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Roberts claims, is philanthropic to the “vagrant, mendicant, and predatory”, andliberal in a way which isintolerant towards whatever is tried, approved, and ordained, but full <strong>of</strong>courtesy towards every tenet, proposition, and theory that tends to loosen thesecret holds <strong>of</strong> opinion, and the foundations <strong>of</strong> necessary authority; – lastly, bya charity which pardons every crime, except that <strong>of</strong> holding preferment,exercising <strong>of</strong>fice, maintaining order, practising devotion, advocating decorum,and suppressing tumult. 60This is a comment <strong>of</strong> value to this study not only in its demonstration <strong>of</strong> the existence<strong>of</strong> its own, very conservative and reactionary viewpoint, but in its identification,howsoever prejudiced, <strong>of</strong> the existence <strong>of</strong> the competing liberal or even radicalviewpoint, highlighting the political conflict being waged by the reviewers.Proper morality, within these critics’ ideology, is wholly identified with ‘proper’religious behaviour: strict adherence to conservative rules. Much the same censurewas directed against a number <strong>of</strong> Byron’s subsequent works, most notably Cain andDon Juan, and it operates the same way, as an attempt to produce the ideologicalculturalstate which it represents as correct.Byron did not fail to anticipate this, as he wrote to Robert Charles Dallas, “I fearMurray will be in a Scrape with the Orthodox, but I cannot help it” (BLJ 2.75,21/8/11), demonstrating an awareness <strong>of</strong> conservative Christian (“Orthodox”)opinions and therefore <strong>of</strong> the imminent reaction against the work, but determinedlyrefusing to alter his words to appease their sensibilities.Part <strong>of</strong> his willingness to ignore the complainants might have been supplied by thefact that not all <strong>of</strong> the religious criticism was condemnatory. One alternative readingwas that Harold provided a salient, negative example. <strong>The</strong> Eclectic Review thought asmuch, and felt that “<strong>The</strong>re is much truth and force in the picture <strong>of</strong> this unhappy being60 British Review, August 1818, RR, I, pp.8-9 (462-3).28

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