_Autres temps, autres m[oe]urs!_ It is all but impossible for the modern reader to appreciate the audacity of _Cain_, or to realize the alarm and indignation which it aroused by its appearance. Byron knew that he was raising a tempest, and pleads, in his Preface, "that with regard to the language of Lucifer, it was difficult for me to make him talk like a clergyman," and again and again he assures his correspondents (_e.g._ to Murray, November 23, 1821, "_Cain_ is nothing more than a drama;" to Moore, March 4, 1822, "With respect to Religion, can I never convince you that _I_ have no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which seems to have frightened everybody?" _Letters_, 1901, v. 469; vi. 30) that it is Lucifer and not Byron who puts such awkward questions with regard to the "politics of paradise" and the origin of evil. Nobody seems to have believed him. It was taken for granted that Lucifer was the mouthpiece of Byron, that the author of _Don Juan_ was not "on the side of the angels."
Little need be said of the "literature," the pamphlets and poems which were evoked by the publication of _Cain: A Mystery_. One of the most prominent assailants (said to be the Rev. H. J. Todd (1763-1845), Archdeacon of Cleveland, 1832, author _inter alia_ of _Original Sin_, _Free Will_, etc., 1818) issued _A Remonstrance to Mr. John Murray, respecting a Recent Publication_, 1822, signed "Oxoniensis." The sting of the _Remonstrance_ lay in the exposure of the fact that Byron was indebted to Bayle's _Dictionary_ for his rabbinical legends, and that he had derived from the same source his Manichean doctrines of the _Two Principles, etc._, and other "often-refuted sophisms" with regard to the origin of evil. Byron does not borrow more than a poet and a gentleman is at liberty to acquire by way of raw material, but it cannot be denied that he had read and inwardly digested more than one of Bayle's "most objectionable articles" (_e.g._ "Adam," "Eve," "Abel," "Manichees," "Paulicians," etc.). The _Remonstrance_ was answered in _A Letter to Sir Walter Scott, etc._, by "Harroviensis." Byron welcomed such a "Defender of the Faith," and was anxious that Murray should print the letter together with the poem. But Murray belittled the "defender," and was upbraided in turn for his slowness of heart (letter to Murray, June 6, 1822, _Letters_, 1901, vi. 76).