Byron Charged With Atheism

Over the next decade Herschel’s work began to be widely known by the younger generation of Romantic writers. Byron visited him at Slough in 1811, and viewed the stars through his telescope, which gave him an alarmingly religious experience: ‘The Night is also a religious concern; and even more so, when I viewed the Moon and Stars through Herschel’s telescope, and saw that they were worlds.’124 Later Byron defended himself against accusations of atheism. ‘I did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of Man, I could be charged with denying the existence of a God. It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, when placed in competition with the mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be … over-rated.’

For extrapolating on the insights about the Universe brought on by looking through Herschel's telescope.