Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
General
Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
Thus brilliantly accomplished for conferring lustre and benefit upon any
cause which he might adopt amongst the many revolutionary movements then
continually emerging in Southern Europe, he finally carried the whole
weight of his great talents, prudence, and energy, together with the
unlimited command of his purse, to the service of Greece in her heroic
struggle with the Sultan. At what point his services and his countenance
were appreciated by the ruling persons in Greece, will be best collected
from the accompanying letter, translated from the original, in modern
Greek, addressed to him by the provisional government of Greece, in
1822. It will be seen that this official document notices with great
sorrow Mr. Gordon's absence from Greece, and with some surprise, as a
fact at that time unexplained and mysterious; but the simple explanation
of this mystery was, that Mr. Gordon had been brought to the very brink
of the grave by a contagious fever, at Tripolizza, and that his native
air was found essential to his restoration. Subsequently, however, he
returned, and rendered the most powerful services to Greece, until the
war was brought to a close, as much almost by Turkish exhaustion, as by
the armed interference of the three great conquerors of Navarino.
"The government of Greece to the SIGNOR GORDON, a man worthy of all
admiration, and a friend of the Grecians, health and prosperity.
"It was not possible, most excellent sir, nor was it a thing endurable
to the descendants of the Grecians, that they should be deprived any
longer of those imprescriptible rights which belong to the inheritance
of their birth--rights which a barbarian of a foreign soil, an
anti-christian tyrant, issuing from the depths of Asia, seized upon with
a robber's hand, and, lawlessly trampling under foot, administered up to
this time the affairs of Greece, after his own lust and will. Needs it
was that we, sooner or later, shattering this iron and heavy sceptre,
should recover, at the price of life itself (if _that_ were found
necessary), our patrimonial heritage, that thus our people might again
be gathered to the family of free and self-legislating states. Moving,
then, under such impulses, the people of Greece advanced with one heart,
and perfect unanimity of council, against an oppressive despotism,
putting their hands to an enterprise beset with difficulties, and hard
indeed to be achieved, yet, in our present circumstances, if any one
thing in this life, most indispensable. This, then, is the second
year which we are passing since we have begun to move in this glorious
contest, once again struggling, to all appearance, upon unequal terms,
but grasping our enterprise with the right hand and the left, and with
all our might stretching forward to the objects before us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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