deas which could be
discussed, and which required to pass through the ordeal of long
reflection and practice, before being fully adopted by him. But
religious ideas were not of this number; on the contrary, they held the
first place in the order of those to be accepted and raised into
principles by every man of honor and good sense. For, whatever may have
been his fluctuations with regard to certain points of religious
doctrine, sects and modes of worship, it is certain that in great
fundamental matters his mind never seriously doubted, and thus escaped
the influence of friends less sensible,--of Matthews in his early youth,
and of Shelley at a later period.[67] That touching Prayer to the
Divinity, written in boyhood, and which is so full of hope and faith in
the soul's immortality, and in the existence of a personal God, he might
have signed again when he came to act instead of writing, as also on his
death-bed.[68]

Between the commencement of his career at eighteen and its close at the
age of thirty-six, it is easy to see, by his language, correspondence,
and works, that his mind had passed successively through different
phases before arriving at the last result. The religious idea is more or
less clear. Nevertheless, one perceives a golden ray ever present,
connecting the different periods of his life, keeping up heat and light
in his soul, and giving unity to his whole career. Hope, desire, and I
may almost say, a sort of latent faith, always influenced him until they
merged into the conviction whose light never more abandoned him.

At fifteen years of age, while at Harrow, he fought with Lord Calthorpe
for calling him an _atheist_; at eighteen, he wrote his beautiful
profession of faith in the Prayer to the Divinity, and in the touching
"Adieu," which he wrote when he thought he would soon die. At nineteen,
giving the list in his memoranda of books already read (a list hardly
credible), he says: "With regard to books on religion, I have read
Blair, Porteous, Tillotson, Hooker,--all very tiresome. I detest books
about religion, but I adore and love my God, apart from the blasphemous
notions of sectarians, and without believing in their absurd and
damnable heresies, mysteries, etc." At twenty-one, when he had passed
through the double influence exercised by Pagan classical literature and
German philosophies, and was in a transition state, he wrote "Childe
Harold;" but the skeptical tendencies to be found in one st