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called on the Bard to assist in the achievement of his own prophecy. Other thoughts might there also be, more nearly affecting home and his return to that native land, with which he was connected by blood and inseparably linked by fame.

The cause of Greece, popular in England, had been adopted with warmth by many public men. The champion of that cause, Lord Byron came before his countrymen in a new and noble character, and might find it no difficult matter-if successful, from admiration,-if unfortunate, from sympathy-to unite around him those popular affections which, in his dark and meteoric career, had been estranged. With all that could excite him to the undertaking, he himself, however, seems to have entered upon it with much !foreboding of disaster; and in the last evening that he spent with Lady Blessington, at Genoa, suffered himself to be overpowered by dark and melancholy emotions. *Here," said he, "we are now all together; but when and where shall we meet again? I have a sort of boding that we see each other for the last time; as something tells me I shall never again return from Greece."

to us the names of Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon, furnishes hardly one solitary example of their theory; nor have they a spiteful consolation in the brief and chivalrous career which our noble Poet entered upon. Landed in Greece, once embarked in her cause, it was impossible for any one to have displayed a sounder judgment, a cooler courage, or a more daring spirit, during circumstances which might have fairly excused a want in either: beset by difficulties of every description,amidst savage Suliotes, rushing at every moment into his room under the wild impulses of warlike insubordination and legislative quacks, spouting forth their well-intentioned nonsense about a free press and a Benthamite republic,-accused here as a miser, because he reserved his means for objects of utilityattacked there as an oligarch and an aristocrat, because he contended that a government must be strong at home which had to fight against a foreign foe,

disappointed in all his darling schemes of distinguishing himself, by the folly or incapacity of those whom he had come to serve,-poked up in a pestilential city, decimated by fever and disturbed by dissensions, he neither allowed himself to be irritated, nor disgusted, nor down-hearted. The only one who showed the least capacity for commanding, he was the only one of Greeks, Germans, or English, who showed the least inclination to obey. While Colonel Stanhope and Mr. Trelawny were leaguing with the Greek chief Ulysses, the Greeks, even in the Greek town in which he was, fighting amongst themselves, his guard actually refusing to march, and his artillery deserting-he himself says:-"As for me, I am willing to do what I am bidden, and to follow my instructions. I neither seek nor shun any thing that I may be wished to attempt. As for personal safety, besides that it ought not to be a consideration, I take it that a man is, on the whole, as safe in one place as another, and after all he had better end with a bullet than bark in his body. If we are not taken off with the sword, we are like to march off with an ague in this mud-basket; and to conclude with a very bad pun, to the ear rather than the eye, better martially than

It was in the beginning of April, 1823, that the noble subject of this memoir received a visit from Mr. Blaquiere, then on his road to the Morea. Almost immediately afterwards, he entered into correspondence with the Greek committee, and, in the latter end | of July, left Italy to see it no more. Madame Guiccioli remained there. Her brother, Count Gamba, accompanied Lord Byron. His course was first bent to one of the Ionian Islands, whence it was thought he might be able to learn the exact position of affairs beLore he landed upon the continent. In Cephalonia he staid a considerable time, where he seems to have been principally occupied with the attempt to unravel the intricate politics of the scene he was about to enter upon, and in listening to the orthodox doctrines of a Mr. Kennedy, a very excellent and pious, but rather illjudging, gentleman, who undertook, very confidently, to convert Lord B. to a full belief in every one of the Thirty-nine Articles, if he would but listen to him twelve hours at a time. Unfortunately, this condition was indispensable. Lord Byron sank, I think, | marsh-ally. The situation of Missolonghi is not unknown beneath the second hour, otherwise (Dr. Kennedy always said) he would have been converted.

It was the end of December when Byron reached the coast of the Morea, and putting off again on the 5th of January, after some danger from adverse winds, arrived, in spite of the Turkish fleet blockading its part, at Missolonghi, where he landed amidst the exulting population of the place, who, amidst the

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to you. The dykes of Holland, when broken down, are the deserts of Arabia for dryness in comparison."

In such a spot and under such circumstances was Lord Byron placed; not, let me say, by a ridiculous enthusiasm, for from first to last he fully understood the difficulties of his situation; but by an honourable desire for enterprise, a carelessness for death in a good cause, a desire, perchance, to be restored to the

| mingled din of rejoicing shouts, wild music, and artil-good esteem of his fellow-countrymen, and an ardent lery, conducted him to the house prepared for him.

A few dull fools have always been ready to spread the doctrine that there exists some incompatibility between a poetical mind and a practical capacity. ¦ Unfortunately for them, history, which has preserved

aspiration for the freedom of a celebrated country and a gallant people, long placed under a degrading and intolerable yoke.

His first endeavours were to mitigate the savage and atrocious character of the existing contest; and

in this, by a well-judged return of some Turkish prisoners, and a letter addressed to Yussuff Pacha, commanding in that district, he succeeded. His next object was to have stormed Lepanto. From this endeavour he was prevented by the insurrection of his troops. He then turned his attention to the formation of a brigade with which he might commence operations in the spring, and to the defence of Missolonghi, for the expense of which, he was willing to have advanced two-thirds of the money required.

In the midst of these plans he was seized, on the 15th of February, by a violent fit, which, though it lasted but a short time, seems to have made a deep impression upon his constitution; the pain he suffered during it being, as he himself said, of such an intolerable nature, that, if it had lasted a minute longer, he must have died.

From the time of this attack in February, Lord Byron continued weak, nervous, subject to tremors and vertigos, which he no doubt increased by an over spare diet, living wholly on toast, vegetables, and cheese, and restrained from exercise by the bad weather and a report of the plague; so that his only recreation was that of playing with his dog Lion, and going through the exercise of drilling with his officers, an exercise sometimes diversified by a game at singlestick. Under these circumstances, it wanted but a very little to animate the elements of destruction already existing in his constitution. A cold, caught from standing, in a state of violent perspiration, exposed to the rain in an open boat, brought on a fit of fever, accompanied with shiverings and rheumatic paius. "At 8 that evening," says Count Gamba, "I entered his room; he was lying on a sofa restless and melancholy; he said to me, I suffer a great deal of pain: I do not care for death, but these agonies I cannot bear.'" The following morning, however, he rode out in the olive woods; but on his return complained of the saddle having been damp. This was the last time he crossed his horse's back.

His fever now rapidly increased. On the 12th he kept his bed all day, complaining he could not sleep, and taking no nourishment whatever. The two following days the fever seemed to have diminished, but he had become weaker, and complained of violent pains in the head. On the 14th his physician, Dr. Bruno, urged bleeding, which Lord Byron, however, from some boyish superstition, resolutely resisted. At this time he would have sent for Dr. Thomas at Zante, but a hurricane blowing into the port rendered all communication with that island impossible. On the 16th, alarmed at some hints from Mr. Millingen, that madness, of which he had great fear, might otherwise ensue, he submitted to bleeding ;(1) but, as if to confirm his theory, the fever after the operation only be

(1) There are contradictory accounts of the whole of these proceedings, but Mr. Moore's seems the best authenticated.

came stronger than before. On the 17th, the bleeding was repeated, but the inflammation on the head hourly increased. On the 18th Lord Byron rose, and attempted to read, but found himself faint, and, tottering back to the room he had quitted, returned to bed. A consultation was then held among such gentlemen of the medical faculty as could be got together, Luca Vaga, Prince Mavrocordato's physician, Dr. Freiber, the medical assistant of Millingen, Dr. Bruno, and Millingen himself; and now, for the first time it appears, Lord Byron was sensible of his extreme danger. Millingen, Fletcher his valet, and Tita, an Italian servant of great fidelity, were standing by his bed, and in tears. The two first, unable to restrain their grief, left the room; the hand of the last was locked in Lord Byron's, so that he could not.

"Oh! questa è una bella scena!" said Byron to him, with a faint smile, giving vent even at this moment to his sense of the theatrical, and deriving a kind of amusement from his own death-scene. He then seemed to reflect a moment, and said, "Call Parry!" Delirium immediately ensued, in which he was heard to say-"Forward! courage!" etc. etc., words, it may be remembered, almost similar to those uttered at a similar moment by Napoleon!

On recovering from this paroxysm, his approaching fate was still more apparent; and perhaps no deathbed scene was ever more sorrowful or exciting than the one which followed, as, between impatience to be understood, and the impossibility of utterance, poor Byron struggled vainly to make his last thoughts and wishes known to his faithful domestic.

"Go to my sister-tell her-go to Lady Byrontell her." Here he became indistinct, but continued muttering with great vehemence for some considerable time. No words were caught, however, except "Augusta," "Hobhouse," "Kiuuaird · .” “Now," he said at last, "I've told you all." "My Lord," replied Fletcher, "I have not understood a word that your Lordship has been uttering." "Not understood me!" said Lord Byron, in the utmost distress; "what a pity! then it is too late; all is over." "I hope not," answered Fletcher; "but the Lord's will be done!" "Yes, not mine," said Byron. He was then heard to repeat the words, "my sister—my child!” Subsequently he was also heard to say, -"there are things that make the world dear to me; for the rest, I am content to die." He spoke also of Greece-" I have given her my time, my means, my health; and now I give her my life-what could I do more?" At six o'clock on the evening of this day, he said"Now I shall go to sleep ;" and, turning round, he fell into a slumber which lasted for twenty-four hours. At a quarter past six o'clock, on the following day (the 19th), he opened his eyes, and shut them again immediately. This was his last sign of life-the physicians felt his pulse-he was no more.

On the 22d of April, in the midst of his own brigade, the troops of the government, and the whole population, the most precious portion of his honoured remains was carried to the church where lie the bodies of Marco Botzaris and of General Normann. The coffin was a rude ill-constructed chest of wood; a black mantle served for a pall, and over it were placed a helmet, a sword, and a crown of laurel. But no funereal pomp could have left the impression, or spoken the feelings, of this simple ceremony. The wretchedness and desolation of the place itself, the wild and half-civilized warriors present, their deep-felt unaffected grief, the fond recollections, the disappointed hopes, the anxieties and sad presentiments, which might be read on overy countenance-all contributed to form a scene more truly affecting than perhaps was ever before witnessed round the grave of a great man. The coffin was not closed till the 29th of the month. On the 2d of May the remains of Lord Byron were embarked, under a salute from the guns of the fortress. After a passage of three days, the vessel reached Zante, where Colonel Stanhope shortly afterwards arrived from the Morea, and, as he was on his way back to England, he took charge of Lord Byron's remains, and embarked with them on board the Florida. On the 25th of May she sailed from Zante, and on the 29th of June entered the Downs. John Cam Hobhouse, Esq. and John Hanson, Esq., Lord Byron's executors, daimed the body from the Florida, and it was removed to the house of Sir Edward Knatchbull, Westminster, where it lay in state several days.

The interment took place on Friday, July 16th. Lord Byron was buried in the family vault, at the village of Hucknall, eight miles beyond Nottingham, and within two miles of the venerable Abbey of Newstead. He was accompanied to the grave by crowds of persons, eager to show this last testimony of respect to his memory. As in one of his earlier poems he had expressed a wish that his dust might mingle with his other's, his coffin was placed in the vault next to hers. It bore the following inscription :-" George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron, of Rochdale. Born in London, (1) Jan. 22, 1788, died at Missolonghi, in Western Greece, April 19th, 1824." An urn accompanied the coffin, and on it was inscribed :— Within this urn are deposited the heart, brain, etc. of the deceased Lord Byron."-At the end of this emoir will be found a correct representation of the Desament erected in Hucknall church, with the inription it bears.

Such was the termination of Lord Byron's earthly arser-the most remarkable poet of his epoch, and e of the most remarkable men that ever lived. Of high birth, a noble fortune (at the time of his eath he had his wife's), of extraordinary abilities

(1) Mr. Dallas says Dover.-P. E.

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all of which he was driven by bigotry, calumny, and prejudice, to dedicate to a foreign cause, in which he miserably but magnificently perished. The sensation which his death produced in Greece must have been tremendous, from the recollections of him which, on visiting that country afterwards, I still found there. Its effect in England was hardly less astounding. There was something so boyish, even to the last, in Byron's character,—there was so much about him of promise, even when he had most performed, that the idea of his death could, I think, have hardly occurred to any one. To me, perhaps, the news of it, a much younger enthusiast, came, considering I was unacquainted with him personally, with peculiar force. Educated at the same school, and, on coming into life, having become acquainted with some of his best friends,-at that very moment preparing, a youthful follower, to join him in his romantic enterprise,-I remained, with a sense of desolation pressing upon me, almost rooted to the spot where I was standing, when I heard the fatal intelligence. Over England in general I believe, indeed, the blow was felt as a private calamity, notwithstanding the injustice which had driven him from it. The very faults of Byron, which excited the hope and the expectation of amendment, if they had provoked reproaches on his life, enhanced the regrets at his death. Never, however, was death more poetical or more glorious. There are bards whose writings may compete with those of the author of Childe Harold; but there are none over whose personal existence such a spell and such a charm has been thrown. Even in his most beautiful compositions, we think less which it seemed Lord Byron's peculiar destiny to excite of the minstrelsy than the minstrel; and this feeling, during his existence, has been perpetuated by the cause for which he perished, and the spot in which he died.

As little has been said, since his leaving Italy, of the lady with whom he had been previously residing, I should observe, that with this lady he kept up an affectionate and continued correspondence; and from some verses, the last and among the most beautiful long governed him, and which, even in what he thought of any he wrote, he refers to the passion that had so his declining years, he still felt, with a poesy and a tenderness that did equal justice to his lady and his muse. I know of few things to say within the short limits still assigned to me, that this narration has not already introduced.

As a man, Lord Byron was a person of good imin his life, from boyhood to manhood, tended to depulses and violent passions, which every circumstance duties, without feeling strong faith in the creed, of velop. As a christian, he performed many of the Christ. For this weakness of faith he was attacked with a virulence such as few people, in civilized times, were ever assailed with for their religious

opinions; a virulence the more absurd, since he expressed no convictions, and never attempted to impress even his doubts upon the minds of others. As a poet, Lord Byron was one of the first, and certainly one of the most extraordinary, that ever lived,-uniting in himself the qualities of two men, than whom no two in England were ever more celebrated or more opposed. The best passages in Comus are not more sublime than some in Manfred and Childe Harold; nor did the author of The Tale of a Tub ever display more wit and humour than are to be found in Beppo and Don Juan. No writer, of any age or country, ever succeeded so well in so many different styles.

The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, written when the author was nineteen, may be classed amongst the very best satirical compositions in our language. The Giaour, The Corsair, and The Bride of Abydos, are all poems original as well as powerful, and equally extraordinary in their language, their thoughts, and their conceptions. Childe Harold stands alone; Don Juan is without rival: and, if we wanted a new proof of the extraordinary genius of this great man, Mr. Moore has given it in a collection of letters to which I have once before alluded; letters which have all the wit of Horace Walpole's, without any of the affectation; and are not more remarkable for their humour than for their power.

As to the tendency of Byron's writings, no author of great celebrity, with the exception of Walter Scott, ever passed in England without, on this score, incurring reproach. Milton, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Smollett, Fielding, were all objects of abuse to the envious and canting hypocrites of their day, and with about as much justice as the poet of our own times. Don Juan, the most attacked of any of his works, is, on the ground of morality, perhaps, the least assailable, being one of the best and most useful satires on a vicious state of society which ever proceeded from human wit; and no more reprehensible, either for the things described, or for the manner of their description, than Don Quixote itself, which, for those who hunt after lewd readings and gross imaginings (witness the love-scene of Maritornes and the carrier), might furnish sufficient ground for snivelling reprehension.

Had Lord Byron chosen, or rather had he been driven by circumstances into, another career, I cannot help myself believing that he would have been equally successful in it; nor do his comparative failures in the House of Lords, at a time when his mind was delivered up to other pursuits, while his success in speaking, to which he had served no apprenticeship, was compared with his success in literature, which he had been long pursuing, offer any proof contradictory to this belief. Great energy, strong passions, a vivid imagination, and most excellent common sense, formed the ground-work of Lord Byron's poetical character, and suited him equally, and perhaps, as he

himself thought, better, for an active than a literary life. At the time he engaged in the former, however, his body had already begun to yield to the pressure of the many griefs and passions it had undergone. The vital essence had almost burnt out, and all that he did in Greece as a hero was to die-as best became the memory of a poet.

As to his feelings respecting money matters, and the advances he made to the Greek cause, no man ever seems to have made such sacrifices with a better or more generous spirit; and though he might expect, and expect fairly, that, if the Greeks obtained resources of their own, they would repay him-not the health and energy devoted to their cause; that they could never repay-not the income devoted to their cause, since that went from day to day without account or reckoning-but such sums as, under no ordinary circumstances of risk, he advanced in the way of loan-(I know of few who would have been inclined to do as much)-yet the feelings he had upon the subject were those of a man who considered himself and his fortune at the service of the cause he had espoused. "So far," says he, in a private and confidential letter to Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, Feb. 21, 1824, "I have succeeded in supporting the government of Western Greece, which would otherwise have been dissolved. If you have received the eleven thousand and odd pounds, these, with what I have in hand, and my income for the current year, to say nothing of contingencies, will, or might, enable me to keep the sinews of war properly strung. If the Deputies be honest fellows, and obtain the loan, they will repay the 4000l. as agreed upon; and even then I shall save little, or indeed less than little, since I am maintaining nearly the whole machine-in this place at least-at my own cost: but let the Greeks only succeed, and I don't care for myself."

The vulgar recklessness for money, which distinguished his early career, passed away, no doubt, in later life, and this change was marked, as all changes in people of warm temperament are marked, by a certain degree of enthusiasm in the new direction. His attention, for a time, to his expenses, keeping a slate by him constantly, on which the day's items were reckoned, never interfered with acts of charity or benevolence; and the debts which, in his former life, he had incurred, and which it was in every way desirable to pay, most fully excuse an economy which, if he adopted at all, he was sure to adopt with a certain poetical appearance of excess.

His most evident weakness was one to which I have alluded, and which, mentioned by all, has I think been too harshly dealt with by some of his biographersI mean a strong prejudice in favour of birth and fashion, and a high estimate of his own importance, for having once figured as a dandy, and been by birth elevated to the peerage. This was a weakness,―

a vulgar weakness; but it naturally arose from his rank coming to him by accident, and from his position in the world having been obtained with difficulty. A peer, he had the faults of a parvenu, for he had laboured under many of the disadvantages, and derived many of the advantages, ordinarily attendant upon the circumstances of rising from a plebeian to a patrician station. In early youth, his mother, and the people surrounding his mother, must always have looked upon a peer of the realm as a mighty personage, and the ideas which the heir of Newstead thus imbibed could not but give him a high opinion of his lordly consequence, and a deep disgust with the world when it did not at once acknowledge it. In the short literary connection which subsisted | between Lord Byron and Mr. Hunt, less blame, as it appears to me, attaches to either party than the partisans of each have endeavoured to have it believed. The two persons were, from every circumstance of their lives, certain to be dissimilar; to have different ideas of gentlemanlike conduct, agreeable manners, and conversational ability. But there is this advantage to be given to Lord Byron-and no incon!siderable one it is-viz. that, of the two, he more appreciated the talents, and made more allowances for the feelings, of his coadjutor and companion.

And now, reader, you who, following me thus far, have sighed with a generous pity over the faults, and burnt with as generous an indignation at the wrongs, of my illustrious countryman, let the pages you have read inspire you with some kindly feeling for those in general, whose way to a reputation in after times is generally through the sneers and calumnies of their contemporaries.

Time has swept on; and the injured is in the tomb, and years, perchance, have effaced from the recollection of the injurers the aspersion and the scoff,-the whispered falsehood and the solemn wrong,-with which they wrung the heart that heaped upon them "the curse of its forgiveness!" But thou, O Nemesis! neither forgetting nor forgiving,-long after their worthless bones shall have rotted in the grave, wilt preserve their blasted fame, blackening by the side of that gentle and triumphant boast

"My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly which they deem not of,
Like the remember'd tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their soften'd spirits sink, and move,
In hearts all rocky now, the late remorse of love."

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The scale of the above is one inch to a foot, the ground is dove, the other parts statuary marble.

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