al dogmatism, sometimes amounting to effrontery, that is apt to
characterize the negations of a youthful sceptic. In September, 1811,
Byron writes from Newstead:--"I will have nothing to do with your
immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity
of speculating upon another. Christ came to save men, but a good Pagan
will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell. 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. I will bring ten Mussulman, shall shame you all in
good will towards men and prayer to God." On a similar outburst in verse,
the Rev. F. Hodgson comments with a sweet humanity, "The poor dear soul
meant nothing of this." Elsewhere the poet writes, "I have read Watson to
Gibbon. He proves nothing; so I am where I was, verging towards Spinoza;
and yet it is a gloomy creed; and I want a better; but there is something
pagan in me that I cannot shake off. _In short, I deny nothing, but I
doubt everything_." But his early attitude on matters of religion is best
set forth in a letter to Gilford, of 1813, in which he says, "I am no
bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted the
immortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence of a
God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world,
when placed in comparison of the mighty whole of which man is an atom,
that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be
overrated. This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch
school, where I was cudgelled to church for the first ten years of my
life, afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a
disease of the mind, as much as other kinds of hypochondria."

Hodgson was a type of friendly forbearance and loyal attachment, which
had for their return a perfect open-heartedness in his correspondent. To
no one did the poet more freely abuse himself; to no one did he indulge in
more reckless sallies of humour; to no one did he more readily betray his
little conceits. From him Byron sought and received advice, and he owed to
him the prevention of what might have been a most foolish and disastrous
encounter. On the other hand, the clergyman was the recipient of one of
the poet's many single-hearted acts of