balance of unprovoked slander and personal abuse stands between them. His Lordship began with a poem, in which be ridiculed Mr. Southey's poetry; this was very well; no man could resent the satire of a boy, who abused the whole literary world. Indeed, the boy himself, when he had grown a year or two older, became ashamed of his work, and put a stop to its publication; and though he has since that time avowed it, and permitted it to be sent forth again, yet that inconsistency only concerns himself, and will scarcely be perceived in such a patchwork character. Afterwards, Lord Byron began his Don Juan! and in the course of that work, we believe, he has introduced Mr. Southey's name, not less than seven or eight times; first laughing at his literary pretensions, then calumniating his moral integrity, and lastly, descending into and falsifying the domestic concerns of his family. This is what Lord Byron has done. Has Mr. Southey returned any of these repeated insults, as he well and successfully might have done? Never. He has upon no occasion mentioned Lord Byron's name, or alluded to, or complained of, his unworthy malignity up to the time of the publication of the 'Vision of Judgment,' when he was impelled by opportunity, by conscience, by love for Christianity and the English Constitution, (and, who shall deny or be ashamed to own, by unjustly wounded feelings,) to write that paragraph which has rendered Lord Byron so infuriate. But what does even this provocation, if we may so call it, amount to? Is there any paltry, and, as we retort the epithet upon his Lordship, cowardly allusion to private circumstances in it? Let it be examined. As far as we remember, Mr. Southey, in the passage in question, speaks of the unprecedented depravity of the lower London press, and bids the Legislature look to it,' as he is correctly quoted, and proceeds to denounce the works of a certain club of persons as being so many shameless insults to decency, government, and religion, declares his apprehensions of the consequences attending their unrestrained diffusion, and calls their authors by the collective name of the "Satanic School." What does Lord Byron complain of? that he has been yoked with Shelley, Morgan and Co.? He has yoked himself with them both in word and in deed. He says himself, Mr. Southey accuses US of attacking the religion of the country! US! whom does his Lordship mean by this plural pronoun? Or does he speak to us after the manner of kings, and look upon himself as a sole corporation of irreligion and misrule? Again, since Lord B. has

spontaneously appropriated the accusation to himself and his friends, does he find fault with the nature and terms of it? How should be do so? He has now for many years past never published any work in which he has not directly or indirectly denounced Christianity," the religion of the country," as a system of delusion and superstition, and as the fruitful source of innumerable ills. Now if he be sincere, he must, as a good man and a patriot, fervently wish to see this incubus upon his country destroyed, and must be bounden by his conscience to do his utmost towards consummating the goodly work. Therefore in this case the accusation is no accusation, but rather the extorted acknowledgment from an adversary of his own honesty and patriotism; but if Lord Byron confesses that he never meant what he has so often and so very deliberately written and published, we have nothing more to say about the matter, except to wish him joy of his Italian or Greek notions of veracity and consistency. Again, perhaps he is offended at the title imposed upon him and his sect, the "Satanic School!" And yet why? Lord B. has of his own accord laboured through thick and thin to exculpate the character of Lucifer or Satan, from the imputations of Scripture; he has denied the charges of murder, lying, and rebellion; he has asserted, in no ambiguous terms, the coeternal and the co-equal nature of that Being and of Jehovah; he expressly attributes the evil of this world to the latter, and not to the former; he calls God a tyrant, and Satan a Spirit, who dares to use his immortality in waging the eternal conflict of independence with oppression; he has notoriously ranged himself in the ranks, and under the banners of the Prince of this world," he is marked with his mark, and is content to be his worshipper. How is it then, we ask, that Lord B. is so nettled at his being designated by the name of one, whom yet he considers so noble and glorious? Why does he complain of being reckoned a disciple of the sect, party, school, or religion, of Satan, in whose defence he argues with vehemence, and in whose praise he enlarges to excess? How is this contradiction to be explained? Has Mr. Hobhouse no " Illustrations" for us on this point? Can he not pick in another " spear's head," wherewith to cleave the palpable obscure of his friend's lucubra tions; Cum tacet, clamat. What then is the result? In the first place, Lord Byron, without any shadow of provocation, for many years together pursues Mr. Southey with the malignity of a common lampooner for hire, and at length, upon occasion of some general remarks upon the tendency of M m

VOL. XVII. MAY, 1822.

writings of a certain description, he bursts out into an ungevernable fit of passion; forgets the manners and language of a gentleman; and all this ostensibly on account of imputations, every one of which this same irascible Peer, in a work directly following in the same volume, not only realizes and appro priates, but justifies also, with the addition of a thousand aggravations of time and place a thousand times multiplied.

It is this latter work which now finally demands our notice; and we hope we shall not seem to our readers to give an undue importance to it, when we set ourselves formally to expose the shallow sophistry, the gross ignorance, and the scandalous falsehoods contained in it. There are undoubtedly some wretched creatures, whose vulgar and disgusting slanders it is wise to pass by in silence; who are themselves beyond the reach of argument, and to whose debased understandings and affections the obligations of truth and morality are unintelligible terms. But Lord B., though we can hardly flatter ourselves that he will listen to argument, is yet certainly of a different class from these. It may perhaps be safe to despise Lady Morgan, Leigh Hunt, and Hazlitt, but the arch-offender must be answered as well as despised. His atrocities come in that questionable shape, that if we were stedfastly to refuse, he might peradventure vaunt that we were unable to answer them. We shall not analyse "Cain," that has been done in Chancery; neither shall we comment upon the sheer nonsense of many parts of it; with our good leave the nonsense may be nonsense still, and at all events absurdity may well escape reprobation, where it is preceded and followed by blasphemy and profaneness. But there are one or two confident assertions respecting important doctrines of Scripture made by the author of "Cain," which as they are utterly false, we shall spend a little time in telling him so, and in demonstrating to the world either bis excessive ignorance or his excessive impudence.

Lord B. in his Preface enounces the following discovery :

"The reader will recollect that the book of Genesis does not state that Eve was tempted by a demon, but by the serpent;' and that only because he was the most subtil of all the beasts of the field. Whatever interpretation the Rabbins and the Fathers may have put upon this, I must take the words as I find them, and reply with Bishop Watson upon similar occasions, when the Fathers were quoted to him as Moderator in the schools of Cambridge, Behold the Book!'-holding up the Scripture."

We beseech his Lordship to compose himself; we will not quote the Rabbins or the Fathers to him; we will quote no

thing but the chapter which he quotes himself; we like Bishop Watson's practice, and say with him, "Behold the Book !"

CHAP. III.

"Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, yé shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

"And the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this that thou bast done? and the woman said, the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

Now we have nothing to do at present with Lord B.'s scepticism, or deism, or atheism, or whatever else he chooses to call it; in this case we must consider him by his own concession as one who appeals to the text of the Bible in proof of a position, and who is therefore willing to be ruled by it. We say nothing about the positive declaratory interpretations which, it is to be remembered, rest upon the same authority as the book of Genesis, and consequently bind exactly as much as the text in question; we say nothing about the whole New Testament, which is founded on it, and whose words must be equal or superior in weight; but this we say, that there is no instance of verbal nonsense in the book of Genesis, or in any other book of Scripture; that when a miracle or interruption of the ordinary course of nature has at any time occurred, some one also there must have been to have caused it; and that it is no where recorded in the book of Genesis that brute animals had the gift of articulate speech, and not only that, but of reasoning, and not only that; but of knowledge superior to man's. But we read that the serpent did speak to the woman; that he reasoned with her, and imparted to her things the conception of which, whether they were true or false, was beyond the reach of the woman's thoughts, and that he did finally persuade her to the commission of actual rebellion. We know that God did not speak in the serpent, neither to the man, nor the woman; who did

then? the serpent, as a serpent only, could not speak or reason or communicate knowledge; who then caused the miracle, and "opened the mouth of the dumb beast:" In essential difference of nature there was but one being besides in the universe, and therefore by a consequence as inevitable as a conclusion of geometry it must have been that one, who being, as we are informed from equivalent authority, a liar, a slanderer, and an accuser from the beginning, uttered the lie, the slander, and the accusation recorded in the text.

But suppose the serpent to have been a mere serpent, and grant that it was natural to serpents in Paradise to speak, to reason, and to possess super-human knowledge, how then is the text held together? how could that particular serpent (for we must remark that this latter clause is to the individual) bruise the heel of the seed of the woman, and how could that seed or future descendant bruise the head of that particular serpent? how, but by supposing the words addressed to one, who would live after the extinction of that serpent, and who would be in a capacity, ages hence, to fulfil the prophecy in doing and suffering?

Thus therefore when Lord. B. says, that if he (Satan) disclaims having tempted Eve in the shape of the serpent, it is only because the book of Genesis has not the most distant allusion to any thing of the kind, but merely to the serpent in his serpentine capacity; he says that which every child of fourteen, who can read and is not an idiot, will tell him confidently is not the case, and which we dare to say his Lordship himself knows to be false.

Thus much for one of these precious specimens of ignorance and sophistry, which, though it might have passed current from the pen of Voltaire, will never do with the clumsy infidelity of Lord B. amongst the free and Protestant natives of England. Now for another.

"The reader will please to bear in mind (what few choose to recollect), that there is no allusion to a future state in any of the books of Moses, nor indeed in the Old Testament. For a reason for this extraordinary omission he may consult Warburton's Divine Legation;' whether satisfactory or not, no better has yet been assigned. I have therefore supposed it new to Cain without, I hope, any perversion of Holy Writ.”

Whether Lord Byron does hope that he has not perverted the Scripture in this assertion, we know not, and, as he himself says, care as little;" that he has done so, which is more to our purpose, we will prove to him directly. We see that it is utterly useless to point out the evident inference to be drawn from