The Works of Lord Byron Volume II Part 31

[The _Mentor_, which Elgin had chartered to convey to England a cargo consisting of twelve chests of antiquities, was wrecked off the Island of Cerigo, in 1803. His secretary, W. R. Hamilton, set divers to work, and rescued four chests; but the remainder were not recovered till 1805.]

6.

To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared.

Stanza xii. line 2.

At this moment (January 3, 1810), besides what has been already deposited in London, an Hydriot vessel is in the Pyraeus to receive every portable relic. Thus, as I heard a young Greek observe, in common with many of his countrymen--for, lost as they are, they yet feel on this occasion--thus may Lord Elgin boast of having ruined Athens. An Italian painter of the first eminence, named Lusieri[205], is the agent of devastation; and like the Greek _finder_[206] of Verres in Sicily, who followed the same profession, he has proved the able instrument of plunder. Between this artist and the French Consul Fauvel[207], who wishes to rescue the remains for his own government, there is now a violent dispute concerning a car employed in their conveyance, the wheel of which--I wish they were both broken upon it!--has been locked up by the Consul, and Lusieri has laid his complaint before the Waywode. Lord Elgin has been extremely happy in his choice of Signer Lusieri. During a residence of ten years in Athens, he never had the curiosity to proceed as far as Sunium (now Cape Colonna),[208] till he accompanied us in our second excursion. However, his works, as far as they go, are most beautiful: but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless as insect or fox-hunting, maiden-speechifying, barouche-driving, or any such pastime; but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the most valuable and ma.s.sy relics that time and barbarism have left to the most injured and most celebrated of cities: when they destroy, in a vain attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration of ages, I know no motive which can excuse, no name which can designate, the perpetrators of this dastardly devastation. It was not the least of the crimes laid to the charge of Verres, that he had plundered Sicily, in the manner since imitated at Athens. The most unblushing impudence could hardly go farther than to affix the name of its plunderer to the walls of the Acropolis; while the wanton and useless defacement of the whole range of the ba.s.so-relievos, in one compartment of the temple, will never permit that name to be p.r.o.nounced by an observer without execration.

On this occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossession in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by plunder, whether of India or Attica.

Another n.o.ble Lord [Aberdeen] has done better, because he has done less: but some others, more or less n.o.ble, yet "all honourable men," have done _best_, because, after a deal of excavation and execration, bribery to the Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. We had such ink-shed, and wine-shed, which almost ended in bloodshed![209]

Lord E.'s "prig"--see Jonathan Wild for the definition of "priggism"[210]--quarrelled with another, _Gropius_[211] by name (a very good name too for his business), and muttered something about satisfaction, in a verbal answer to a note of the poor Prussian: this was stated at table to Gropius, who laughed, but could eat no dinner afterwards. The rivals were not reconciled when I left Greece. I have reason to remember their squabble, for they wanted to make me their arbitrator.

7.

Her Sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard, Yet felt some portion of their Mother's pains.

Stanza xii. lines 7 and 8.

I cannot resist availing myself of the permission of my friend Dr.

Clarke, whose name requires no comment with the public, but whose sanction will add tenfold weight to my testimony, to insert the following extract from a very obliging letter of his to me, as a note to the above lines:--"When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving of it, great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, ????? [Telos]!--I was present." The Disdar alluded to was the father of the present Disdar.

[Disdar, or Dizdar, i.e. castle-holder--the warden of a castle or fort (_N. Eng. Dict_., art. "Dizdar"). The story is told at greater length in _Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa_, by Edward Daniel Clarke, LL.D., 1810-14, Part II. sect. ii. p. 483.]

8.

Where was thine aegis, Pallas! that appalled Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?

Stanza xiv. lines i and 2.

According to Zosimus, Minerva and Achilles frightened Alaric from the Acropolis: but others relate that the Gothic king was nearly as mischievous as the Scottish peer.--See Chandler.

[Zosimus, _Historiae_, lib. v. cap. 6, _Corp. Scr. Byz_., 1837, p. 253.

As a matter of fact, Alaric, King of the Visigoths, occupied Athens in A.D. 395 without resistance, and carried off the movable treasures of the city, though he did not destroy buildings or works of art.--Note by Rev. E. C. Owen, _Childe Harold_, 1898, p. 162.]

9.

The netted canopy.

Stanza xviii. line 2.

To prevent blocks or splinters from falling on deck during action.

10.

But not in silence pa.s.s Calypso's isles.

Stanza xxix. line 1.

Goza is said to have been the island of Calypso.

[Strabo (Paris, 1853), lib. i. cap. ii. 57 and lib. vii. cap. iii. 50, says that Apollodorus blamed the poet Callimachus, who was a grammarian and ought to have known better, for his contention that Gaudus, i.e.

Gozo, was Calypso's isle. Ogygia (_Odyssey_, i. 50) was

"a sea-girt isle, Where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle."

It was surely as a poet, not as a grammarian, that Callimachus was at fault.]

11.

Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes On thee, thou rugged Nurse of savage men!

Stanza x.x.xviii. lines 5 and 6.

Albania comprises part of Macedonia, Illyria, Chaonia, and Epirus.

Iskander is the Turkish word for Alexander; and the celebrated Scanderbeg[212] (Lord Alexander) is alluded to in the third and fourth lines of the thirty-eighth stanza. I do not know whether I am correct in making Scanderbeg the countryman of Alexander, who was born at Pella in Macedon, but Mr. Gibbon terms him so, and adds Pyrrhus to the list, in speaking of his exploits.

Of Albania Gibbon remarks that a country "within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America." Circ.u.mstances, of little consequence to mention, led Mr. Hobhouse and myself into that country before we visited any other part of the Ottoman dominions; and with the exception of Major Leake,[213] then officially resident at Joannina, no other Englishmen have ever advanced beyond the capital into the interior, as that gentleman very lately a.s.sured me. Ali Pacha was at that time (October, 1809) carrying on war against Ibrahim Pacha, whom he had driven to Berat, a strong fortress, which he was then besieging: on our arrival at Joannina we were invited to Tepaleni, his highness's birthplace, and favourite Serai, only one day's distance from Berat; at this juncture the Vizier had made it his headquarters. After some stay in the capital, we accordingly followed; but though furnished with every accommodation, and escorted by one of the Vizier's secretaries, we were nine days (on account of the rains) in accomplishing a journey which, on our return, barely occupied four. On our route we pa.s.sed two cities, Argyrocastro and Libochabo, apparently little inferior to Yanina in size; and no pencil or pen can ever do justice to the scenery in the vicinity of Zitza and Delvinachi, the frontier village of Epirus and Albania Proper.

On Albania and its inhabitants I am unwilling to descant, because this will be done so much better by my fellow-traveller, in a work which may probably precede this in publication, that I as little wish to follow as I would to antic.i.p.ate him.[214] But some few observations are necessary to the text. The Arnaouts, or Albanese, struck me forcibly by their resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very mountains seemed Caledonian, with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect, Celtic in its sound; and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven. No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese; the Greeks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as Moslems; and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither.

Their habits are predatory--all are armed; and the red-shawled Arnaouts, the Montenegrins, Chimariots, and Gegdes, are treacherous;[215] the others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character. As far as my own experience goes, I can speak favourably. I was attended by two, an Infidel and a Mussulman, to Constantinople and every other part of Turkey which came within my observation; and more faithful in peril, or indefatigable in service, are rarely to be found. The Infidel was named Basilius; the Moslem, Dervish Tahiri; the former a man of middle age, and the latter about my own. Basili was strictly charged by Ali Pacha in person to attend us; and Dervish was one of fifty who accompanied us through the forests of Acarnania to the banks of Achelous, and onward to Messalonghi in aetolia. There I took him into my own service, and never had occasion to repent it till the moment of my departure.

When, in 1810, after the departure of my friend Mr. Hobhouse for England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea, these men saved my life by frightening away my physician, whose throat they threatened to cut if I was not cured within a given time. To this consolatory a.s.surance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr.

Romanelli's prescriptions, I attributed my recovery.[gg] I had left my last remaining English servant at Athens; my dragoman was as ill as myself, and my poor Arnaouts nursed me with an attention which would have done honour to civilization. They had a variety of adventures; for the Moslem, Dervish, being a remarkably handsome man, was always squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch that four of the princ.i.p.al Turks paid me a visit of remonstrance at the Convent on the subject of his having taken a woman from the bath--whom he had lawfully bought, however--a thing quite contrary to etiquette. Basili also was extremely gallant amongst his own persuasion, and had the greatest veneration for the church, mixed with the highest contempt of churchmen, whom he cuffed upon occasion in a most heterodox manner. Yet he never pa.s.sed a church without crossing himself; and I remember the risk he ran in entering St. Sophia, in Stambol, because it had once been a place of his worship. On remonstrating with him on his inconsistent proceedings, he invariably answered, "Our church is holy, our priests are thieves:" and then he crossed himself as usual, and boxed the ears of the first "papas" who refused to a.s.sist in any required operation, as was always found to be necessary where a priest had any influence with the Cogia Bashi[216] of his village. Indeed, a more abandoned race of miscreants cannot exist than the lower orders of the Greek clergy.

When preparations were made for my return, my Albanians were summoned to receive their pay. Basili took his with an awkward show of regret at my intended departure, and marched away to his quarters with his bag of piastres. I sent for Dervish, but for some time he was not to be found; at last he entered, just as Signor Logotheti,[217] father to the ci-devant Anglo-consul of Athens, and some other of my Greek acquaintances, paid me a visit. Dervish took the money in his hand, but on a sudden dashed it to the ground; and clasping his hands, which he raised to his forehead, rushed out of the room weeping bitterly. From that moment to the hour of my embarkation, he continued his lamentations, and all our efforts to console him only produced this answer, "?'afe??e? [M'apheinei]", "He leaves me." Signer Logotheti, who never wept before for anything less than the loss of a para (about the fourth of a farthing), melted; the padre of the convent, my attendants, my visitors--and I verily believe that even Sterne's "foolish fat scullion" would have left her "fish-kettle" to sympathize with the unaffected and unexpected sorrow of this barbarian.[218]

For my own part, when I remembered that, a short time before my departure from England, a n.o.ble and most intimate a.s.sociate had excused himself from taking leave of me because he had to attend a female relation "to a milliner's,"[219] I felt no less surprised than humiliated by the present occurrence and the past recollection. That Dervish would leave me with some regret was to be expected; when master and man have been scrambling over the mountains of a dozen provinces together, they are unwilling to separate; but his present feelings, contrasted with his native ferocity, improved my opinion of the human heart. I believe this almost feudal fidelity is frequent amongst them.

One day, on our journey over Parna.s.sus, an Englishman in my service gave him a push in some dispute about the baggage, which he unluckily mistook for a blow; he spoke not, but sat down leaning his head upon his hands.

Foreseeing the consequences, we endeavoured to explain away the affront, which produced the following answer:--"I _have been_ a robber; I _am_ a soldier; no captain ever struck me; _you_ are my master, I have eaten your bread, but by _that_ bread! (a usual oath) had it been otherwise, I would have stabbed the dog, your servant, and gone to the mountains." So the affair ended, but from that day forward he never thoroughly forgave the thoughtless fellow who insulted him. Dervish excelled in the dance of his country, conjectured to be a remnant of the ancient Pyrrhic: be that as it may, it is manly, and requires wonderful agility. It is very distinct from the stupid Romaika,[220] the dull round-about of the Greeks, of which our Athenian party had so many specimens.

The Albanians in general (I do not mean the cultivators of the earth in the provinces, who have also that appellation, but the mountaineers) have a fine cast of countenance; and the most beautiful women I ever beheld, in stature and in features, we saw _levelling_ the _road_ broken down by the torrents between Delvinachi and Libochabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good Arnaout horseman; my own preferred the English saddles, which, however, they could never keep. But on foot they are not to be subdued by fatigue.

12.

And pa.s.sed the barren spot, Where sad Penelope o'erlooked the wave.

Stanza x.x.xix. lines 1 and 2.

Ithaca.

13.

Actium--Lepanto--fatal Trafalgar.

Stanza xl. line 5.

Actium and Trafalgar need no further mention. The battle of Lepanto [October 7, 1571], equally b.l.o.o.d.y and considerable, but less known, was fought in the Gulf of Patras. Here the author of Don Quixote lost his left hand.

["His [Cervantes'] galley the _Marquesa_, was in the thick of the fight, and before it was over he had received three gun-shot wounds, two in the breast and one on the left hand or arm." In consequence of his wound "he was seven months in hospital before he was discharged. He came out with his left hand permanently disabled; he had lost the use of it, as Mercury told him in the 'Viaje del Parnase,' for the greater glory of the right."--_Don Quixote_, A Translation by John Ormsby, 1885, _Introduction_, i. 13.]

14.

And hailed the last resort of fruitless love.

Stanza xli. line 3.