Memoir of Francis Hodgson
Lord Byron to Francis Hodgson, 3 September 1811
Newstead Abbey: September 3, 1811.
My dear Hodgson,—I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we
are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon
another. If men are to live, why die at all? and if they die, why disturb the
sweet and sound sleep that ‘knows no waking’? ‘Post
mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors
nihil’—‘quæris quo jaceas post
obitum loco?’ ‘Quo non nata
jacent.’ . . . As to revealed religion, Christ came to save
men; but a ![]()
| BYRON ON REVEALED RELIGION. | 195 |
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good Pagan will
go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell; ‘Argal’ (I argue like the
gravedigger1) 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, &c., 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—niggers 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 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
God who punishes in this existence had left that last asylum for the weary.
όν ό Θεός
άγαπάει
άποθνήσκει
νέος.2
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I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician,
Manichean, Spinozist, 1 In Hamlet.
2 He whom God loves dies young. |
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| 196 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. | |
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Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastian, than one of the
seventy-two villanous 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 ten
Mussulmen shall shame you all in good will towards men, prayer to God, and duty
to their neighbours. And is there a ———,1 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 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.
Scrope Berdmore Davies (1782-1852)
Byron met his bosom friend while at Cambridge. Davies, a professional gambler, lent Byron
funds to pay for his travels in Greece and Byron acted as second in Davies' duels.
Francis Hodgson (1781-1852)
Provost of Eton College, translator of Juvenal (1807) and close friend of Byron. He wrote
for the
Monthly and
Critical Reviews, and was
author of (among other volumes of poetry)
Childe Harold's Monitor; or
Lines occasioned by the last Canto of Childe Harold (1818).
Charles Skinner Matthews (1785-1811)
The libertine friend of Byron and Hobhouse at Trinity College, Cambridge; he was drowned
in the Cam.
