The
_Quarterly_ began to cool towards the author. Moore wrote to him, that
Cain was "wonderful, terrible, never to be forgotten," but "dreaded and
deprecated" the influence of Shelley. Byron showed the letter to Shelley,
who wrote to a common friend to assure Mr. Moore that he had not the
smallest influence over his lordship in matters of religion, and only
wished he had, as he would "employ it to eradicate from his great mind the
delusions of Christianity, which seem perpetually to recur, and to lie in
ambush for the hours of sickness and distress." Shelley elsewhere writes:
"What think you of Lord B.'s last volume? In my opinion it contains finer
poetry than has appeared in England since _Paradise Lost_. Cain is
apocalyptic; it is a revelation not before communicated to man." In the
same strain, Scott says of the author of the "grand and tremendous drama:"
"He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground." The worst effect of
those attacks appears in the shifts to which Byron resorted to explain
himself,--to be imputed, however, not to cowardice, but to his wavering
habit of mind.
Pages:
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229