There is no doubt that he is occasionally cynical, but it is where nature herself is shameless.
Is he very far wrong when he says (v. 48, 49):
"Some talk of an appeal unto some passion,
Some to men's feeling, others to their reason;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
no
Method's more sure at moments to take hold
Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow
More tender, as we every day behold,
Than that all-softening, overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul—the dinner-bell."
Is he wrong when (ix. 73) he affirms love to be vain and selfish? Or does he let his satirical temper carry him too far when he says, in describing the happiness of family life (iii. 60):
"Yet a fine family is a fine thing
(Provided they don't come in after dinner);
'Tis beautiful to see a matron bring
Her children up (if nursing them don't thin her)."
Alas! as long as there is a wrong side to the most beautiful things, it is in vain to forbid the poet to show it to us, let the moralist groan as he will. These passages are among the most cynical in the poem. And it is to be remarked that the bitter, Rousseau-like attacks on civilisation (as the joys of which the poet enumerates "war, pestilence, the despot's desolation, the kingly scourge") are always accompanied by ardent declarations of love for nature (see especially viii. 61-68).
Byron exclaims (iii. 104):
"Some kinder casuists are pleased to say,
In nameless print—that I have no devotion;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
My altars are the mountain and the ocean,
Earth, air, stars, all that springs from the great Whole,
Who hath produced, and will receive the soul"
But, unfortunately, natural religion of this kind was not in accordance with theological ritual. Like a refrain from Childe Harold recurs the glorification of liberty of thought (xi. 90):—
"I may stand alone,
But would not change my free thoughts for a throne."