"March 26.
"Since your intelligence with regard to the Greek loan, P. Mavrocordato has shown to me an extract from some correspondence of his, by which it would appear that three commissioners are to be named to see that the amount is placed in proper hands for the service of the country, and that my name is amongst the number. Of this, however, we have as yet only the report.
"This commission is apparently named by the Committee or the contracting parties in England. I am of opinion that such a commission will be necessary, but the office will be both delicate and difficult. The weather, which has lately been equinoctial, has flooded the country, and will probably retard our proceeding to Salona for some days, till the road becomes more practicable.
"You were already apprised that P. Mavrocordato and myself had been invited to a conference by Ulysses and the Chiefs of Eastern Greece. I hear (and am indeed consulted on the subject) that in case the remittance of the first advance of the Loan should not arrive immediately, the Greek General Government mean to try to raise some thousand dollars in the islands in the interim, to be repaid from the earliest instalments on their arrival. What prospect of success they may have, or on what conditions, you can tell better than me: I suppose, if the Loan be confirmed, something might be done by them, but subject of course to the usual terms. You can let them and me know your opinion. There is an imperious necessity for some national fund, and that speedily, otherwise what is to be done? The auxiliary corps of about two hundred men, paid by me, are, I believe, the sole regularly and properly furnished with the money, due to them weekly, and the officers monthly. It is true that the Greek Government give their rations; but we have had three mutinies, owing to the badness of the bread, which neither native nor stranger could masticate (nor dogs either), and there is still great difficulty in obtaining them even provisions of any kind.
"There is a dissension among the Germans about the conduct of the agents of their Committee, and an examination amongst themselves instituted. What the result may be cannot be anticipated, except that it will end in a row, of course, as usual.
"The English are all very amicable as far as I know; we get on too with the Greeks very tolerably, always making allowance for circumstances; and we have no quarrels with the foreigners."
During the month of March there occurred but little, besides what is mentioned in these letters, that requires to be dwelt upon at any length, or in detail. After the failure of his design against Lepanto, the two great objects of his daily thoughts were, the repairs of the fortifications of Missolonghi [1], and the formation of a brigade;—the one, with a view to such defensive measures as were alone likely to be called for during the present campaign; and the other in preparation for those more active enterprises, which he still fondly flattered himself he should undertake in the next. "He looked forward (says Mr. Parry) for the recovery of his health and spirits, to the return of the fine weather, and the commencement of the campaign, when he proposed to take the field at the head of his own brigade, and the troops which the Government of Greece were to place under his orders."
[Footnote 1: The generous zeal with which he applied himself to this important object will be understood from the following statement:—"On reporting to Lord Byron what I thought might be done, he ordered me to draw up a plan for putting the fortifications in thorough repair, and to accompany it with an estimate of the expense. It was agreed that I should make the estimate only one third of what I thought would be the actual expense; and if that third could be procured from the magistrates, Lord Byron undertook secretly to pay the remainder.">[
With that thanklessness which too often waits on disinterested actions, it has been sometimes tauntingly remarked, and in quarters from whence a more generous judgment might be expected [1], that, after all, Lord Byron effected but little for Greece:—as if much could be effected by a single individual, and in so short a time, for a cause which, fought as it has been almost incessantly through the six years since his death, has required nothing less than the intervention of all the great Powers of Europe to give it a chance of success, and, even so, has not yet succeeded. That Byron himself was under no delusion as to the importance of his own solitary aid,—that he knew, in a struggle like this, there must be the same prodigality of means towards one great end as is observable in the still grander operations of nature, where individuals are as nothing in the tide of events,—that such was his, at once, philosophic and melancholy view of his own sacrifices, I have, I trust, clearly shown. But that, during this short period of action, he did not do well and wisely all that man could achieve in the time, and under the circumstances, is an assertion which the noble facts here recorded fully and triumphantly disprove. He knew that, placed as he was, his measures, to be wise, must be prospective, and from the nature of the seeds thus sown by him, the benefits that were to be expected must be judged. To reconcile the rude chiefs to the Government and to each other;—to infuse a spirit of humanity, by his example, into their warfare;—to prepare the way for the employment of the expected Loan, in a manner most calculated to call forth the resources of the country;—to put the fortifications of Missolonghi in such a state of repair as might, and eventually did, render it proof against the besieger;—to prevent those infractions of neutrality, so tempting to the Greeks, which brought their Government in collision with the Ionian authorities[2], and to restrain all such license of the Press as might indispose the Courts of Europe to their cause:—such were the important objects which he had proposed to himself to accomplish, and towards which, in this brief interval, and in the midst of such dissensions and hinderances, he had already made considerable and most promising progress. But it would be unjust to close even here the bright catalogue of his services. It is, after all, not with the span of mortal life that the good achieved by a name immortal ends. The charm acts into the future,—it is an auxiliary through all time; and the inspiring example of Byron, as a martyr of liberty, is for ever freshly embalmed in his glory as a poet. From the period of his attack in February he had been, from time to time, indisposed; and, more than once, had complained of vertigos, which made him feel, he said, as if intoxicated. He was also frequently affected with nervous sensations, with shiverings and tremors, which, though apparently the effects of excessive debility, he himself attributed to fulness of habit. Proceeding upon this notion, he had, ever since his arrival in Greece, abstained almost wholly from animal food, and ate of little else but dry toast, vegetables, and cheese. With the same fear of becoming fat, which had in his young days haunted him, he almost every morning measured himself round the wrist and waist, and whenever he found these parts, as he thought, enlarged, took a strong dose of medicine.
[Footnote 1: Articles in the Times newspaper, Foreign Quarterly Review, &c.]