of a foreign king, and Trelawny thought that Byron was really impressed by the possibility of receiving a crown. Byron hinted to Parry afterwards of great offers which had been made to him. Fancies of this kind may have passed through his mind. Yet his general judgment of the situation was remarkable for its strong sense. His cynical tendencies at least kept him free from the enthusiasts' illusions, and did not damp his zeal.
In Cephalonia Byron had some conversations upon religious topics with Dr. Kennedy, physician of the garrison. Kennedy reported them in a book, in which he unfortunately thought more of expounding his argument than of reporting Byron. Byron had, in fact, no settled views. His heterodoxy did not rest upon reasoning, but upon sentiment. He was curiously superstitious through life, and seems to have preferred catholicism to other religions. Lady Byron told Crabb Robinson (5 March 1855) that Byron had been made miserable by the gloomy Calvinism from which, she said, he had never freed himself. Some passages in his letters, and the early ‘Prayer to Nature’—an imitation of Pope's ‘Universal Prayer’—seem to imply a revolt from the doctrines to which Lady Byron referred. ‘Cain,’ his most serious utterance, clearly favours the view that the orthodox theology gave a repulsive or a nugatory answer to the great problems. But, in truth, Byron's scepticism was part of his quarrel with cant. He hated the religious dogma as he hated the political creed and the social system of the respectable world. He disavowed sympathy with Shelley's opinions, and probably never gave a thought to the philosophy in which Shelley was interested.
Trelawny was now with Odysseus and the chiefs of Eastern Greece. Prince Mavrocordato, the most prominent of the Western Greeks, had at last occupied Missolonghi. Byron sent Colonel Stanhope (afterwards Lord Harrington), a representative of the Greek committee, with a letter to Mavrocordato and another to the general government (2 Dec. and 30 Nov. 1823), insisting upon the necessity of union; and on 28 Dec. sailed himself, on the entreaty of Mavrocordato and Stanhope. The voyage was hazardous. Gamba's ship was actually seized by a Turkish man-of-war, and he owed his release to the lucky accident that his captain had once saved the Turkish captain's life. Byron, in a ‘mistico,’ took shelter under some rocks called the Scrophes. Thence, with some gunboats sent to their aid, they reached Missolonghi, in spite of a gale, in which Byron showed great coolness. Byron was heartily welcomed. Mavrocordato was elected governor-general. Attempts were made to organise troops. Byron took into his pay a body of five hundred disorderly Suliotes. He met thickening difficulties with unexpected temper, firmness, and judgment. Demands for money came from all sides; Byron told Parry that he had been asked for fifty thousand dollars in a day. He raised sums on his own credit, and urged the Greek committee to provide a loan. His indignation when Gamba spent too much upon some red cloth was a comic exhibition of his usual economy—hardly unreasonable under the circumstances. His first object was an expedition against Lepanto, held, it was said, by a weak garrison ready to come over. At the end of January he was named commander-in-chief. His wild troops were utterly unprovided with the stores required for an assault. The Greek committee had sent two mountain guns, with ammunition, and some English artisans under William Parry, a ‘rough burly fellow’ (Trelawny, ii. 149), who had been a clerk at Woolwich. Parry after a long voyage reached Missolonghi on 5 Feb. 1824. In the book to which he gave his name, and for which he supplied materials, he professes to have received Byron's confidence. Byron called him ‘old boy,’ laughed at his sea slang, his ridiculous accounts of Bentham (one of the Greek committee), and played practical jokes upon him. Parry landed his stores, set his artisans to work, and gave himself military airs. The Suliotes became mutinous. They demanded commissions, says Gamba, for 150 out of three or four hundred men. Byron, disgusted, threatened to discharge them all, and next day, 15 Feb., they submitted. The same day Byron was seized with an alarming fit—the doctors disputed whether epileptic or apoplectic; but in any case so severe that Byron said he should have died in another minute. Half an hour later a false report was brought that the Suliotes were rising to seize the magazine. Next day, while Byron was still suffering from the disease and the leeches applied by the doctors, who could hardly stop the bleeding, a tumultuous mob of Suliotes broke into his room. Stanhope says that the courage with which he awed the mutineers was ‘truly sublime.’ On the 17th a Turkish brig came ashore, and was burned by the Turks after Byron had prepared an attack. On the 19th a quarrel arose between the Suliotes and the guards of the arsenal, and a Swedish officer, Sasse, was killed. The English artificers, alarmed at discovering that shooting was, as Byron says, a ‘part of housekeeping’ in these parts, insisted on leaving for peaceable regions. The Suliotes became intolerable, and
