'Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?'[186]
Well, I don't know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed, with truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring in consequence of his experiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish, and our eyes have kept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have found it difficult to make any one now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be; and that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau. But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man's Immortality instead of dulled by his death,—and, gazing on the sky, look for the day when every eye must gaze also—for behold, He cometh with the clouds—this it is no more possible for Christian England to apprehend, however exhorted by her gifted and guid.
'But Byron was not thinking of such things!'—He, the reprobate! how should such as he think of Christ?
Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at chance, another line or two, to try:
'Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's daughter;[187]
If he speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and
Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land.'
Blasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you understand it? The first line I gave you was easy Byron—almost shallow Byron—these are of the man in his depth, and you will not fathom them, like a tarn,—nor in a hurry.
'Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' How did Carnage behave in the Holy Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether the sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you in any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect what he was bid stand still for? or if not—will you please look—and what, also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw, rejoicing?
'Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah—and fought against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein.' And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, 'and Joshua smote all the country of the hills and of the south—and of the vale and of the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed—as the Lord God of Israel commanded.'
Thus 'it is written:' though you perhaps do not so often hear these texts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the world. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it has always preferred parting first with its Life—and God has taken it at its word. But Death is not His Begotten Son, for all that; nor is the death of the innocent in battle carnage His 'instrument for working out a pure intent' as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for working out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology perhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;—neither is the Woolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad 'Thunderer' utter thunders of God—which facts, if you had had the grace or sense to learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been better at this day for you, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine shore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.
It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines that I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George Fox—its folly shown practically by Penn. But the compassion of the pious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron came, neither Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of men that