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nothing to do” (McGann 5.297:72-3), he is distancing himself from an atheist radicalwho took up his Cain as a political tract.Byron’s comments are all justification, not persuasion: no attempt is made to argue,merely to assert. This argument from precedent was apparently deemed effective,considering that it was adopted by the lawyer Lancelot Shadwell for the defence ofthe copyright of Cain. 461 Further, the poet is here expressing his wish to take all ofthe blame upon himself: he advised Murray to make use of the letter, and Byron’sjustification of Cain was indeed published in various periodicals in March of 1822. 462There are also two significant points of comparison for this passage. The first isanother passage from later in the very same letter, wherein Byron writes to Murray,“As for what the Clergyman says of “Don Juan” you have brought it upon yourself byyour absurd half and half prudery” (BLJ 9.104), referring to Murray having publishedDon Juan but having withheld his own name from it. The religion of Cain isdefended where that of Don Juan is not: the drama appears to have been meant to bemore pious than the travelogue-meditation. The second point for comparison isByron’s response, three months earlier, to Murray’s very first letter about the contentof Cain:The two passages 463 cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk like theBishop of Lincoln – which would not be in the character of the former. – –The notion is from Cuvier (that of the old Worlds) as I have explained in anadditional note to the preface. – The other passage is also in Character – ifnonsense – so much the better – because then it can do no harm – & the sillierMcGann notes, the second Preface to Cain “could not have been written before late August” of 1822(5.715), after most of the reviews which Tannenbaum lists.461 Q.v. Galignani Edition., p.597, for an excerpt of Shadwell’s argument and Lord Chancellor Eldon’sprevaricating reply. It should be noted that, contrary to some accounts (q.v. McGann 6.648-9), Eldondid not simply withhold protection from the work, but instead deferred the decision to a jury, whogranted the request for legal protection, albeit ineffectually. Q.v. Smiles 1.428, Coleridge 5.203-4.462 Q.v. The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron, ed. by Andrew Nicholson (Liverpool: LiverpoolUniversity Press, 2007), p.433; Truman Guy Steffan, in Lord Byron’s Cain: Twelve Essays and a Textwith Variants and Annotations (Austin & London: University of Texas Press, 1968) notes that severalperiodicals published the letter, beginning with The Examiner on the 10 th of March, and The LiteraryGazette on the 16 th of March, 1822 (p.12n24).463 Murray’s letter has been lost, and so it is not known which two passages are meant here (Nicholson,p.431), but the Galignani edition identifies them as occurring in 2.2 (p.612n1).287