SOURCE: "Politics and Religion in Byron's Heaven and Earth" in The Byron Journal, No. 11, 1983, pp. 30-9.

In this essay, Watkins argues that in Heaven and Earth Byron demonstrates how religious beliefs can be manipulated to support authoritarian political views.

Byron's faith in the ability of readers to understand and appreciate his poetry seems to have disappeared completely in his later years. His famous response to the strong moral criticisms of Don Juan reflects his sense of how far the public missed his literary aims: "it may be bawdy—but is it not good English?—it may be profligate—but is it not life, is it not the thing?" Criticism of the history plays, too, derived from ignorance; the plays, he claimed, would be appreciated only when properly "understood." His impatience perhaps reached its peak in his sardonic comment that Cain was subtitled "A Mystery" "in honour of what...