But if pain actually paralyzed for a time the elasticity of his mind, the latter very soon recovered its natural vigor and showed itself in all its glowing energy in the eighth and ninth stanzas, which are most delicate emanations from a beautiful soul. The first stanzas alone, however, continued to occupy the attention of some orthodox and over-scrupulous minds: poetry not necessarily being a mode of teaching philosophy. We must besides remark that the meaning of the lines is purely hypothetical. In _saying_ that the soul might _not be immortal_, is it not saying much the same as was said by Locke in the words _the soul is perhaps spiritual_? Is not that perishable which is capable of dissolution according to the laws of the world? Lord Byron, though a stanch spiritualist at heart, derived his doubts from other much less exalted authorities. Believing implicitly in the omnipotence of the Creator, could he not modestly fear that God, who had made his soul out of nothing, might cause it to return to nothing? Might he not imagine that the contrary belief was rather the result of our wishes, of our pride, and of the importance which we love to attach to ourselves? Can the conviction of the existence of immortality, unless founded upon revelation, be any thing else but a hope or a sentiment? Pantheists alone find immortality to be the fatal consequence of their presumptuous doctrine. But what an immortality! One to be laughed at, as a philosopher of our days so well expresses it. Accused of skepticism, Byron replied by explaining the meaning of his lines in a note which, at the instance of Mr. Dallas, he also consented to suppress with his habitual good-nature, and in which he endeavored to show that the spirit which pervaded the whole of the poem was rather one of discouragement and despair, than raillery at religion, and that, after all, the effect of religion upon the world had been less to make men love their equals than to excite the various sects to a hatred against one another, and thus give rise to those fanatical wars which have caused so much bloodshed and injured so deeply the cause which they were intended to defend. In reading this note again, one can with difficulty make out what Dallas's objections were, and why he tried so hard to have it suppressed; for it savors much more of a spirit of toleration and charity than of skepticism. Lord Byron nevertheless withdrew it. But this was not enough to satisfy the British straight-lacedness. As the accusations against his skepticism were on the increase daily, Mr. Gifford, for whose enlightened opinion Byron ever had great respect, advised him to be more prudent, whereupon Byron replied:--