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Lord Byron to Francis Hodgson, 1811

Byron tells his friend Hodgson bluntly that he wants nothing to do with arguments for an afterlife, and argues that no single religion can rightly claim salvation for itself.

This letter includes frank irreligious argument and a passage recalling how, during a past illness abroad, the writer looked to death as a relief from pain.

Newstead Abbey, Sept. 3, 1811.

My dear Hodgson,

I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity of speculating upon another. If men are to live, why die at all? and if they die, why disturb the sweet and sound sleep that 'knows no waking'? 'Post Mortem nihil est, ipsaque Mors nihil… quaeris quo jaceas post obitum loco? Quo non Nata jacent.'

As to revealed religion, Christ came to save men; but a good Pagan will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell; 'Argal' (I argue like the gravedigger) why are not all men Christians? or why are any? If mankind may be saved who never heard or dreamt, at Timbuctoo, Otaheite, Terra Incognita, etc., of Galilee and its Prophet, Christianity is of no avail: if they cannot be saved without, why are not all orthodox? It is a little hard to send a man preaching to Judaea, and leave the rest of the world – Negers and what not – dark as their complexions, without a ray of light for so many years to lead them on high; and who will believe that God will damn men for not knowing what they were never taught? I hope I am sincere; I was so at least on a bed of sickness in a far-distant country, when I had neither friend, nor comforter, nor hope, to sustain me.

I looked to death as a relief from pain, without a wish for an after-life, but a confidence that the God who punishes in this existence had left that last asylum for the weary.

Hon ho theos agapaei apothnaeskei neos.

I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other. Talk of Galileeism? Show me the effects – are you better, wiser, kinder by your precepts? I will bring you ten Mussulmans shall shame you in all goodwill towards men, prayer to God, and duty to their neighbours. And is there a Talapoin, or a Bonze, who is not superior to a fox-hunting curate? But I will say no more on this endless theme; let me live, well if possible, and die without pain. The rest is with God, who assuredly, had He come or sent, would have made Himself manifest to nations, and intelligible to all. I shall rejoice to see you.

My present intention is to accept Scrope Davies's invitation; and then, if you accept mine, we shall meet here and there. Did you know poor Matthews? I shall miss him much at Cambridge.

Why this letter

Francis Hodgson was a clergyman, poet, and one of Byron's closest friends from his Cambridge days; at the time of this letter he was helping prepare the second canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage for the press, whose opening stanzas on mortality prompted this reply. Byron had just lost his mother and several friends within a few months, including his college friend Charles Skinner Matthews, who drowned that summer. Writing to a friend training for the Church, Byron argues bluntly against belief in an afterlife and against the idea that any one faith holds a monopoly on virtue or salvation. It is one of the frankest statements of his religious skepticism, all the more pointed for being addressed to a clergyman.

Provenance

Author
Lord Byron (1788–1824)
To
Francis Hodgson
Written
3 September 1811, Newstead Abbey
Source
The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Vol. 2, ed. Rowland E. Prothero (1898), via Project Gutenberg
Rights
Public domain — Lord Byron died in 1824; the text follows Rowland E. Prothero's 1898 edition of his letters and journals.
Formatting
Paragraph breaks added for readability; the wording is unchanged.

Printed in The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Vol. 2, edited by Rowland E. Prothero (1898); this text follows that edition as reproduced by Project Gutenberg. The letter quotes a Greek line (a variant of a saying from Menander, 'whom the gods love dies young'); it is given here in the Gutenberg edition's Latin transliteration, since the printed Greek could not be confirmed character-for-character against a scan of the original page.

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