88 — To Robert Charles Dallas
Dorant's, January 21, 1808.
Sir, — Whenever leisure and inclination permit me the pleasure of a visit, I shall feel truly gratified in a personal acquaintance with one whose mind has been long known to me in his writings.
You are so far correct in your conjecture, that I am a member of the University of Cambridge, where I shall take my degree of A.M. this term; but were reasoning, eloquence, or virtue, the objects of my search, Granta is not their metropolis, nor is the place of her situation an "El Dorado," far less an Utopia. The intellects of her children are as stagnant as her Cam, and their pursuits limited to the church — not of Christ, but of the nearest benefice.
As to my reading, I believe I may aver, without hyperbole, it has been tolerably extensive in the historical department; so that few nations exist, or have existed, with whose records I am not in some degree acquainted, from Herodotus down to Gibbon. Of the classics, I know about as much as most school-boys after a discipline of thirteen years;
of
the law of the land as much as enables me to keep "within the statute" — to use the poacher's vocabulary. I did study the "Spirit of Laws"
and the Law of Nations; but when I saw the latter violated every month, I gave up my attempts at so useless an accomplishment:— of geography, I have seen more land on maps than I should wish to traverse on foot; — of mathematics, enough to give me the headach without clearing the part affected; — of philosophy, astronomy, and metaphysics, more than I can comprehend; and of common sense so little, that I mean to leave a Byronian prize at each of our "Almæ Matres" for the first discovery, — though I rather fear that of the longitude will precede it.
I once thought myself a philosopher, and talked nonsense with great decorum: I defied pain, and preached up equanimity. For some time this did very well, for no one was in
pain
for me but my friends, and none lost their patience but my hearers. At last, a fall from my horse convinced me bodily suffering was an evil; and the worst of an argument overset my maxims and my temper at the same moment: so I quitted Zeno for Aristippus, and conceive that pleasure constitutes the
Greek (transliterated): to kalon
.
In morality, I prefer Confucius to the Ten Commandments, and Socrates to St. Paul (though the two latter agree in their opinion of marriage). In religion, I favour the Catholic emancipation, but do not acknowledge the Pope; and I have refused to take the sacrament, because I do not think eating bread or drinking wine from the hand of an earthly vicar will make me an inheritor of heaven. I hold virtue, in general, or the virtues severally, to be only in the disposition, each a
feeling
, not a principle. I believe truth the prime attribute of the Deity, and death an eternal sleep, at least of the body. You have here a brief compendium of the sentiments of the
wicked
George, Lord Byron; and, till I get a new suit, you will perceive I am badly cloathed.
I remain yours, etc.,
Byron
.
Footnote 1:
In Byron's "List of historical writers whose works I have perused in different languages" (
Life
, pp. 46, 47), occurs the name of Montesquieu. It is to his
Esprit des Lois
that Byron refers.
