tion produced on the poor frightened engineer. 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 re Every day, however, brought new trials both to his health and temper. The constant rains had rendered the swamps of Mis-sumption of the blockade, insurrectionary solonghi almost impassable; —an alarm of movements, instigated, as was afterwards plague, which, about the middle of March, | known, by the malcontents of the Morea, was circulated, made it prudent, for some manifested themselves formidably both in the time, to keep within doors; and he was thus, town and its neighbourhood. The first week after week, deprived of his accustomed cause for alarm was the landing, in canoes, air and exercise. The only recreation he from Anatolico, of a party of armed men, had recourse to was that of playing with the followers of Cariascachi of that place, his favourite dog, Lion; and, in the evening, who came to demand retribution from the going through the exercise of drilling with people of Missolonghi for some injury that, his officers, or practising at single-stick. 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." 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 ainong 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 "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 ET. 36. LAST ILLNESS. This, it appears, according to the order. 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 peohere with the citizens and Cariascachi's ple, 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. 66 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. "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 ""T is 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 regular police. This example of severity, tempered by 1 A corps of fifty Suliotes which he had, almost ever 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 : LETTER 561. TO MR. BARFF. "April 7. "The Greeks here of the Government have the brigade to maintain, and the campaign is been boring me for more money. As I have apparently now to open, and as I have already them in one way or another, and more esspent 30,000 dollars in three months upon so that they ought not to draw from indipecially as their public loan has succeeded, viduals at that rate, I have given them a -another refusal in terms of considerable refusal, and—as they would not take that, sincerity. "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 Almost every thing depends upon the arrival, do not advise you, except to act as you please. 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 them for the present. We are all doing as for any force that can be brought against 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 men. But, however opportune the arrival of such a force, It already with this view marched to Anatolico near 2000 they were a cause of fresh embarrassment, as there was a total want of provisions for their daily maintenance. 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. It 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." feed the flame, the all-absorbing flame, of his genius, the whole powers of his nature, physical as well as moral, were sacrificed; present that grand and costly conflagration to the world's eyes, in which, "Glittering, like a palace set on fire, To to 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. LAST ILLNESS. 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 day he rose at his accus- On the evening of the 11th his fever, which It was not till the 14th that his physician, 66 To the faithful Fletcher, the idea of his plaint being so slight as the physician seemed It was at this juncture that Mr. Millingen was, for the first time, according to his own account, invited to attend Lord Byron in his so little, as he states, professional, that he medical capacity,-his visit on the 10th being did not even, on that occasion, feel his Lordwas now called in, and rather, it would seem, ship's pulse. The great object for which he purpose of joining his representations and by Fletcher than Dr. Bruno, was for the the patient to suffer himself to be bled, remonstrances to theirs, and prevailing upon an operation now become absolutely necessary from the increase of the fever, and which Dr. Bruno had, for the last two days, urged in vain. Holding gentleness to be, with a disposition like that of Byron, the most effectual means of success, Mr. Millingen tried, as he himself tells us, all that reasoning and persuasion could suggest towards attaining his object. But his efforts were fruitless : Lord Byron, who had now become morbidly irritable, replied angrily, but still with all his accustomed acuteness and spirit, to the physician's observations. Of all his prejudices, he declared, the strongest was that from him a promise never to consent to being against bleeding. His mother had obtained bled; and whatever argument night be pro'Besides, is it not," he asked, duced, his aversion, he said, was stronger "asserted by Dr. Reid, in his Essays, that than reason. less slaughter is effected by the lance than the lancet-that minute instrument of mighty mischief!" On Mr. Millingen observing that "Who is nerthis remark related to the treatment of nervous, but not of inflammatory complaints, he rejoined, in an angry tone, vous, if I am not ? words of his, too, apply to my case, where he says that drawing blood from a nervous patient is like loosening the chords of a muwant of sufficient tension? Even before this sical instrument, whose tones already fail for 66 And do not those other illness, you yourself know how weak and irritable I had become ; — and bleeding, by increasing this state, will inevitably kill me. Do with me whatever else you like, but bleed me you shall not. I have had several inflammatory fevers in my life, and at an age when more robust and plethoric: yet I got through them without bleeding. This time, also, will I take my chance." 1 After much reasoning and repeated entreaties, Mr. Millingen at length succeeded in obtaining from him a promise, that should he feel his fever increase at night, he would allow Dr. Bruno to bleed him. During this day he had transacted business, and received several letters; particularly one that much pleased him from the Turkish Governor, to whom he had sent the rescued prisoners, and who, in this communication, thanked him for his humane interference and requested a repetition of it. In the evening he conversed a good deal with Parry, who remained some hours by his bedside. "He sat up in his bed (says this officer), and was then calm and collected. He talked with me on a variety of subjects connected with himself and his family; he spoke of his intentions as to Greece, his plans for the campaign, and what he should ultimately do for that country. He spoke to me about my own adventures. He spoke of death also with great composure; and though he did not believe his end was so very near, there was something about him so serious and so firm, so resigned and composed, so different from any thing I had ever before seen in him, that my mind misgave me, and at times foreboded his speedy dissolution." it On revisiting his patient early next morning, Mr. Millingen learned from him, that having passed, as he thought, on the whole, a better night, he had not considered it necessary to ask Dr. Bruno to bleed him. What followed, I shall, in justice to Mr.Millingen, give in his own words. "I thought my duty now to put aside all consideration of his feelings, and to declare solemnly to him how deeply I lamented to see him trifle thus with his life, and show so little resolution. His pertinacious refusal had already, I said, caused most precious time to be lost;-but few hours of hope now remained, and, unless he submitted immediately to be bled, we could not answer for the consequences. It was true, he cared not for life; but who could assure him that, unless he changed his resolution, the uncontrolled disease might not operate such disorganisation in his system 'It was during the same, or some similar conversation, that Dr. Bruno also reports him to have said, "If my "We seized the moment (adds Mr. Millingen), and drew about twenty ounces. On coagulating, the blood presented a strong buffy coat; yet the relief obtained did not correspond to the hopes we had formed, and during the night the fever became stronger than it had been hitherto. The restlessness and agitation increased, and the patient spoke several times in an incoherent manner." On the following morning, the 17th, the bleeding was repeated; for, although the rheumatic symptoms had been completely removed, the appearances of inflammation on the brain were now hourly increasing. Count Gamba, who had not for the last two days seen him, being confined to his own apartment by a sprained ankle, now contrived to reach his room. "His countenance," says this gentleman, "at once awakened in me the most dreadful suspicions. He was very calm; he talked to me in the kindest manner about my accident, but in a hollow, sepulchral tone. Take care of your foot,' said he; I know by experience how painful it must be.' I could not stay near his bed: a flood of tears rushed into my eyes, and I was obliged to withdraw." Neither Count Gamba, indeed, nor Fletcher, appear to have been sufficiently masters of themselves to do much else than weep during the remainder of this afflicting scene. In addition to the bleeding, which was repeated twice on the 17th, it was thought right also to apply blisters to the soles of his feet. "When on the point of putting them on," says Mr. Millingen, "Lord Byron asked me whether it would answer the purpose to apply both on the same leg. Guessing immediately the motive that led him to ask this question, I told him that I would place them above the knees. Do so,' he replied." It is painful to dwell on such details, but we are now approaching the close. In addition to most of those sad varieties of wretchedness which surround alike the grandest and humblest deathbeds, there was also in the scene now passing around the dying Byron such a degree of confusion and un hour is come, I shall die, whether I lose my blood or keep it." [See BYRONIANA.] |