ill not show himself stanch in his adherence to
great principles. Lord Byron had enough of systems, and was disgusted
with their absurdity, their proud dogmatical views, and their intolerant
spirit. Whenever the great questions of life and the dictates of the
soul occupy his thoughts, either in the silence of the night or in the
absence of passion, we shall see him set himself resolutely to the
examination of his own conscience, for the purpose of arriving at truth
and justice. The answers which his powerful reasoning suggested to him
served to determine and confirm his faith in God.

On leaving Geneva, Lord Byron proceeded to Milan. "One day," says Mr.
Stendhall, who knew Lord Byron at Milan, in 1817, and saw a great deal
of him there, "some people alluded to a couplet from the 'Aminta' of
Tasso, in which the poet appears to take credit to himself for being an
unbeliever, and expresses it in the lines which may thus be
translated:--

'Listen, oh my son, to the thunder as it rolls.
But what is it to us what Jupiter does up there?
Let us rejoice down here if betroubled above;
Let the common herd of mortals dread his blows:
And let the world go to ruin, I will only think
Of what pleases me; and if I become dust again,
I shall only be what I have already been.'

Lord Byron says that these lines were written under the influence of
spleen. A belief in the existence of a superior Being was a necessity
for the fiery and tender nature of Tasso. He was, besides, far too
Platonic to try to reconcile such contrary opinions. When he wrote those
lines, he probably was in want of a piece of bread and a mistress."

Lord Byron reached Venice, and there his most agreeable hours and days
were spent with Padre Pasquale, in the convent of the Armenian priests.

He also wrote, at this time, the sublimely moral poem entitled
"Manfred," in which he renders justice to the existence of God, to the
free will of man, the abuse of which has resulted in the loss of
"Manfred," and retraces, in splendid lines, all the duties incumbent
upon man, together with the limits which he is not allowed to pass. The
apparition of his lovely and young victim, the uncertainty of her
happiness, which causes Manfred's greatest grief, and finally his
supplication to her that he may know whether she is enjoying eternal
bliss,

... "That I do bear
This punishment for both--that thou wilt be
One of the blessed--...."

the whole bears