Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824 -- Last years; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
'Lord Byron loved Greece. Her climate and her scenery, her history,
her struggles, her great men and her antiquities, he admired. He
declared that he had no mastery over his own thoughts. In early youth
he was no poet, nor was he now, except when the fit was upon him, and
he felt his mind agitated and feverish. These attacks, he continued,
scarcely ever visited him anywhere but in Greece; there he felt
himself exhilarated--metamorphosed into another person, and with
another soul--in short, never had he, but in Greece, written one good
line of poetry. This is a fact exaggerated, as facts often are, by the
impulses of strong feelings. It is not on that account less calculated
to convey to others the character of Lord Byron's mind, or to impress
it the less upon their recollections.
'Once established at Missolonghi, it required some great impetus to
move Lord Byron from that unhealthy swamp. On one occasion, when
irritated by the Suliotes and the constant applications for money, he
intimated his intention to depart. The citizens of Missolonghi and the
soldiers grumbled, and communicated to me, through Dr. Meyer, their
discontent. I repeated what I had heard to Lord Byron. He replied,
calmly, that he would rather be cut to pieces than imprisoned, for he
came to aid the Greeks in their struggle for liberty, and not to be
their slave. No wonder that the "Hellenists" endeavoured to impede
Lord Byron's departure, for even I, a mere soldier, could not escape
from Missolonghi, Athens, Corinth, or Salona, without considerable
difficulty. Some time previous to Lord Byron's death, he began to feel
a restlessness and a wish to remove to Athens or to Zante.'
On Monday, July 12, at eleven o'clock in the morning, the funeral
procession, attended by a great number of carriages and by crowds of
people, left No. 20, Great George Street, Westminster, and, passing the
Abbey, moved slowly to St. Pancras Gate. Here a halt was made; the
carriages returned, and the hearse proceeded by slow stages to Nottingham.
The Mayor and Corporation of Nottingham now joined the funeral procession.
Mr. Hobhouse, who attended, tells us that the cortège extended about a
quarter of a mile, and, moving very slowly, was five hours on the road to
Hucknall-Torkard.
'The view of it as it wound through the villages of Papplewick and
Lindlay excited sensations in me which will never be forgotten. As we
passed under the Hill of Annesley, "crowned with the peculiar diadem
of trees" immortalized by Byron, I called to mind a thousand
particulars of my first visit to Newstead. It was dining at Annesley
Park that I saw the first interview of Byron, after a long interval,
with his early love, Mary Anne Chaworth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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