, nor from what he allowed to escape his lips, that I could have
drawn this conclusion; for, in conversing with me on politics or
religion, and passing capriciously over this latter subject, sometimes
laughing and making strings of jests, he would say, for instance, '_the
more I think the more I doubt--I am a thorough skeptic_;' but I find
these words contradicted in _all his actions, and in all his sentiments
seriously expressed from childhood to death_. And I opine that although
occasionally he may have appeared changeable, still he always came back
to certain fixed ideas in his mind; that he always entertained a
constant attachment to liberty according to his notions of liberty; and
that, although not orthodox in religion, he _firmly believed_ in the
existence of a God. It is then equally false to represent him as an
atheist or as an orthodox Christian. Lord Byron was, as he often told
me, _a thorough deist_."[65]

It would be easy to prove in a thousand ways that, despite the danger of
inconstancy resulting from his great sensibility, imagination, and
intellect, no one, more than Lord Byron, steadily and firmly adhered
_through life_ in his actions to the principles which _constitute the
man of honor_. Chances, caprices, inequalities of temper, which are to
sensitive natures what bubbles are on a lake, all disappeared when these
great principles required to be acted upon; and the effects even of his
well-nigh inexhaustible benevolence were checked, if he had to struggle
against his principles. We find in his memoranda, 1813:--"I like George
Byron" (his cousin, the present lord); "I like him much more than one
generally does one's heirs. He is a fine fellow. I would do any thing to
see him advance in his career as a sailor; _any thing except
apostatize_!" (Lord Byron was a _Whig_, and his cousin a _Tory_.)

As it is impossible to quote every thing, I will only say that his
passion for firmness and constancy in the principles of honor, went so
far as to inspire him with repugnance for those characters lacking the
firmness and oneness of action which he considered it a sacred duty to
practice. It is even to this sentiment that must be attributed certain
antipathies which he expressed, sometimes by words and sometimes by
silence, and which have been laid to totally different, and quite
impossible motives. For instance, his silence concerning Chateaubriand,
expressive of his little sympathy for the individual (a silence