"Salute Gifford and all my friends.
"Yours, &c."
As already, before his acquaintance with Mr. Matthews commenced, Lord
Byron had begun to bewilder himself in the mazes of scepticism, it
would be unjust to impute to this gentleman any further share in the
formation of his noble friend's opinions than what arose from the
natural influence of example and sympathy;--an influence which, as it
was felt perhaps equally on both sides, rendered the contagion of
their doctrines, in a great measure, reciprocal. In addition, too, to
this community of sentiment on such subjects, they were both, in no
ordinary degree, possessed by that dangerous spirit of ridicule, whose
impulses even the pious cannot always restrain, and which draws the
mind on, by a sort of irresistible fascination, to disport itself most
wantonly on the brink of all that is most solemn and awful. It is not
wonderful, therefore, that, in such society, the opinions of the noble
poet should have been, at least, accelerated in that direction to
which their bias already leaned; and though he cannot be said to have
become thus confirmed in these doctrines,--as neither now, nor at any
time of his life, was he a confirmed unbeliever,--he had undoubtedly
learned to feel less uneasy under his scepticism, and even to mingle
somewhat of boast and of levity with his expression of it. At the very
first onset of his correspondence with Mr. Dallas, we find him
proclaiming his sentiments on all such subjects with a flippancy and
confidence far different from the tone in which he had first ventured
on his doubts,--from that fervid sadness, as of a heart loth to part
with its illusions, which breathes through every line of those
prayers, that, but a year before, his pen had traced.
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