterised the commencement of the present century, a most
undue weight was laid upon the importance of the services rendered by some weak, ignorant, and
enthusiastic men and women. We have seen, with a feeling closely bordering upon contempt, the
sycophantish bearing of some of our worthiest clergymen towards these people. That day has gone
by; the absurdities of the adherents of Campbell and
Erskine have broken the spell—the depositaries
and guardians of our faith have been awakened to resist their false and insidious allies, and
honest men may again speak their mind freely.
Dr Kennedy belongs most decidedly to the objectionable
class. He had received a good education, at first with a view to the bar, and afterwards with a
view to the medical profession, which he finally embraced. There are, however, some natures so
obtuse that no education can free them from the original taint of narrow-minded and childish
opinions, and want of taste. What are we to think of the intellect of a man who deliberately
asserts that the period passed by Lord Byron at Argastoli
was “the happiest and brightest of his life,” because—“during
the whole of that time he was not engaged in writing any poem, nor was he in the practice
of any open vice!” Yet this is the tone of moral reflection which is affected
through the whole book. Dr Kennedy's principles of action were such as
might be expected from the calibre of his intellect. He prefers Scott, Erskine, Gregory, and Bogue, to
those theologians whose eloquence and argumentative power command the reverence of the
loftiest, as they are intelligible to the lowest, grades of mind. He is offended at the levity
of three or four young men, and offers to demonstrate the truth of the Scriptures to them
logically in the course of a few sittings. We approve of that warm conviction which seeks to
propagate itself; but we have no sympathy for the pedant who undertakes to overwhelm giddy boys
by his logic, (at once miscalculating his own power and their vulnerable side,) and dares to
put Christianity to the hazard. Kennedy bargains for twelve hours'
hearing, and loses patience when he is asked to explain the meaning of an expression he has
used. He answers their doubts by telling them that they are not yet advanced enough to
understand his positions. They read their Bibles as he desires, and when they inform him that
they cannot find his peculiar doctrines there, he tells them to pray that they may be enabled
to see them. The natural consequence is, that he disgusts all of them but one; and he follows
up this defeated attempt to act the part of a home missionary—commenced in an overweening
conceit of his own unaided powers—carried on with petulance, dogmatism, and
testiness—and ending very naturally with making some of his auditors worse than
before—by railing at their perverseness in good set terms.
Lord Byron's part in the book is very short. Indeed a much
more appropriate title would have been—“Sermons delivered on four different
occasions to the Right Honourable George Lord Byron, by James
Kennedy, Esq. M.D.” His Lordship takes by far the smallest share of the
conversation, but what he does say is stamped with the impress of that clear and manly sense
which characterises all his authentic writings and conversation. The anecdotes concerning him
have also marks of authenticity, though none of them are strictly new. On his religious
opinions the book throws no additional light. It merely tells us, what we knew before, that he
had not any fixed opinions on the subject. The volume, though edited professedly for a pious
end, exhibits to us the picture of a most zealous Christian failing to convert one who met him
half-way. Those who can look deep enough into men's characters will easily see that the cause
of this lay entirely in the structure of the two characters opposed to each other—and
that the dignity and power of religion is nowise compromised by the result. But how many are
able to see so far? And what must they be who, laying claim to the character of peculiar and
exclusive piety, have, from avarice, vanity, or similar motives, thrown such a
stumbling-block in the way of the timorous believer?
It is, however, but an act of justice to the memory of Dr Kennedy to say, that we believe him to have been animated
in his attempt to convert Byron by honest zeal; and that
highly though we must disapprove of dragging these matters before the public, he has, unlike
the most of the feeders upon the dead man's sayings and doings, done ample justice to the fair
side of his character. One thing is of importance. We have it here from a person who was no
dependent, and scarcely a friend, of Byron—from a man of puritanical
principles, that he was to the last anxious for a reconciliation with his wife, and convinced of its possibility. How much did he
miscalculate that cold and shallow heart, which can insult his memory by the same malignant
innuendoes which tarnished his living fame! which knows so well how to strengthen an
accusation, by hinting at what it dare not speak out, for fear of dissipating the illusion,
but, like the cunning artist, contrives to heighten the effect of the picture by a judicious
admixture of the chiaro 'scuro!
We have spoken our mind freely of no less than two ladies in this article, and we
are prepared for the exclamation—“It is so unmanly!” But artists, authors,
and actors, have no sex.