Byron

by John Nichol

O'er many a mount sublime,
Through lands scarce noticed in historic tales.

Byron was deeply impressed by the beauty of the scenery, and the half-savage independence of the people, described as "always strutting about with slow dignity, though in rags." In October we find him with his companions at Janina, hospitably entertained by order of Ali Pasha, the famous Albanian Turk, bandit, and despot, then besieging Ibrahim at Berat in Illyria. They proceeded on their way by "bleak Pindus," Acherusia's lake, and Zitza, with its monastery door battered by robbers. Before reaching the latter place, they encountered a terrific thunderstorm, in the midst of which they separated, and Byron's detachment lost its way for nine hours, during which he composed the verses to Florence, quoted above.

Some days later they together arrived at Tepaleni, and were there received by Ali Pasha in person. The scene on entering the town is described as recalling Scott's Branksome Castle and the feudal system; and the introduction to Ali, who sat for some of the traits of the poet's corsairs,—is graphically reproduced in a letter to Mrs. Byron. "His first question was, why at so early an age I left my country, and without a 'lala,' or nurse? He then said the English minister had told him I was of a great family, and desired his respects to my mother, which I now present to you (date, November 12th). He said he was certain I was a man of birth, because I had small ears, curling hair, and little white hands. He told me to consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on me as his son. Indeed he treated me like a child, sending me almonds, fruit, and sweetmeats, twenty times a day." Byron shortly afterwards discovered his host to be, a poisoner and an assassin. "Two days ago," he proceeds in a passage which illustrates his character and a common experience, "I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship-of-war, owing to the ignorance of the captain and crew. Fletcher yelled after his wife; the Greeks called on all the saints, the Mussulmen on Alla; the captain burst into tears and ran below deck, telling us to call on God. The sails were split, the mainyard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night setting in; and all our chance was to make for Corfu—or, as F. pathetically called it, 'a watery grave.' I did what I could to console him, but finding him incorrigible, wrapped myself in my Albanian capote, and lay down on the deck to wait the worst." Unable from his lameness, says Hobhouse, to be of any assistance, he in a short time was found amid the trembling sailors, fast asleep. They got back to the coast of Suli, and shortly afterwards started through Acarnania and AEtolia for the Morea, again rejoicing in the wild scenery and the apparently kindred spirits of the wild men among whom they passed. Byron was especially fascinated by the firelight dance and song of the robber band, which he describes and reproduces in Childe Harold. On the 21st of November he reached Mesolonghi, whore, fifteen years later, he died. Here he dismissed most of his escort, proceeded to Patras, and on to Vostizza, caught sight of Parnassus, and accepted a flight of eagles near Delphi as a favouring sign of Apollo. "The last bird," he writes, "I ever fired at was an eaglet on the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto. It was only wounded and I tried to save it—the eye was so bright. But it pined and died in a few days: and I never did since, and never will, attempt the life of another bird." From Livadia the travellers proceeded to Thebes, visited the cave of Trophonius, Diana's fountain, the so-called ruins of Pindar's house, and the field of Cheronea, crossed Cithaeron, and on Christmas, 1809, arrived before the defile, near the ruins of Phyle, where, he had his first glimpse of Athens, which evoked the famous lines:—

Ancient of days, august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were.
First in the race that led to glory's goal,
They won, and pass'd away: is this the whole—
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour?

After which he reverts to his perpetually recurring moral, "Men come and go; but the hills, and waves, and skies, and stars, endure"—

Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds;
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, glory, freedom fail—but nature still is fair.

The duration of Lord Byron's first visit to Athens was about three months, and it was varied by excursions to different parts of Attica; Eleusis, Hymettus, Cape Colonna, (Sunium, the scene of Falconer's shipwreck), the Colonus of OEdipus, and Marathon, the plain of which is said to have been placed at his disposal for about the same sum that, thirty years later, an American offered to give for the bark with the poet's name on the tree at Newstead. Byron had a poor opinion of the modern Athenians, who seem to have at this period done their best to justify the Roman satirist. He found them superficial, cunning, and false; but, with generous historic insight, he says that no nation in like circumstances would have been much better; that they had the vices of ages of slavery, from which it would require ages of freedom to emancipate them.

In the Greek capital he lodged at the house of a respectable lady, widow of an English vice-consul, who had three daughters, the eldest of whom, Theresa, acquired an innocent and enviable fame as the Maid of Athens, without the dangerous glory of having taken any very firm hold of the heart that she was asked to return. A more solid passion was the poet's genuine indignation on the "lifting," in Border phrase, of the marbles from the Parthenon, and their being taken to England by order of Lord Elgin. Byron never wrote anything more sincere than the Curse of Minerva; and he has recorded few incidents more pathetic than that of the old Greek who, when the last stone was removed for exportation, shed tears, and said "[Greek: telos]!" The question is still an open one of ethics. There are few Englishmen of the higher rank who do not hold London in the right hand as barely balanced by the rest of the world in the left; a judgment in which we can hardly expect Romans, Parisians, and Athenians to concur. On the other hand, the marbles were mouldering at Athens, and they are preserved, like ginger, in the British Museum.

Among the adventures of this period are an expedition across the Ilissus to some caves near Kharyati, in which the travellers were by accident nearly entombed; another to Pentelicus, where they tried to carve their names on the marble rock; and a third to the environs of the Piraeus in the evening light. Early in March the convenient departure of an English sloop-of-war induced them to make an excursion to Smyrna. There, on the 28th of March, the second canto of Childe Harold, begun in the previous autumn at Janina, was completed. They remained in the neighbourhood, visiting Ephesus, without poetical result further than a reference to the jackals, in the Siege of Corinth; and on April 11th left by the "Salsette," a frigate on its way to Constantinople. The vessel touched at the Troad, and Byron spent some time on land, snipe-shooting, and rambling among the reputed ruins of Ilium. The poet characteristically, in Don Juan and elsewhere, attacks the sceptics, and then half ridicules the belief.

I've stood upon Achilles' tomb,
And heard Troy doubted! Time will doubt of Rome!
* * * * *
There, on the green and village-cotted hill, is,
Flank'd by the Hellespont, and by the sea,
Entomb'd the bravest of the brave Achilles.—
They say so: Bryant says the contrary.