177—To To Francis Hodgson

Newstead Abbey, Sept. 3, 1811.

My Dear Hodgson,—I will have nothing to do with your immortality 1 ; 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." ²³

As to revealed religion, Christ came to save men; but a good Pagan will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell; "Argal" (I argue like the gravedigger) 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, etc., 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—Negers 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.

Greek: Hon ho theòs agapáei apothnáeskei néos.

I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous 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 you ten Mussulmans shall shame you in all goodwill towards men, prayer to God, and duty to their neighbours.

And is there a Talapoin 4 , 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.

Footnote 1:

  The religious discussion arose out of the opening stanzas of Childe Harold, Canto II., which Hodgson was helping to correct for the press.

Byron's opinions were not newly formed, as is shown by the following letter to Ensign Long (see Letters, vol. i. p. 73, note 2

[Footnote 2 of Letter 31]), which reached the Editor too late for insertion in its proper place:

Southwell, Ap: 16th, 1807.

"Your Epistle, my dear Standard Bearer, augurs not much in favour of your new life, particularly the latter part, where you say your happiest Days are over. I most sincerely hope not. The past has certainly in some parts been pleasant, but I trust will be equalled, if not exceeded by the future. You hope it is not so with me.

"To be plain with Regard to myself. Nature stampt me in the Die of Indifference. I consider myself as destined never to be happy, although in some instances fortunate. I am an isolated Being on the Earth, without a Tie to attach me to life, except a few School-fellows, and a score of females. Let me but 'hear my fame on the winds' and the song of the Bards in my Norman house, I ask no more and don't expect so much. Of Religion I know nothing, at least in its favour. We have fools in all sects and Impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one understands, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for Inspiration, and style themselves Evangelicals? However enough on this subject. Your piety will be aghast, and I wish for no proselytes. This much I will venture to affirm, that all the virtues and pious Deeds performed on Earth can never entitle a man to Everlasting happiness in a future State; nor on the other hand can such a Scene as a Seat of eternal punishment exist, it is incompatible with the benign attributes of a Deity to suppose so.

"I am surrounded here by parsons and methodists, but, as you will see, not infected with the mania. I have lived a Deist, what I shall die I know not; however, come what may, ridens moriar.

"Nothing detains me here but the publication, which will not be complete till June. About 20 of the present pieces will be cut out, and a number of new things added. Amongst them a complete Episode of Nisus and Euryalus from Virgil, some Odes from Anacreon, and several original Odes, the whole will cover 170 pages. My last production has been a poem in imitation of Ossian, which I shall not publish, having enough without it. Many of the present poems are enlarged and altered, in short you will behold an 'Old friend with a new face.' Were I to publish all I have written in Rhyme, I should fill a decent Quarto; however, half is quite enough at present. You shall have all when we meet.

"I grow thin daily; since the commencement of my System I have lost 23 lbs. in my weight (i.e.) 1 st. and 9 lbs. When I began I weighed 14 st. 6 lbs., and on Tuesday I found myself reduced to 12 st. 11 lb. What sayest thou, Ned? do you not envy? I shall still proceed till I arrive at 12 st. and then stop, at least if I am not too fat, but shall always live temperately and take much exercise.

"If there is a possibility we shall meet in June. I shall be in Town, before I proceed to Granta, and if the 'mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the mountain.' I don't mean, by comparing you to the mountain, to insinuate anything on the Subject of your Size. Xerxes, it is said, formed Mount Athos into the Shape of a Woman; had he lived now, and taken a peep at Chatham, he would have spared himself the trouble and made it unnecessary by finding a Hill ready cut to his wishes.

"Adieu, dear Mont Blanc, or rather Mont Rouge; don't, for Heaven's sake, turn Volcanic, at least roll the Lava of your indignation in any other Channel, and not consume Your's ever,

Byron.

"Write Immediately."

Byron lived to modify these opinions, as is shown by the following passages from his

Detached Thoughts:

"If I were to live over again, I do not know what I would change in my life, unless it were for—not to have lived at all. All history and experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and evil are pretty equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be desired is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us but years? and those have little of good but their ending.

"Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me that there can be little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind; it is in perpetual activity. I used to doubt of it, but reflection has taught me better. It acts also so very independent of body—in dreams, for instance;—incoherently and madly, I grant you, but still it is mind, and much more mind than when we are awake. Now that this should not act separately, as well as jointly, who can pronounce? The stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call the present state 'a soul which drags a carcass,'—a heavy chain, to be sure; but all chains being material may be shaken off. How far our future life will be individual, or, rather, how far it will at all resemble our present existence, is another question; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so. Of course I here venture upon the question without recurring to Revelation, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of it as any other. A material resurrection seems strange, and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong; and when the world is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer? Human passions have probably disfigured the divine doctrines here;—but the whole thing is inscrutable."

"It is useless to tell me not to reason, but to believe. You might as well tell a man not to wake, but sleep. And then to bully with torments, and all that! I cannot help thinking that the menace of hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains."

"Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But, God help us all! it is at present a sad jar of atoms."

Footnote 2:

  The lines are quoted from Seneca's

Troades

(act ii. et seqq.):

"Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.
........
........
Quæris, quo jaceas post obitum loco?
Quo non nata jacent."

Footnote 3:

  The sentiment is found in one of the

Greek: monóstichoi of Menander (Menandri et Philemonis reliquiæ, edidit Augustus Meineke, p. 48). It is thus quoted by Stobæus (Florilegium, cxx. 8) as an iambic:

Greek: Hon oi theoì philoûsin apothnáeskei néos.

In the Comicorum Græcorum Sententiæ, id est Greek: gnômai

(p. 219, ed, Henricus Stephanus, MDLXIX.) it is quoted as a leonine verse:

Greek: Hon gàr philei theòs apothnáeskei néos.

Plautus gives it thus (Bacchides, iv. 7):

"Quem di diligunt adolescens moritur."

Footnote 4:

 The word is said to be illegible, and the conclusion of the letter to be lost (Memoir of the Rev. Francis Hodgson, vol. i. p. 196). Only the latter statement is correct. The word is perfectly legible. Talapoin (Yule's Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words, sub voce) is the name used by the Portuguese, and after them by the French writers, and by English travellers of the seventeenth century (Hakluyt, ed. 1807, vol. ii. p. 93; and Purchas, ed. 1645, vol. ii. p. 1747), to designate the Buddhist monks of Ceylon and the Indo-Chinese countries. Pallegoix (Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam, vol. ii. p. 23) says, "Les Européens les ont appelés talapoins, probablement du nom de l'éventail qu'ils tiennent à la main, lequel s'appelle talapat, qui signifie feuille de palmier."

Possibly Byron knew the word through Voltaire (Dial. xxii., André des Couches à Siam);

"A. des C.:	Combien avez-vous de soldats?
Croutef.:	Quatre-vingt mille, fort médiocrement payés.
A. des C.:	Et de talapoins?
Cr.:	Cent vingt-mille, tous fainéans et trés riches," etc.