nce over your mind (knowing you as I do, and knowing what
Lady B. _ought_ to have found out, that you are a person the most
tractable to those who live with you that, perhaps, ever existed) I own
I dread and deprecate most earnestly."[78]

[Footnote 78: This passage having been shown by Lord Byron to Mr.
Shelley, the latter wrote, in consequence, a letter to a gentleman with
whom I was then in habits of intimacy, of which the following is an
extract. The zeal and openness with which Shelley always professed his
unbelief render any scruple that might otherwise be felt in giving
publicity to such avowals unnecessary; besides which, the testimony of
so near and clear an observer to the state of Lord Byron's mind upon
religious subjects is of far too much importance to my object to be,
from any over-fastidiousness, suppressed. We have here, too strikingly
exemplified,--and in strong contrast, I must say, to the line taken by
Mr. Hunt in similar circumstances,--the good breeding, gentle temper,
and modesty for which Shelley was so remarkable, and of the latter of
which Dualities in particular the undeserved compliment to myself
affords a strong illustration, as showing how little this true poet had
yet learned to know his own place.

"Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him, in which
Moore speaks with great kindness of me; and of course I cannot but feel
flattered by the approbation of a man, my inferiority to whom I am proud
to acknowledge. Amongst other things, however, Moore, after giving Lord
B, much good advice about public opinion, &c. seems to deprecate my
influence on his mind on the subject of religion, and to attribute the
tone assumed in Cain to my suggestions. Moore cautions him against any
influence on this particular with the most friendly zeal, and it is
plain that his motive springs from a desire of benefiting Lord B.
without degrading me. I think you know Moore. Pray assure him that I
have not the smallest influence over Lord Byron in this particular; if I
had, I certainly should employ it to eradicate from his great mind the
delusions of Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem
perpetually to recur, and to lay in ambush for the hours of sickness and
distress. Cain was _conceived_ many years ago, and begun before I saw
him last year at Ravenna. How happy should I not be to attribute to
myself, however indirectly, any participation in that immortal work!"]

"March 16. 1822.

"