Byron indeed left Italy in an unsettled state of mind: he spoke of returning in a few months, and as the period for his departure approached, became more and more irresolute. A presentiment of his death seemed to brood over a mind always superstitious, though never fanatical. Shortly before his own departure, the Blessingtons were preparing to leave Genoa for England. On the evening of his farewell call he began to speak of his voyage with despondency, saying, "Here we are all now 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:" after which remark he leant his head on the sofa, and burst into one of his hysterical fits of tears. The next week was given to preparations for an expedition, which, entered on with mingled motives—sentimental, personal, public—became more real and earnest to Byron at every step he took. He knew all the vices of the "hereditary bondsmen" among whom he was going, and went among them, with yet unquenched aspirations, but with the bridle of discipline in his hand, resolved to pave the way towards the nation becoming better, by devoting himself to making it free.
On the morning of July 14th (1823) he embarked in the brig "Hercules," with Trelawny, Count Pietro Gamba, who remained with him to the last, Bruno a young Italian doctor, Scott the captain of the vessel, and eight servants, including Fletcher, besides the crew. They had on board two guns, with other arms and ammunition, five horses, an ample supply of medicines, with 50,000 Spanish dollars in coin and bills. The start was inauspicious. A violent squall drove them back to port, and in the course of a last ride with Gamba to Albaro, Byron asked, "Where shall we be in a year?" On the same day of the same month of 1824 he was carried to the tomb of his ancestors. They again set sail on the following evening, and in five days reached Leghorn, where the poet received a salutation in verse, addressed to him by Goethe, and replied to it. Here Mr. Hamilton Brown, a Scotch gentleman with considerable knowledge of Greek affairs, joined the party, and induced them to change their course to Cephalonia, for the purpose of obtaining the advice and assistance of the English resident, Colonel Napier. The poet occupied himself during the voyage mainly in reading—among other books, Scott's Life of Swift, Grimm's Correspondence, La Rochefoucauld, and Las Casas—and watching the classic or historic shores which they skirted, especially noting Elba, Soracte, the Straits of Messina, and Etna. In passing Stromboli he said to Trelawny, "You will see this scene in a fifth canto of Childe Harold." On his companions suggesting that he should write some verses on the spot, he tried to do so, but threw them away, with the remark, "I cannot write poetry at will, as you smoke tobacco." Trelawny confesses that he was never on shipboard with a better companion, and that a severer test of good fellowship it is impossible to apply. Together they shot at gulls or empty bottles, and swam every morning in the sea. Early in August they reached their destination. Coming in sight of the Morea, the poet said to Trelawny, "I feel as if the eleven long years of bitterness I have passed through, since I was here, were taken from my shoulders, and I was scudding through the Greek Archipelago with old Bathurst in his frigate." Byron remained at or about Cephalonia till the close of the year. Not long after his arrival he made an excursion to Ithaca, and, visiting the monastery at Vathi, was received by the abbot with great ceremony, which, in a fit of irritation, brought on by a tiresome ride on a mule, he returned with unusual discourtesy; but next morning, on his giving a donation to their alms-box, he was dismissed with the blessing of the monks. "If this isle were mine," he declared on his way back, "I would break my staff and bury my book." A little later, Brown and Trelawny being sent off with letters to the provisional government, the former returned with some Greek emissaries to London, to negotiate a loan; the latter attached himself to Odysseus, the chief of the republican party at Athens, and never again saw Byron alive. The poet, after spending a month on board the "Hercules," dismissed the vessel, and hired a house for Gamba and himself at Metaxata, a healthy village about four miles from the capital of the island. Meanwhile, Blaquière, neglecting his appointment at Zante, had gone to Corfu, and thence to England. Colonel Napier being absent from Cephalonia, Byron had some pleasant social intercourse with his deputy, but, unable to get from him any authoritative information, was left without advice, to be besieged by letters and messages from the factions. Among these there were brought to him hints that the Greeks wanted a king, and he is reported to have said, "If they make me the offer, I will perhaps not reject it."
The position would doubtless have been acceptable to a man who never—amid his many self-deceptions—affected to deny that he was ambitious: and who can say what might not have resulted for Greece, had the poet lived to add lustre to her crown? In the meantime, while faring more frugally than a day-labourer, he yet surrounded himself with a show of royal state, had his servants armed with gilt helmets, and gathered around him a body-guard of Suliotes. These wild mercenaries becoming turbulent, he was obliged to despatch them to Mesolonghi, then threatened with siege by the Turks and anxiously waiting relief. During his residence at Cephalonia, Byron was gratified by the interest evinced in him by the English residents. Among these the physician, Dr. Kennedy, a worthy Scotchman, who imagined himself to be a theologian with a genius for conversion, was conducting a series of religious meetings at Argostoli, when the poet expressed a wish to be present at one of them. After listening, it is said, to a set of discourses that occupied the greater part of twelve hours, he seems, for one reason or another, to have felt called on to enter the lists, and found himself involved in the series of controversial dialogues afterwards published in a substantial book. This volume, interesting in several respects, is one of the most charming examples of unconscious irony in the language, and it is matter of regret that our space does not admit of the abridgment of several of its pages. They bear testimony, on the one hand, to Byron's capability of patience, and frequent sweetness of temper under trial; on the other, to Kennedy's utter want of humour, and to his courageous honesty. The curiously confronted interlocutors, in the course of the missionary and subsequent private meetings, ran over most of the ground debated between opponents and apologists of the Calvinistic faith, which Kennedy upheld without stint. The Conversations add little to what we already know of Byron's religious opinions; nor is it easy to say where he ceases to be serious and begins to banter, or vice versa. He evidently wished to show that in argument he was good at fence, and could handle a theologian as skilfully as a foil. At the same time he wished if possible, though, as appears, in vain, to get some light on a subject with regard to which in his graver moods he was often exercised. On some points he is explicit. He makes an unequivocal protest against the doctrines of eternal punishment and infant damnation, saying that if the rest of mankind were to be damned, he "would rather keep them company than creep into heaven alone." On questions of inspiration, and the deeper problems of human life, he is less distinct, being naturally inclined to a speculative necessitarianism, and disposed to admit original depravity; but he did not see his way out of the maze through the Atonement, and held that prayer had only significance as a devotional affection of the heart. Byron showed a remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures, and with parts of Barrow, Chillingworth, and Stillingfleet; but on Kennedy's lending for his edification Boston's Fourfold State, he returned it with the remark that it was too deep for him. On another occasion he said, "Do you know I am nearly reconciled to St. Paul, for he says there is no difference between the Jews and the Greeks? and I am exactly of the same opinion, for the character of both is equally vile." The good Scotchman's religious self-confidence is throughout free from intellectual pride; and his own confession, "This time I suspect his lordship had the best of it," might perhaps be applied to the whole discussion.
Critics who have little history and less war have been accustomed to attribute Byron's lingering at Cephalonia to indolence and indecision; they write as if he ought on landing on Greek soil to have put himself at the head of an army and stormed Constantinople. Those who know more, confess that the delay was deliberate, and that it was judicious. The Hellenic uprising was animated by the spirit of a "lion after slumber," but it had the heads of a Hydra hissing and tearing at one another. The chiefs who defended the country by their arms, compromised her by their arguments, and some of her best fighters were little better than pirates and bandits. Greece was a prey to factions—republican, monarchic, aristocratic—representing naval, military, and territorial interests, and each beset by the adventurers who flock round every movement, only representing their own. During the first two years of success they were held in embryo; during the later years of disaster, terminated by the allies at Navarino, they were buried; during the interlude of Byron's residence, when the foes were like hounds in the leash, waiting for a renewal of the struggle, they were rampant. Had he joined any one of them he would have degraded himself to the level of a mere condottiere, and helped to betray the common cause. Beset by solicitations to go to Athens, to the Morea, to Acarnania, he resolutely held apart, biding his time, collecting information, making himself known as a man of affairs, endeavouring to conciliate rival clamants for pension or place, and carefully watching the tide of war. Numerous anecdotes of the period relate to acts of public or private benevolence, which endeared him to the population of the island; but he was on the alert against being fleeced or robbed. "The bulk of the English," writes Colonel Napier, "came expecting to find the Peloponnesus filled with Plutarch's men, and returned thinking the inhabitants of Newgate more moral. Lord Byron judged the Greeks fairly, and knew that allowance must be made for emancipated slaves." Among other incidents we hear of his passing a group, who were "shrieking and howling as in Ireland" over some men buried in the fall of a bank; he snatched a spade, began to dig, and threatened to horsewhip the peasants unless they followed his example. On November 30th he despatched to the central government a remarkable state paper, in which he dwells on the fatal calamity of a civil war, and says that unless union and order are established all hopes of a loan—which being every day more urgent, he was in letters to England constantly pressing—are at an end. "I desire," he concluded, "the well being of Greece, and nothing else. I will do all I can to secure it; but I will never consent that the English public be deceived as to the real state of affairs. You have fought gloriously; act honourably towards your fellow-citizens and the world, and it will then no more be said, as has been repeated for two thousand years, with the Roman historians, that Philopoemen was the last of the Grecians."
Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos—the most prominent of the practical patriotic leaders—having been deposed from the presidency, was sent to regulate the affairs of Western Greece, and was now on his way with a fleet to relieve Mesolonghi, in attempting which the brave Marco Bozzaris had previously fallen. In a letter, opening communication with a man for whom he always entertained a high esteem, Byron writes, "Colonel Stanhope has arrived from London, charged by our committee to act in concert with me…. Greece is at present placed between three measures—either to reconquer her liberty, to become a dependence of the sovereigns of Europe, or to return to a Turkish province. She has the choice only of these three alternatives. Civil war is but a road that leads to the two latter."
At length the long looked-for fleet arrived, and the Turkish squadron, with the loss of a treasure-ship, retired up the Gulf of Lepanto. Mavrocordatos on entering Mesolonghi lost no time in inviting the poet to join him, and placed a brig at his disposal, adding, "I need not tell you to what a pitch your presence is desired by everybody, or what a prosperous direction it will give to all our affairs. Your counsels will be listened to like oracles."
At the same date Stanhope writes, "The people in the streets are looking forward to his lordship's arrival as they would to the coming of the Messiah." Byron was unable to start in the ship sent for him; but in spite of medical warnings, a few days later, i.e. December 28th, he embarked in a small fast-sailing sloop called a mistico, while the servants and baggage were stowed in another and larger vessel under the charge of Count Gamba. From Gamba's graphic account of the voyage we may take the following:—"We sailed together till after ten at night; the wind favourable, a clear sky, the air fresh, but not sharp. Our sailors sang alternately patriotic songs, monotonous indeed, but to persons in our situation extremely touching, and we took part in them. We were all, but Lord Byron particularly, in excellent spirits. The mistico sailed the fastest. When the waves divided us, and our voices could no longer reach each other, we made signals by firing pistols and carbines. To-morrow we meet at Mesolonghi—to morrow. Thus, full of confidence and spirits, we sailed along. At twelve we were out of sight of each other."
Byron's vessel, separated from her consort, came into the close proximity of a Turkish frigate, and had to take refuge among the Scrofes' rocks. Emerging thence, he attained a small seaport of Acarnania, called Dragomestri, whence sallying forth on the 2nd of January under the convoy of some Greek gunboats, he was nearly wrecked. On the 4th Byron made, when violently heated, an imprudent plunge in the sea, and was never afterwards free from a pain in his bones. On the 5th he arrived at Mesolonghi, and was received with salvoes of musketry and music. Gamba was waiting him. His vessel, the "Bombarda," had been taken by the Ottoman frigate, but the captain of the latter, recognizing the Count as having formerly saved his life in the Black Sea, made interest in his behalf with Yussuf Pasha at Patras, and obtained his discharge. In recompense, the poet subsequently sent to the Pasha some Turkish prisoners, with a letter requesting him to endeavour to mitigate the inhumanities of the war. Byron brought to the Greeks at Mesolonghi the 4000_l_. of his personal loan (applied, in the first place, to defraying the expenses of the fleet), with the spell of his name and presence. He was shortly afterwards appointed to the command of the intended expedition against Lepanto, and, with this view, again took into his pay five hundred Suliotes. An approaching general assembly to organize the forces of the west, had brought together a motley crew, destitute, discontented, and more likely to wage war upon each other than on their enemies. Byron's closest associates during the ensuing months, were the engineer Parry, an energetic artilleryman, "extremely active, and of strong practical talents," who had travelled in America, and Colonel Stanhope (afterwards Lord Harrington) equally with himself devoted to the emancipation of Greece, but at variance about the means of achieving it. Stanhope, a moral enthusiast of the stamp of Kennedy, beset by the fallacy of religious missions, wished to cover the Morea with Wesleyan tracts, and liberate the country by the agency of the Press. He had imported a converted blacksmith, with a cargo of Bibles, types, and paper, who on 20_l_. a year, undertook to accomplish the reform. Byron, backed by the good sense of Mavrocordatos, proposed to make cartridges of the tracts, and small shot of the type; he did not think that the turbulent tribes were ripe for freedom of the press, and had begun to regard Republicanism itself as a matter of secondary moment. The disputant allies in the common cause occupied each a flat of the same small house, the soldier by profession was bent on writing the Turks down, the poet on fighting them down, holding that "the work of the sword must precede that of the pen, and that camps must be the training schools of freedom." Their altercations were sometimes fierce—"Despot!" cried Stanhope, "after professing liberal principles from boyhood, you when called to act prove yourself a Turk." "Radical!" retorted Byron, "if I had held up my finger I could have crushed your press,"—but this did not prevent the recognition by each of them of the excellent qualities of the other.
Ultimately Stanhope went to Athens, and allied himself with Trelawny and Odysseus and the party of the Left. Nothing can be more statesmanlike than some of Byron's papers of this and the immediately preceding period; nothing more admirable than the spirit which inspires them. He had come into the heart of a revolution, exposed to the same perils as those which had wrecked the similar movement in Italy. Neither trusting too much nor distrusting too much, with a clear head and a good will he set about enforcing a series of excellent measures. From first to last he was engaged in denouncing dissension, in advocating unity, in doing everything that man could do to concentrate and utilize the disorderly elements with which he had to work. He occupied himself in repairing fortifications, managing ships, restraining licence, promoting courtesy between the foes, and regulating the disposal of the sinews of war.
On the morning of the 22nd of January, his last birthday, he came from his room to Stanhope's, and said, smiling, "You were complaining that I never write any poetry now," and read the familiar stanzas beginning—