as skilfully as a foil.  At the same time he wished if possible, though, as appears, in vain, to get some light on a subject with regard to which in his graver moods he was often exercised.  On some points he is explicit.  He makes an unequivocal protest against the doctrines of eternal punishment and infant damnation, saying that if the rest of mankind were to be damned, he “would rather keep them company than creep into heaven alone.”  On questions of inspiration, and the deeper problems of human life, he is less distinct, being naturally inclined to a speculative necessitarianism, and disposed to admit original depravity; but he did not see his way out of the maze through the Atonement, and held that prayer had only significance as a devotional affection of the heart.  Byron showed a remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures, and with parts of Barrow, Chillingworth, and Stillingfleet; but on Kennedy’s lending for his edification Boston’s Fourfold State, he returned it with the remark that it was too deep for him.  On another occasion he said, “Do you know I am nearly reconciled to St. Paul, for he says there is no difference between the Jews and the Greeks? and I am exactly of the same opinion, for the character of both is equally vile.”  The good Scotchman’s religious self-confidence is throughout free from intellectual pride; and his own confession, “This time I suspect his lordship had the best of it,” might perhaps be applied to the whole discussion.

Critics who have little history and less war have been accustomed to attribute Byron’s lingering at Cephalonia to indolence and indecision; they write as if he ought on landing on Greek soil to have put himself at the head of an army and stormed Constantinople.  Those who know more, confess that the delay was deliberate, and that it was judicious.  The Hellenic uprising was animated by the spirit of a “lion after slumber,” but it had the heads of a Hydra hissing and tearing at one another.  The chiefs who defended the country by their arms, compromised her by their arguments, and some of her best fighters were little better than pirates and bandits.  Greece was a prey to factions—­republican, monarchic, aristocratic—­representing naval, military, and territorial interests, and each beset by the adventurers who flock round every movement, only representing their own.  During the first two years of success they were held in embryo; during the later years of disaster, terminated by the allies at Navarino, they were buried; during the interlude of Byron’s residence, when the foes were like hounds in the leash, waiting for a renewal of the struggle, they were rampant.  Had he joined any one of them he would have degraded himself to the level of a mere condottiere, and helped to betray the common cause.  Beset by solicitations to go to Athens, to the Morea, to Acarnania, he resolutely held apart, biding his time, collecting information, making himself known as a man of affairs, endeavouring