on the same subject a little later, and received
the following reply:--"As for poor Shelley, who also frightens you and
the world, he is, to my knowledge, the least egotistical and kindest of
men. I know no one who has so sacrificed both fortune and sentiments for
the good of others; as for his speculative opinions, we have none in
common, nor do I wish to have any."

All the poems which he wrote at this time, and which admitted of his
introducing the religious element either purposely or accidentally into
them, prove one and all that his mind, as regards religion, was as we
have shown it to be. This is particularly noticeable in his mystery
called "Heaven and Earth;" but the same remark is applicable to others,
such as the "Island," and even to some passages in "Don Juan." "Heaven
and Earth"--a poem which appeared about this time, and which he styled
"A Mystery"--is a biblical poem in which all the thoughts agree with the
Book of Genesis, and "which was inspired," says Galt, "by a mind both
serious and patriarchal, and is an echo of the oracles of Adam and of
Melchisedec." In this work he exhibits as much veneration for scriptural
theology as Milton himself. In the "Island," which he wrote at Genoa,
there are passages which penetrate the soul with so religious a feeling,
that Benjamin Constant, in reading it, and indignant at hearing Byron
called an unbeliever, exclaimed in his work on religion, "I am assured
that there are men who accuse Lord Byron of atheism and impiety. There
is more religion in the twelve lines which I have quoted than in the
past, present, and future writings of all his detractors put together."

Even in "Don Juan," in that admirable satire which, not being rightly
understood, has given rise to so many calumnies, he says, after having
spoken in the fifteenth canto of the moral greatness of various men, and
among others of Socrates:--

"And thou, Diviner still,
Whose lot it is by man to be mistaken,
And thy pure creed made sanction of all ill?
Redeeming worlds to be by bigots shaken,
How was thy toil rewarded?"

At the end of this stanza he wrote the following note:----

"As it is necessary in these times to avoid ambiguity, I say that I mean
by 'Diviner still,' Christ. If ever God was man--or man God--he was
both. I never arraigned his creed, but the use or abuse made of it. Mr.
Canning one day quoted Christianity to sanction negro slavery, and Mr.
Wilberf