proceed to Salona at the request of Ulysses and the Chiefs of Eastern Greece, and take measures offensive and defensive for the ensuing campaign. Mavrocordato is almost recalled by the new Government to the Morea, (to take the lead, I rather think,) and they have written to propose to me to go either to the Morea with him, or to take the general direction of affairs in this quarter with General Londo, and any other I may choose, to form a council. A. Londo is my old friend and acquaintance, since we were lads in Greece together. It would be difficult to give a positive answer till the Salona meeting is over; but I am willing to serve them in any capacity they please, either commanding or commanded it is much the same to me, as long as I can be of any presumed use to them.

"Excuse haste; it is late, and I have been several hours on horseback in a country so miry after the rains, that every hundred yards brings you to a ditch, of whose depth, width, colour, and contents, both my horses and their riders have brought away many tokens."

LETTER 558. TO MR. BARFF.

"March 26. "Since your intelligence with regard to the Greek loan, P. Mavrocordato has shown to me an extract from some correspondence of his, by which it would appear that three commissioners are to be named to see that the amount is placed in proper hands for the service of the country, and that my name is amongst the number. Of this, however, we have as yet only the report.

This commission is apparently named by the Committee or the contracting parties in England. I am of opinion that such a commission will be necessary; but the office will be both delicate and difficult. The weather, which has lately been equinoctial, has flooded the country, and will probably retard our proceeding to Salona for some days, till the road becomes more practicable.

"You were already apprised that P. Mavrocordato and myself had been invited to a conference by Ulysses and the Chiefs of Eastern Greece. I hear (and am indeed consulted on the subject) that in case the

remittance of the first advance of the Loan should not arrive immediately, the Greek General Government mean to try to raise some thousand dollars in the islands in the interim, to be repaid from the earliest instalments on their arrival. What prospect of success they may have, or on what conditions, you can tell better than I: I suppose, if the Loan be confirmed, something might be done by them, but subject of course to the usual terms. You can let them and me know your opinion. There is an imperious necessity for some national fund, and that speedily, otherwise what is to be done? The auxiliary corps of about two hundred men, paid by me, are, I believe, the sole regularly and properly furnished with the money, due to them weekly, and the officers monthly. It is true that the Greek Government give their rations; but we have had three mutinies, owing to the badness of the bread, which neither native nor stranger could masticate (nor dogs either), and there is still great difficulty in obtaining them even provisions of any kind.

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There is a dissension among the Germans about the conduct of the agents of their Committee, and an examination amongst themselves instituted. What the result may be cannot be anticipated, except that it will end in a row, of course, as usual.

"The English are all very amicable, as far as I know; we get on too with the Greeks very tolerably, always making allowance for circumstances; and we have no quarrels with the foreigners."

During the month of March there occurred but little, besides what is mentioned in these letters, that requires to be dwelt upon at any length, or in detail. After the failure of his design against Lepanto, the two great objects of his daily thoughts were, the repairs of the fortifications of Missolonghi 2, and the formation of a brigade; - the one, with a view to such defensive measures as were alone likely to be called for during the present campaign; and the other in preparation for those more active enterprises, which he still fondly flattered himself he should undertake in the next. "He looked forward (says Mr. Parry), for the recovery of his health and

2 The generous zeal with which he applied himself to this important object will be understood from the fol

I thought might be done, he ordered me to draw up a plan for putting the fortifications in thorough repair, and to accompany it with an estimate of the expense. It was agreed that I should make the estimate only one third of what I thought would be the actual expense; and if that third could be procured from the magistrates, Lord Byron undertook secretly to pay the remainder." [See BYRONIANA.]

spirits, to the return of the fine weather, and the commencement of the campaign, when he proposed to take the field at the head of his own brigade, and the troops which the Government of Greece were to place under his orders."

With that thanklessness which too often waits on disinterested actions, it has been sometimes tauntingly remarked, and in quarters from whence a more generous judgment might be expected', that, after all, Lord Byron effected but little for Greece:- as if much could be effected by a single individual, and in so short a time, for a cause which, fought as it has been almost incessantly through the six years since his death, has required nothing less than the intervention of all the great Powers of Europe to give it a chance of success, and, even so, has not yet succeeded. That Byron himself was under no delusion as to the importance of his own solitary aid, that he knew, in a struggle like this, there must be the same prodigality of means towards one great end as is observable in the still grander operations of nature, where individuals are as nothing in the tide of events, that such was his at once philosophic and melancholy view of his own sacrifices, I have, I trust, clearly shown. But that, during this short period of action, he did not do well and wisely all that man could achieve in the time, and under the circumstances, is an assertion which the noble facts here recorded fully and triumphantly disprove. He knew that, placed as he was, his measures, to be wise, must be prospective, and from the nature of the seeds thus sown by him, the benefits that were to be expected must be judged. To reconcile the rude chiefs to the Government and to each other; to infuse a spirit of humanity, by his example, into their warfare;- -to prepare the way for the employment of the expected Loan, in a manner most calculated to call forth the resources of the country;- to put the fortifications of Missolonghi in such a state of repair as might, and eventually did, render it proof against the besieger; to prevent those infractions of neutrality, so tempting to the Greeks, which brought their Government in collision with the Ionian authorities, and to restrain all such license of the Press as might indispose the Courts of Europe to their cause :—such were the important objects which he had proposed to

1 Articles in the Times newspaper, Foreign Quarterly Review, &c.

2 In a letter which he addressed to Lord Sidney Osborne enclosing one, on the subject of these infractions, from Prince Mavrocordato to Sir T. Maitland, Lord Byron says," You must all be persuaded how difficult

himself to accomplish, and towards which, in this brief interval, and in the midst of such dissensions and hinderances, he had already made considerable and most promising progress. But it would be unjust to close even here the bright catalogue of his services. It is, after all, not with the span of mortal life that the good achieved by a name immortal ends. The charm acts into the future, — it is an auxiliary through all time; and the inspiring example of Byron, as a martyr of Liberty, is for ever freshly embalmed in his glory as a poet.

From the period of his attack in February he had been, from time to time, indisposed; and, more than once, had complained of vertigos, which made him feel, he said, as if intoxicated. He was also frequently affected with nervous sensations, with shiverings and tremors, which, though apparently the effects of excessive debility, he himself attributed to fulness of habit. Proceeding upon this notion, he had, ever since his arrival in Greece, abstained almost wholly from animal food, and ate of little else but dry toast, vegetables, and cheese. With the same fear of becoming fat, which had in his young days haunted him, he almost every morning measured himself round the wrist and waist, and whenever he found these parts, as he thought, enlarged, took a strong dose of medicine.

Exertions had, as we have seen, been made by his friends at Cephalonia, to induce him, without delay, to return to that island, and take measures, while there was yet time, for the re-establishment of his health. "But these entreaties (says Count Gamba) produced just the contrary effect; for in proportion as Byron thought his position more perilous, he the more resolved upon remaining where he was.” In the midst of all this, too, the natural flow of his spirits in society seldom deserted him; and whenever a trick upon any of his attendants, or associates, suggested itself, he was as ready to play the mischief-loving boy as ever. His engineer, Parry, having been much alarmed by the earthquake they had experienced, and still continuing in constant apprehension of its return, Lord Byron contrived, as they were all sitting together one evening, to have some barrels full of cannon-balls trundled through the room above them; and laughed heartily, as he would have done when a Harrow boy at the ludicrous effect which this decep

it is, under existing circumstances, for the Greeks to keep up discipline, however they may be all disposed to do so. I am doing all I can to convince them of the necessity of the strictest observance of the regulations of the Islands, and, I trust, with some effect."

tion produced on the poor frightened engineer.

Every day, however, brought new trials both to his health and temper. The constant rains had rendered the swamps of Missolonghi almost impassable; — an alarm of plague, which, about the middle of March, | was circulated, made it prudent, for some time, to keep within doors; and he was thus, week after week, deprived of his accustomed air and exercise. The only recreation he had recourse to was that of playing with his favourite dog, Lion; and, in the evening, going through the exercise of drilling with his officers, or practising at single-stick.

At the same time, the demands upon his exertions, personal and pecuniary, poured in from all sides, while the embarrassments of his public position every day increased. The chief obstacle in the way of his plan for the reconciliation of all parties had been the rivalry so long existing between Mavrocordato and the Eastern chiefs; and this difficulty was now not a little heightened by the part taken by Colonel Stanhope and Mr. Trelawney, who, having allied themselves with Odysseus, the most powerful of these Chieftains, were endeavouring actively to detach Lord Byron from Mavrocordato, and enlist him in their own views. This schism was,

to say the least of it, —- ill-timed and unfortunate. For, as Prince Mavrocordato and Lord Byron were now acting in complete harmony with the Government, a co-operation of all the other English agents on the same side would have had the effect of assuring a preponderance to this party (which was that of the civil and commercial interests all through Greece), that might, by strengthening the hands of the ruling power, have afforded some hope of vigour and consistency in its movements. By this division, however, the English lost their casting weight; and not only marred whatever little chance they might have had of extinguishing the dissensions of the Greeks, but exhihited, most unseasonably, an example of dissension among themselves.

The visit to Saiona, in which, though distrustful of the intended Military Congress, Mavrocordato had consented to accompany Lord Byron, was, as the foregoing letters have mentioned, delayed by the floods, — the river Fidari having become so swollen as not to be fordable. In the mean time, dan

1 "Lord Byron declared that, as far as he was concerned, no barbarous usages, however adopted even by some civilised people, should be introduced into Greece; especially as such a mode of punishment would disgust rather than reform. We hit upon an expedient which favoured our military discipline: but it required not only all Lord

gers, both from within and without, threatened Missolonghi. The Turkish fleet had again come forth from the Gulf, while, in concert, it was apprehended, with this resumption of the blockade, insurrectionary movements, instigated, as was afterwards known, by the malcontents of the Morea, manifested themselves formidably both in the town and its neighbourhood. The first cause for alarm was the landing, in canoes, from Anatolico, of a party of armed men, the followers of Cariascachi of that place, who came to demand retribution from the people of Missolonghi for some injury that, in a late affray, had been inflicted on one of their clan. It was also rumoured that 300 Suliotes were marching upon the town; and the following morning, news came that a party of these wild warriors had actually seized upon Basiladi, a fortress that commands the port of Missolonghi, while some of the soldiers of Cariascachi had, in the course of the night, arrested two of the Primates, and carried them to Anatolico. The tumult and indignation that this intelligence produced was universal. All the shops were shut, and the bazaars deserted. Lord Byron," says Count Gamba, "ordered his troops to continue under arms; but to preserve the strictest neutrality, without mixing in any quarrel, either by actions or words."

During this crisis, the weather had become sufficiently favourable to admit of his paying the visit to Salona, which he had purposed. But, as his departure at such a juncture might have the appearance of abandoning Missolonghi, he resolved to wait the danger At this time the following letters were

out.

written.

LETTER 559. TO MR. BARFF.

"April 3.

"There is a quarrel, not yet settled, between the citizens and some of Cariascachi's people, which has already produced some blows. I keep my people quite neutral; but have ordered them to be on their guard.

"Some days ago we had an Italian private soldier drummed out for thieving. The German officers wanted to flog him; but I flatly refused to permit the use of the stick or whip, and delivered him over to the police. Since then a Prussian officer rioted in his lodgings; and I put him under arrest,

Byron's eloquence, but his authority, to prevail upon our Germans to accede to it. The culprit had his uniform stripped off his back, in presence of his comrades, and was afterwards marched through the town with a label on his back, describing, both in Greek and Italian, the nature of his offence; after which he was given up to the

according to the order. This, it appears, did not please his German confederation : but I stuck by my text; and have given them plainly to understand, that those who do not choose to be amenable to the laws of the country and service, may retire; but that in all that I have to do, I will see them obeyed by foreigner or native.

"I wish something was heard of the arrival of part of the Loan, for there is a plentiful dearth of every thing at present."

LETTER 560. TO MR. BARFF.

"April 6.

"Since I wrote, we have had some tumult here with the citizens and Cariascachi's people, and all are under arms, our boys and all. They nearly fired on me and fifty of my lads, by mistake, as we were taking our usual excursion into the country. To-day matters are settled or subsiding; but, about an hour ago, the father-in-law of the landlord of the house where I am lodged (one of the Primates the said landlord is) was arrested for high treason.

"They are in conclave still with Mavrocordato; and we have a number of new faces from the hills, come to assist, they say. Gunboats and batteries all ready, &c.

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The row has had one good effect-it has put them on the alert. What is to become of the father-in-law, I do not know: nor what he has done, exactly 2: but

"'Tis a very fine thing to be father-in-law

To a very magnificent three-tail'd bashaw,' as the man in Bluebeard says and sings. I wrote to you upon matters at length, some days ago; the letter, or letters, you will re

regular police. This example of severity, tempered by a humane spirit, produced the best effect upon our soldiers, as well as upon the citizens of the town. But it was very near causing a most disagreeable circumstance; for, in the course of the evening, some very high words passed on the subject between three Englishmen, two of them officers of our brigade, in consequence of which cards were exchanged, and two duels were to have been fought the next morning. Lord Byron did not hear of this till late at night: but he immediately ordered me to arrest both parties, which I accordingly did; and, after some difficulty, prevailed on them to shake hands."COUNT GAMBA's Narrative.

1 A corps of fifty Suliotes which he had, almost ever since his arrival at Missolonghi, kept about him as a body-guard. A large outer room of his house was appropropriated to these troops; and their carbines were suspended along the walls. "In this room (says Mr. Parry), and among these rude soldiers, Lord Byron was accustomed to walk a great deal, particularly in wet weather, accompanied by his favourite dog, Lion."

When he rode out, these fifty Suliotes attended him on foot; and though they carried their carbines, "they were always," says the same authority, " able to keep up

ceive with this. We are desirous to hear more of the Loan; and it is some time since I have had any letters (at least of an interesting description) from England, excepting one of 4th February, from Bowring (of no great importance). My latest dates are of 9bre, or of the 6th 10bre, four months exactly. I hope you get on well in the islands: here most of us are, or have been, more or less indisposed, natives as well as foreigners."

"They wish now to try in the Islands for a few thousand dollars on the ensuing Loan. If you can serve them, perhaps you will, (in the way of information, at any rate,) and I will see that you have fair play; but still I do not advise you, except to act as you please. Almost every thing depends upon the arrival, and the speedy arrival, of a portion of the Loan to keep peace among themselves. If they can but have the sense to do this, I think that they will be a match and better for any force that can be brought against them for the present. We are all doing as well as we can."

with the horses at full speed. The captain, and a certain number, preceded his Lordship, who rode accompanied one side by Count Gamba, and on the other by the Greek interpreter. Behind him, also on horseback, came two of his servants, generally his black groom, and Tita, — both dressed like the chasseurs usually seen behind the carriages of ambassadors, and another division of his guard closed the cavalcade."-PARRY's Last Days of Lord Byron.

2 This man had, it seems, on his way from Ioannina, passed by Anatolico, and held several conferences with Cariascachi. He had long been suspected of being a spy; and the letters found upon him confirmed the suspicion.

3 In consequence of the mutinous proceedings of Cariascachi's people, most of the neighbouring chieftains hastened to the assistance of the Government, and had already with this view marched to Anatolico near 2000 men. But, however opportune the arrival of such a force, they were a cause of fresh embarrassment, as there was a total want of provisions for their daily maintenance. It was in this emergency that the Governor, Primates, and Chieftains had recourse, as here stated, to their usual source of supply.

CHAPTER LVI.

LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH.

Ir will be perceived from these letters, that besides the great and general interests of the cause, which were in themselves sufficient to absorb all his thoughts, he was also met on every side, in the details of his duty, by every possible variety of obstruction and distraction that rapacity, turbulence, and treachery could throw in his way. Such vexations, too, as would have been trying to the most robust health, here fell upon a frame already marked out for death; nor can we help feeling, while we contemplate this last scene of his life, that, much as there is in it to admire, to wonder at, and glory in, there is also much that awakens sad and most dis. tressful thoughts. In a situation more than any other calling for sympathy and care, we see him cast among strangers and mercenaries, without either nurse or friend; the self-collectedness of woman being, as we shall find, wanting for the former office, and the youth and inexperience of Count Gamba unfitting him wholly for the other. The very firmness with which a position so lone and disheartening was sustained, serves, by interesting us more deeply in the man, to increase our sympathy, till we almost forget admiration in pity, and half regret that he should have been great at such a cost.

The only circumstances that had for some time occurred to give him pleasure were, as regarded public affairs, the news of the successful progress of the Loan, and, in his personal relations, some favourable intelligence which he had received, after a long interruption of communication, respecting his sister and daughter. The former, he learned, had been seriously indisposed at the very time of his own fit, but had now entirely recovered. While delighted at this news, he could not help, at the same time, remarking, with his usual tendency to such superstitious feelings, how strange and striking was the

coincidence.

To those who have, from his childhood, traced him through these pages, it must be manifest, I think, that Lord Byron was not formed to be long-lived. Whether from any hereditary defect in his organisation, as he himself, from the circumstance of both his parents having died young, concluded, — or from those violent means he so early took to counteract the natural tendency of his habit, and reduce himself to thinness, he was,

almost every year, as we have seen, subject to attacks of indisposition, by more than one of which his life was seriously endangered. The capricious course which he at all times pursued respecting diet, his long fastings, his expedients for the allayment of hunger, his occasional excesses in the most unwholesome food, and, during the latter part of his residence in Italy, his indulgence in the use of spirituous beverages, - all this could not be otherwise than hurtful and undermining to his health; while his constant recourse to medicine, - daily, as it appears, and in large quantities, both evinced, and, no doubt, increased, the derangement of his digestion. When to all this we add the wasteful wear of spirits and strength from the slow corrosion of sensibility, the warfare of the passions, and the workings of a mind that allowed itself no sabbath, it is not to be wondered at that the vital principle in him should so soon have burnt out, or that, at the age of thirtythree, he should have had as he himself drearily expresses it "an old feel." To feed the flame, the all-absorbing flame, of his genius, the whole powers of his nature, physical as well as moral, were sacrificed; — to present that grand and costly conflagration to the world's eyes, in which,

"Glittering, like a palace set on fire,

His glory, while it shone, but ruin'd him !" 1 It was on the very day when, as I have mentioned, the intelligence of his sister's recovery reached him, that having been for the last three or four days prevented from taking exercise by the rains, he resolved, though the weather still looked threatening, to venture out on horseback. Three miles

from Missolonghi Count Gamba and himself were overtaken by a heavy shower, and returned to the town walls wet through, and in a state of violent perspiration. It had been their usual practice to dismount at the but, on this day, Count Gamba, representing to Lord Byron how dangerous it would be, warm as he then was, to sit exposed so long to the rain in a boat, entreated of him to go back the whole way on horseback. To this, however, Lord Byron would not consent; but said, laughingly, "I should make a pretty soldier indeed, if I were to care for such a trifle." They accordingly dismounted and got into the boat as usual.

walls and return to their house in a boat;

About two hours after his return home he was seized with a shuddering, and complained of fever and rheumatic pains. "At eight that evening," says Count Gamba, “I entered

1 Beaumont and Fletcher.