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much about one or the other? They care nothing about church establishments orreligion.” He goes on to assert that their only true interest in matters religious is themaintenance of an appearance of propriety. 466It is also worth mentioning that Byron wrote, in a private, subsequent letter to ThomasMoore, someone whom he had no need to impress with any appearance of his ownpiety, a similar defence of the drama:There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in “Cain” that I recollect.I hold no such opinions; – but, in a drama, the first rebel and the first murderermust be made to talk according to their characters. However, the parsons areall preaching at it, from Kentish Town and Oxford to Pisa, – the scoundrels ofpriests, who do more harm to religion than all the infidels that ever forgot theircatechisms! (BLJ 9.111, to Moore, 20/2/22).The valuation of religion such that priests can be criticized for ‘doing it harm’ issignificant. Similarly, he writes to Kinnaird, “for my part – I maintain that it [Cain] isas orthodox as the thirty nine articles” (BLJ 9.56, 4/11/21). 467Thus, Byron consistently represents Cain, in all of his letters to his friends, as notbeing unorthodox or impious, and he consistently represents his characters as merelyspeaking in propria persona. The consistency of his arguments problematizesBostetter’s claim that Byron, “awed by his own audacity […] automatically adopted”the language of orthodox views, to which he then “paid lip service”: 468 his lettersrepeat the same sentiments over a period of four months to his publisher, his banker,and his personal friend, never wavering at all, showing a steadfastness of opinionmore likely to be the result of genuine conviction than of momentary defensiveness.The very length of time is more than enough for the frequently self-deprecating poet466 Galt, ‘Life of Byron’, in Galignani Edition, p.cxvii.467 He does devalue those articles in a much earlier journal note, but from a religious perspective: “Iabhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God, without the blasphemous notions ofsectaries, or belief in their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, and Thirty-nine articles”(‘Memoranda of Readings’, 30/11/7, in The Life, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, ed. by ThomasMoore (London: John Murray, 1901), 5.47).468 Bostetter, p.283.289