Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6: With His Letters and JournalsMoore, Thomas
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Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6: With His Letters and Journals
Moore, Thomas
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
[Footnote 1: "He often mentioned," says Mr. Trelawney, "that he
thought he should not live many years, and said that he would die in
Greece." This he told me at Cephalonia. He always seemed unmoved on
these occasions, perfectly indifferent as to when he died, only
saying that he could not bear pain. On our voyage we had been reading
with great attention the life and letters of Swift, edited by Scott,
and we almost daily, or rather nightly, talked them over; and he more
than once expressed his horror of existing in that state, and
expressed some fears that it would be his fate.]
It will hardly, by those who know any thing of human nature, be
denied that such misgivings and heart-sinkings as are here described
may, under a similar depression of spirits, have found their way into
the thoughts of some of the gallantest hearts that ever
breathed;--but then, untold and unremembered, even by the sufferer
himself, they passed off with the passing infirmity that produced
them, leaving neither to truth to record them as proofs of want of
health, nor to calumny to fasten upon them a suspicion of want of
bravery. The assertion of some one that all men are by nature
cowardly would seem to be countenanced by the readiness with which
most men believe others so. "I have lived," says the Prince de Ligne,
"to hear Voltaire called a fool, and the great Frederick a coward."
The Duke of Marlborough in his own times, and Napoleon in ours, have
found persons not only to assert but believe the same charge against
them. After such glaring instances of the tendency of some minds to
view greatness only through an inverting medium, it need little
surprise us that Lord Byron's conduct in Greece should, on the same
principle, have engendered a similar insinuation against him; nor
should I have at all noticed the weak slander, but for the
opportunity which it affords me of endeavouring to point out what
appears to me the peculiar nature of the courage by which, on all
occasions that called for it, he so strikingly distinguished himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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