“Your letter, and that of the venerable Ignazio, have filled me with joy.  Your Excellency is exactly the person of whom we stand in need.  Let nothing prevent you from coming into this part of Greece.  The enemy threatens us in great number; but, by the help of God and your Excellency, they shall meet a suitable resistance.  I shall have something to do to-night against a corps of six or seven thousand Albanians, encamped close to this place.  The day after to-morrow I will set out with a few chosen companions, to meet your Excellency.  Do not delay.  I thank you for the good opinion you have of my fellow-citizens, which God grant you will not find ill-founded; and I thank you still more for the care you have so kindly taken of them.

“Believe me,” &c.

In the expectation that Lord Byron would proceed forthwith to Missolonghi, it had been the intention of Botzari, as the above letter announces, to leave the army, and hasten, with a few of his brother warriors, to receive their noble ally on his landing in a manner worthy of the generous mission on which he came.  The above letter, however, preceded but by a few hours his death.  That very night he penetrated, with but a handful of followers, into the midst of the enemy’s camp, whose force was eight thousand strong, and after leading his heroic band over heaps of dead, fell, at last, close to the tent of the Pasha himself.

The mention made in this brave Suliote’s letter of Lord Byron’s care of his fellow-citizens refers to a popular act done recently by the noble poet at Cephalonia, in taking into his pay, as a body-guard, forty of this now homeless tribe.  On finding, however, that for want of employment they were becoming restless and turbulent, he despatched them off soon after, armed and provisioned, to join in the defence of Missolonghi, which was at that time besieged on one side by a considerable force, and blockaded on the other by a Turkish squadron.  Already had he, with a view to the succour of this place, made a generous offer to the Government, which he thus states himself in one of his letters:—­“I offered to advance a thousand dollars a month for the succour of Missolonghi, and the Suliotes under Botzari (since killed); but the Government have answered me, that they wish to confer with me previously, which is in fact saying they wish me to expend my money in some other direction.  I will take care that it is for the public cause, otherwise I will not advance a para.  The opposition say they want to cajole me, and the party in power say the others wish to seduce me, so between the two I have a difficult part to play; however, I will have nothing to do with the factions unless to reconcile them if possible.”

In these last few sentences is described briefly the position in which Lord Byron was now placed, and in which the coolness, foresight, and self-possession he displayed sufficiently refute the notion that even the highest powers of imagination, whatever effect they may sometimes produce on the moral temperament, are at all incompatible with the sound practical good sense, the steadily balanced views, which the business of active life requires.