this mud basket; and, to conclude with a very bad pun, better martially than marsh-ally. The dykes of Holland when broken down are the deserts of Arabia, in comparison with Mesolonghi." In April, when it was too late, Stanhope wrote from Salona, in Phocis, imploring him not to sacrifice health, and perhaps life, “in that bog."

Byron's house stood in the midst of the exhalations of a muddy creek, and his natural irritability was increased by a more than usually long ascetic regimen. From the day of his arrival in Greece he discarded animal food, and lived mainly on toast, vegetables, and cheese, olives and light wine, at the rate of forty paras a day. In spite of his strength of purpose, his temper was not always proof against the rapacity and turbulence by which he was surrounded. About the middle of February, when the artillery had been got into readiness for the attack on Lepanto-the northern, as Patras was the southern, gate of the gulf, still in the hands of the Turks-the expedition was thrown back by an unexpected rising of the Suliotes. These peculiarly froward Greeks, chronically seditious by nature, were on this occasion, as afterwards appeared, stirred up by emissaries of Colocatroni, who, though assuming the position of the rival of Mavrocordatos, was simply a brigand on a large scale in the Morea. Exasperation at this mutiny, and the vexation of having to abandon a cherished scheme, seem to have been the immediately provoking causes of a violent convulsive fit which, on the evening of the 15th, attacked the poet, and endangered his life. Next day he was better, but complained of weight in the head; and the doctors applying leeches too close to the temporal artery, he was bled till he fainted. And now occurred the last of those striking incidents so frequent in his life, in reference to which we may quote the joint testimony of two witnesses. Colonel Stanhope writes, "Soon after this dreadful paroxysm, when he was lying on his sick-bed, with his whole nervous system completely shaken, the mutinous Suliotes, covered with dirt and splendid attires, broke into his apartment, brandishing their costly arms and loudly demanding their rights. Lord Byron, electrified by this unexpected act, seemed to recover from his sickness; and the more the Suliotes raged the more his calm courage triumphed. The scene was truly sublime." "It is impossible," says Count Gamba, "to do justice to the coolness and magnanimity which he displayed upon every trying occasion. Upon trifling occasions he was certainly irritable; but the aspect of danger calmed him in an instant, and restored him the free exercise of all the powers of his noble nature. A more undaunted man in the hour of peril never breathed." A few days later, the riot being renewed, the disorderly crew were, on payment of their arrears, finally dismissed; but several of the English artificers under Parry left about the same time, in fear of their lives.

On the 4th, the last of the long list of Byron's letters to Moore resents, with some bitterness, the hasty acceptance of a rumour that he had been quietly writing Don Juan in some Ionian island.

At the same date he writes to Kennedy, "I am not unaware of the precarious state of my health. But it is proper I should remain in Greece, and it were better to die doing something than nothing." Visions of enlisting Europe and America on behalf of the establishment of a new state, that might in course of time develop itself over the realm of Alexander, floated and gleamed in his fancy; but in his practical daily procedure the poet took as his text the motto "festina lente," insisted on solid ground under his feet, and had no notion of sailing balloons over the sea. With this view he discouraged Stanhope's philanthropic and propagandist paper, the Telegrapho, and disparaged Dr. Mayer, its Swiss editor, saying, "Of all petty tyrants he is one of the pettiest, as are most demagogues." Byron had none of the Sclavonic leanings, and almost personal hatred of Ottoman rule, of some of our statesmen; but he saw on what side lay the forces and the hopes of the future. "I cannot calculate," he said to Gamba, during one of their latest rides together, "to what a height Greece may rise. Hitherto it has been a subject for the hymns and elegies of fanatics and enthusiasts; but now it will draw the attention of the politician. . . . At present there is little difference, in many respects, between Greeks and Turks, nor could there be; but the latter must, in the common course of events, decline in power; and the former must as inevitably become better.... The English Government deceived itself at first in thinking it possible to maintain the Turkish Empire in its integrity; but it cannot be done-that unwieldy mass it already putrified, and must dissolve. If anything like an equilibrium is to be upheld, Greece must be supported." These words have been well characterised as prophetic. During this time Byron rallied in health, and displayed much of his old spirit, vivacity, and humour, took part in such of his favourite amusements as circumstances admitted, fencing, shooting, riding, and playing with his pet dog Lion. The last of his recorded practical jokes is his rolling about cannonballs, and shaking the rafters, to frighten Parry in the room below with the dread of an earthquake.

Towards the close of the month, after being solicited to accompany Mavrocordatos to share the governorship of the Morea, he made an appointment to meet Colonel Stanhope and Odysseus at Salona, but was prevented from keeping it by violent floods which blocked up the communication. On the 30th he was presented with the freedom of the city of Mesolonghi. On the 3rd of April he intervened to prevent an Italian private, guilty of theft, from being flogged by order of some German officers. On the 9th, exhilarated by a letter from Mrs. Leigh with good accounts of her own and Ada's health, he took a long ride with Gamba and a few of the remaining Suliotes, and after being violently heated, and then drenched in a heavy shower, persisted in returning home in a boat, remarking with a laugh, in answer to remonstrance, "I should make a pretty soldier if I were to care for such a trifle." It soon became apparent that he had caught his death. Almost immediately on his return he was seized with shiverings and violent pain.

The next day he rose as usual, and had his last ride in the olive woods. On the 11th a rheumatic fever set in. On the 14th, Bruno's skill being exhausted, it was proposed to call Dr. Thomas from Zante, but a hurricane prevented any ship being sent. Оп the 15th, another physician, Mr. Milligen, suggested bleeding to allay the fever, but Byron held out against it, quoting Dr. Reid to the effect that "less slaughter is effected by the lance than the lancet-that minute instrument of mighty mischief; " and saying to Bruno, "If my hour is come I shall die, whether I lose my blood or keep it." Next morning Milligen induced him to yield, by a suggestion of the possible loss of his reason. Throwing out his arm, he cried, "There! you are, I see, a d-d set of butchers. Take away as much blood as you like, and have done with it." The remedy, repeated on the following day with blistering, was either too late or ill-advised. On the 18th he saw more doctors, but was manifestly sinking, amid the tears and lamentations of attendants who could not understand each other's language. In his last hours his delirium bore him to the field of arms. He fancied he was leading the attack on Lepanto, and was heard exclaiming, "Forwards! forwards! follow me!" Who is not reminded of another death-bed, not remote in time from his, and the Tete d'armée of the great Emperor who with the great Poet divided the wonder of Europe? The stormy vision passed, and his thoughts reverted home. "Go to my sister," he faltered out to Fletcher; "tell her go to Lady Byron-you will see her, and say "—nothing more could be heard but broken ejaculations: “Augusta-Ada— my sister, my child. lo lascio qualche cosa di caro nel mondo. For the rest, I am content to die." At six on the evening of the 18th he uttered his last words, "Aɛi μe vv xalɛúde;" and on the 19th he passed away.

66

Never, perhaps, was there such a national lamentation. By order of Mavrocordatos, thirty-seven guns-one for each year of the poet's life-were fired from the battery, and answered by the Turks from Patras with an exultant volley. All offices, tribunals, and shops were shut, and a general mourning for twenty-one days proclaimed. Stanhope wrote, on hearing the news, "England has lost her brightest genius-Greece her noblest friend;" and Trelawny, on coming to Mesolonghi, heard nothing in the streets but " Byron is dead!" like a bell tolling through the silence and the gloom. Intending contributors to the cause of Greece turned back when they heard the tidings, that seemed to them to mean she was headless. Her cities contended for the body, as of old for the birth of a poet. Athens wished him to rest in the Temple of Theseus. The funeral service was performed at Mesolonghi. But on the 2nd of May the embalmed remains left Zante, and on the 29th arrived in the Downs. His relatives applied for permission to have them interred in Westminster Abbey, but it was refused; and on the 16th July they were conveyed to the village church of Hucknall.

CHAPTER XI.

CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE.

LORD JEFFREY at the close of a once-famous review quaintly laments: "The tuneful quartos of Southey are already little better than lumber, and the rich melodies of Keats and Shelley, and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth, and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry, and the blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride." Of the poets of the early part of this century Lord John Russell thought Byron the greatest; then Scott; then Moore. "Such an opinion," wrote a National reviewer, in 1860, “is not worth a refutation; we only smile at it." Nothing in the history of literature is more curious than the shifting of the standard of excellence, which so perplexes criticism. But the most remarkable feature of the matter is the frequent return to power of the once discarded potentates. Byron is resuming his place: his spirit has come again to our atmosphere; and every budding critic, as in 1820, feels called on to pronounce a verdict on his genius and character. The present times are, in many respects, an aftermath of the first quarter of the century which was an era of revolt, of doubt, of storm. There succeeded an era of exhaustion, of quiescence, of reflection. The first years of the third quarter saw a revival of turbulence and agitation; and, more than our fathers, we are inclined to sym pathise with our grandfathers. Macaulay has popularised the story of the change of literary dynasty which in our island marked the close of the last, and the first two decades of the present, hundred years.

The corresponding artistic revolt on the continent was closely connected with changes in the political world. The originators of the romantic literature in Italy, for the most part, died in Spielberg or in exile. The same revolution which levelled the Bastille, and converted Versailles and the Trianon-the classic school in stone and terrace-into a moral Herculaneum and Pompeii, drove the models of the so-called Augustan ages into a museum of antiquarians. In our own country, the movement initiated by Chatterton, Cowper, and Burns was carried out by two classes of great writers. They agreed in opposing freedom to formality; in substituting for the old new aims and methods; in preferring a

grain of mother wit to a peck of clerisy. They broke with the old school, as Protestantism broke with the old Church; but, like the sects, they separated again. Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, while refusing to acknowledge the literary precedents of the past, submitted themselves to a self-imposed law. The partialities of their maturity were towards things settled and regulated; their favourite virtues, endurance and humility; their conformity to established institutions was the basis of a new Conservatism. The others were the Radicals of the movement: they practically acknowledged no law but their own inspiration. Dissatisfied with the existing order, their sympathies were with strong will and passion and defiant independence. These found their master-types in Shelley and in Byron.

A reaction is always an extreme. Lollards, Puritans, Covenanters were in some respects nauseous antidotes to ecclesiastical corruption. The ruins of the Scotch cathedrals and of the French nobility are warnings at once against the excess that provokes and the excess that avenges. The revolt against the ancien régime in letters made possible the Ode that is the high-tide mark of modern English inspiration, but it was parodied in page on page of maundering rusticity. Byron saw the danger, but was borne headlong by the rapids. Hence the anomalous contrast between his theories and his performance. Both Wordsworth and Byron were bitten by Rousseau; but the former is, at furthest, a Girondin. The latter, acting like Danton on the motto "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace," sighs after Henri Quatre et Gabrielle. There is more of the spirit of the French Revolution in Don Juan than in all the works of the author's contemporaries; but his criticism is that of Boileau, and when deliberate is generally absurd. He never recognised the meaning of the artistic movement of his age, and. overvalued those of his works which the Unities helped to destroy. He hailed Gifford as his Magnus Apollo, and put Rogers next to Scott in his comical pyramid. "Chaucer," he writes, "I think obscene and contemptible.' He could see no merit in Spenser, preferred Tasso to Milton, and called the old English dramatists "mad and turbid mountebanks." In the same spirit he writes: "In the time of Pope it was all Horace; now it is all Claudian.” He saw-what fanatics had begun to deny that Pope was a great writer, and the "angel of reasonableness," the strong common sense of both, was a link between them; but the expressions he uses during his controversy with Bowles look like jests, till we are convinced of his earnestness by his anger. "Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. . Your whole generation are not worth a canto of the Dunciad, or anything that is his." All the while he was himself writing prose and verse, in grasp, if not in vigour as far beyond the stretch of Pope, as Pope is in "worth and wit and sense " removed above his mimics. The point of the paradox is not merely that he deserted, but that he sometimes imi