s, in vain, to get some light on a subject with regard to
which in his graver moods he was often exercised. On some points he is
explicit. He makes an unequivocal protest against the doctrines of eternal
punishment and infant damnation, saying that if the rest of mankind were
to be damned, he "would rather keep them company than creep into heaven
alone." On questions of inspiration, and the deeper problems of human
life, he is less distinct, being naturally inclined to a speculative
necessitarianism, and disposed to admit original depravity; but he did not
see his way out of the maze through the Atonement, and held that prayer
had only significance as a devotional affection of the heart. Byron showed
a remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures, and with parts of Barrow,
Chillingworth, and Stillingfleet; but on Kennedy's lending for his
edification Boston's _Fourfold State_, he returned it with the remark that
it was too deep for him. On another occasion he said, "Do you know I am
nearly reconciled to St. Paul, for he says there is no difference between
the Jews and the Greeks? and I am exactly of the same opinion, for the
character of both is equally vile." The good Scotchman's religious
self-confidence is throughout free from intellectual pride; and his own
confession, "This time I suspect his lordship had the best of it," might
perhaps be applied to the whole discussion.

Critics who have little history and less war have been accustomed to
attribute Byron's lingering at Cephalonia to indolence and indecision;
they write as if he ought on landing on Greek soil to have put himself at
the head of an army and stormed Constantinople. Those who know more,
confess that the delay was deliberate, and that it was judicious. The
Hellenic uprising was animated by the spirit of a "lion after slumber,"
but it had the heads of a Hydra hissing and tearing at one another. The
chiefs who defended the country by their arms, compromised her by their
arguments, and some of her best fighters were little better than pirates
and bandits. Greece was a prey to factions--republican, monarchic,
aristocratic--representing naval, military, and territorial interests, and
each beset by the adventurers who flock round every movement, only
representing their own. During the first two years of success they were
held in embryo; during the later years of disaster, terminated by the
allies at Navarino, they were buried; during the interlude of Byron's
res