down in tears.

On the edge of this inner circle, and in many respects associated with it,
was the Rev. Francis Hodgson, a ripe scholar, good translator, a sound
critic, a fluent writer of graceful verse, and a large-hearted divine,
whoso correspondence, recently edited with a connecting narrative by his
son, has thrown light on disputed passages of Lord Byron's life. The views
entertained by the friends on literary matters were almost identical; they
both fought under the standards of the classic school; they resented the
same criticisms, they applauded the same successes, and were bound
together by the strong tie of mutual admiration. Byron commends Hodgson's
verses, and encourages him to write; Hodgson recognizes in the _Bards and
Reviewers_ and the early cantos of _Childe Harold_ the promise of
_Manfred_ and _Cain_. Among the associates who strove to bring the poet
back to the anchorage of fixed belief, and to wean him from the error of
his thoughts, Francis Hodgson was the most charitable, and therefore the
most judicious. That his cautions and exhortations were never stultified
by pedantry or excessive dogmatism, is apparent from the frank and
unguarded answers which they called forth. In several, which are
preserved, and some for the first time reproduced in the
recently-published Memoir, we are struck by the mixture of audacity and
superficial dogmatism, sometimes amounting to effrontery, that is apt to
characterize the negations of a youthful sceptic. In September, 1811,
Byron writes from Newstead:--"I will have nothing to do with your
immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without the absurdity
of speculating upon another. Christ came to save men, but a good Pagan
will go to heaven, and a bad Nazarene to hell. 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