Henry Crabb Robinson, 30 Russell Square, London, to Lady Anne Isabella Byron, [no address], 16 March 1855.

[f. 87r]

London

30 Russell Square

16 March 1855

Dear Lady Byron,         

       I ought to have answerd your last letter before, most interesting as it was, is, and as the subject ever must be – but I have been – not ill; – but indisposed to write – even to acknowledge a pleasure received – The consequence of a sense of old age growing on me rapidly –

      I regret by no means that I write so heedlessly as to occasion your misconceiving my impression of Dr K: for otherwise you might ^not^ have written what is so instructive – I never doubted the honesty of Dr K: or questioned the tendency of Lord B’s mind to morbid orthodoxy – I thought he must despise so common place a representation of truths, he yet dared not dispute – And I entertain no doubt whatever of the inevitably fatal effects of such a creed as it was his Lordships fate to receive and – believe he believed – or indeed, actually believe

      I am sorry to say that these are to me as well known as Lambs Old familiar faces or Dickens’s Household Words – As I have little Sensibility and I have been protected from all ^the^ injury they could do to strong & heroic frames.

       [f. 87v] Your letter contains the expression of a most valuable & important Sentiment – and in your words and understood in your sense most true – I need not quote them for you will at once know to what I refer –

       At the same time it is equally true – That this doctrine – held alone – without its antagonistic doctrine becomes fatal to the world – The self-satisfied sinner is the Pharisee The Solisidian Evangelical is the Antinomian which who according to an old saying is the Calvinist run to seed – The single point on which I might express myself differently, or rather view things in other relations is this –

       Is the doctrine the consequences of a diseased mind – as I would prefer to consider it? or does the doctrine cause the disease as often said, I think without thought?          

       The Anti-religious are fond of imputing to a Religion which perhaps partakes of a gloomy superstition the sad effects upon a sensitive mind.

       I see no great importance in solving this problem – It is a mere estimate of no [f. 88r] use – but to enable those to form a judgement which who are expressly prohibited from forming one – Be that as it may – We cannot help judging others. And are driven to do so by the unacknowledged consciousness that more or less we are judging of ourselves –

       That Sense of unpardonable guilt is the last extreme of that disease – And the problem is complicated by another if that other does not preclude it – The problem of free will & necessity – in other words, In whom lies responsibility? But we are “in wandering mazes left” –

       There is a curious fact in connection with this subject which I perhaps may have referred to before – but rather think I have not – And that is one of the abuses or perversions of the truth you have expressions – That the Saints have always preferred the immoral to the apparently moral numbers of society –

       [f. 88v] The religious world of his own age preferred Mandeville – Man – Devil – his name should be written – to Shaftesbury agt whom his Fable of the Bees was made

       And what in Fooles Manor was deemed a burst of malignant Satire – Mother Coles words to the young rakes – “As dear Doctor Squintim says – There’s nothing like having a thumping Sin to repent of” is acted on by many who are too cunning to confess as much.

       I saw J. J. Tayler to day – Tho’ the National Rev: has been given up – the Leaders they may still do something on a smaller scale by which the same or nearly the same end may be attained   I wish they may succeed  It does <–> seem to be alter et idem.

            I am

                          faithfully yours

                                     H. C. Robinson

The Lady Noel Byron

Text:  MS-DEP Lovelace-Byron 109, fols. 87-88, Bodleian Library, Oxford.