Byron had lashed his imagination into a sort of romantic phrensy and enthusiasm on the subject of the struggle of the Greeks for their liberation from Turkish tyranny. He had a generous feeling of devotion to the interests of liberty in all lands. But at this particular juncture he was becoming tired of Italy, and had just witnessed the hopelessness of an attempt there for freedom, and the ruin which that unsuccessful attempt had brought on many of his Italian acquaintances and allies of his political opinions. A few months before, he had spoken of quitting Italy for England, and bidding farewell forever to one who had been the delight of his existence there; but then, when the time for departure came, his courage failed, he could not separate from "La dame de ses pensées.' "It was the same, in some respects, on this occasion; he talked for a long time to her of this romantic expedition, he descanted on its pleasure, its perils and excitement, and sometimes half seriously, half ironically, of its glories. He persuaded her to allow her brother, Count Gamba, to accompany him to Greece; he told her he was resolved, in a few months, to return to Italy, ritornaire a l'Italia (to her, as it was interpreted, for what was Italy then to Byron without her?); but Madame Guiccioli says, "Notwithstanding all this, every person who was near him at the time can bear witness to the struggle which his mind underwent (however much he endeavored to hide it) as the period fixed for his departure approached." In the evening of the 13th of July, when all the preparations were made, and the persons of his suite who were at the Saluzzi, and were to accompany him, had been sent on, Byron, who had been busily engaged in superintending those preparations, with manifest effort endeavoring to appear composed, indifferent, wholly rapt up in Greece and liberty, and affecting to be jaunty in his air and lively in his conversation, took his last leave of the person who for him had abandoned every thing in this life that should be held dear to woman. His lordship embarked the evening before the intended departure; he and his whole party slept on board the Hercules, the vessel chartered for the expedition. Byron's latest dream * Moore's Life of Byron, p. 590. of love had been dreamed out; and that last vision of his life's romance past and gone, nothing now remained for him but a vague, undefined object, looked at through a refracting medium that tinged its imperfect outlines with bright hues, and invested them with glorious shapes and classical poetic illusions. In that work, which Byron told Mr. Murray, in July, 1821, "at the particular request of the Contessa G―, he had promised not to continue"-Don Juan, there are some farewell lines of the Donna Julia which might have been appropriately addressed to the author of that poem by the Donna Teresa Guiccioli, on the occasion of his departure from Genoa : "My breast has been all weakness, is so yet, But still I think I can collect my mind: To all except one image madly blind; Byron, at the time of his departure from Genoa, was in hist thirty-sixth, and Madame Guiccioli in her twenty-second year. The Hercules cleared the port at daybreak on the 14th of July, but the vessel lay becalmed all day in sight of Genoa. At nightfall a storm set in, and after encountering considerable danger, the captain had to put back to port, and anchored there about six o'clock in the morning of the 15th. Lord Byron came on shore dejected, and appearing thoughtful. On relanding, he set off for Albaro, expecting to find the Guiccioli still at Saluzzi. On the way he said to his companion, "Where shall we be in a year?" He arrived in the chill gray morning, at an early hour, at his former residence, but there was no light step of one rushing forth to meet him as he approached. "He entered the house his home no more, For without hearts there is no home, and felt Without a welcome: there he long had dwelt, All was still and silent in the Saluzzi; a caretaker of the deserted house met his lordship at the threshold, and said, “La senora è partita." Madame Guiccioli had taken her departure that morning. A painter should have been there, ensconced in some nook-one of a divining spirit as well as of a skillful hand. Byron wandered for some time through the desolate-looking apartments, the rooms she inhabited, the grounds that were her customary walks; and, like that Lambro of whom he had written five years previously-" a man of a strange temperament"-he felt there was in the aspect of a place that had recently been an abode that had enjoyments and joyous loving inmates, and all at once had become a solitude, "A thing to human feeling the most trying, Than even the mental agony of dying." Byron returned early in the day to Genoa, and there he passed some hours with his friend Mr. Barry, walking about some gardens near the city, and conversing in a way that showed his thoughts had taken a gloomy turn. In the evening of that day he embarked, and finally lost sight of Genoa, and soon of Italy. During Byron's life, it was "la nobile e bellissima sua fisonomia, il suono della sua voce, le sue maniere, i mille incanti, che lo circondavano che lo rendevano un essere cosi differente cosi superiore a tutti quelli che ella aveva sino allora veduti," which had nourished the passion of the Countess Guiccioli. But the fidelity of her attachment to the memory of that highly-gifted being, at the expiration of thirty years even, still survives. It has assumed a settled aspect of veneration, that with a pale but steady light shines not ineffectually over the remains of the greatly loved and honored dead. This kind of culte reminds one of the sepulchral lamps of the ancients that are said to have burned continually in charnels, giving out a faint, unfading light, without receiving aliment or support from without the precincts of the tomb. ants!" "The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head, like heaven, is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came veiling all the lightning of his song in sorrow,' on the 18th of April, 1824, was drawing to the end of life at Missolonghi. In the latter part of that day few of his words could be distinguished, and these were names-" Ada," " Hobhouse," "Kinnaird." Later, in an interval of reason, he was heard to say, "Poor Greece !" "Poor town!" "My poor serv!""My hour is come; I do not care for death, but why did I not go home before I came here?" At another time he said, "There are things which make this world dear to me; for the rest, I am content to die." He spoke again of Greece, saying, "I have given her my time, my means, my health, and now I have given her my life: what could I do more?" It was about six o'clock on the evening of Thursday when he said, "Now I shall go to sleep ;" and then turning round, fell into that slumber from which he never awoke.† At half past six the following day, the 19th, after lying nearly twenty-four hours almost bereft of sense or motion, he breathed his last. A great intelligence passed away into the world of spirits. It remained for a clerical corporation to determine that world into which his spirit had passed was one of wrath and woe. They would not suffer the place in which the ashes of Castlereagh of hundreds of impious, profane, and many unprincipled persons, many mercenary, some sanguinary, and several very vile and worthless minions of power, were laid, to be contaminated with the remains of Byron; but then Byron was a Liberal, and for the punishment of adverse politics, hypocrisy put on a garb of piety on this as well as many other occasions, and party had its revenge, while religion had the name of a vindication of her cause. Johnson speaks of a Dean of Westminster whose abhorrence of Milton was so intensely orthodox, that the name of the bard, Elegy on the death of Keats, by Shelley. † Moore's Notices, &c., vol. vi., p. 212. 1 in his opinion, was too detestable to be read on the walls of a building dedicated to devotion.* On the arrival in England of the remains of Byron from Greece, application was made by the executors, in their individual capacity, to the dean and chapter of Westminster, for permission to have his remains interred in the Abbey; "but such an answer was received as left little doubt of any more regular application."+ It was then decided on having his remains interred in the family vault at Hucknall, near Newstead. But some of "the nearest friends" of the deceased poet were not content that his imperfections should be buried with his ashes. The remains of Byron were removed from the house of Sir George Knatchbull, in Great George Street, on the 12th of July, 1824, and on the 16th the last duties were paid to them in the small village church of Hucknall. They were laid in the family vault, close to those of his mother. On a tablet of white marble, in the chancel of the church, there is the following inscription: In the vault beneath, where many of his ancestors, and his mother, are buried, GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON, in the County of Lancaster, the Author of "Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage." He was born in London, on the 22d of JANUARY, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, on the engaged in the glorious attempt to restore that country to her His sister, the Honorable Augusta Maria Leigh, placed this About eight years ago Madame Guiccioli married an elderly French noble, the Marquis de Boissy. One would have thought the first experiment of this kind might have sufficed. * Life of Milton. + Notices of Life of Lord Byron, vol. vi., p. 222. |