[Ward's essay, published just after Trelawny's death, reflects the general nineteenth-century acceptance of Trelawny's version of his own life and celebrates him as one of the last of the truly adventurous spirits.]

In the course of last season a collection of pictures was exhibited in Bond Street which not unnaturally attracted a good deal of notice. It was a small collection, comprising not more than eighteen or twenty canvases, and all the works were by one hand; but that hand was Mr. Millais'. Each step in the development of his genius and characteristics was illustrated by at least one picture, and his later style was shown by none better than by the “North-West Passage.” Visitors to the Academy exhibition of some four or five years ago, may remember that this picture had a conspicuous position in the large room, and was ever surrounded by a crowd, for it called to mind the then recent attempt made by this country to penetrate to the North Pole. The figures were those of a young girl sitting on a low stool reading, and an old white-bearded man in a blue sailor-suit and with a glass of rum and water beside him. He was listening to the story of the expedition, and the spectator could not fail to be struck with the thought that if the terrible enterprise were ever to be carried through, it must be by the help of such a man as the old one in the picture; for nothing could exceed the expression of resolution given by the clenched hand as it rested on the table, or the look of concentrated energy in the whole face as he said: “It must be done!”

That old man was Edward John Trelawny, whose career has just closed, and who had had, up to middle life at least, more personal adventures than, perhaps, any man living.

Born in 1792, the younger son of an ancient Cornish family, he inherited a name that has found a place in the Volkslieder of the West of England. But very little is known to the outside world of his early years; and indeed his life had been such a full one that anything like an adequate view of it could not be given in an article of this kind. It will be sufficient to offer a brief account of the years 1820-25, of which he has written in his book, Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author; for those are the years of highest interest in his career, and the period when his life may be said to have attained historic value.

After some years of adventure, “of moving accidents by flood and field,” Trelawny found himself in the year 1820 at Geneva. It was at the house of a friend, on the outskirts of that pleasant city, that he first met Medwin and Williams—men whose names and lives are as closely joined with the last period of Shelley's career as Trelawny's own. They were young subalterns just returned from India, and at that time on furlough. Medwin was enthusiastic about Shelley, whom he had met quite lately, and sang his praises over the dinner-table with such evident sincerity, and such enthusiasm, that Trelawny's desire to know the poet was keenly aroused. Who was this young and daring bard who was striving with all his might to overthrow the settled order of things, to loose the bands that held society together, whose every poem was a blast of revolutionary breath, who had been driven forth from his own country amid the howls and execrations of an outraged community? Trelawny's love of adventure prompted him to seek the acquaintance of such an one. But these two men, so truly different as to suggest a doubt whether they were made of the same constituent elements of flesh and blood, and yet between whom in a very short time there sprang up so true and warm a friendship, were not to meet just then. Trelawny was called by urgent private business to England, and it was not until the early part of 1822 that he first saw Shelley.

It may be interesting to note here that a little time before Trelawny met Medwin and Williams, he had, most unexpectedly, encountered Wordsworth, whom he asked abruptly what he thought of Shelley. “Nothing,” replied the elder bard; and then, seeing Trelawny's surprise, added, “A poet who has not produced a good poem before he is twenty-five, we may conclude cannot and never will do so.” It is quite enough to mention that at this time the ‘Cenci,’ perhaps the ‘Prometheus,’ certainly the ‘Lines Written among the Enganean Hills,’ and innumerable exquisite lyrics, had been published; but one must also remember that, some years afterwards, Wordsworth admitted that “Shelley was the greatest master of harmonious verse in our modern literature.”

It was late one evening in the spring of 1822 that Trelawny arrived at Pisa. He had had a troublesome and fatiguing journey from London, and was only too glad to receive the warm welcome of his friends the Williamses, between whom and himself a correspondence had been kept up since their parting, more than a year before, at Paris, whither they had accompanied him on his way from Geneva to London. They were now under the same roof with the Shelleys. Trelawny tells the story of that first evening in a manner inimitable from its picturesque grace, and it would be worse than ridiculous to give it in any other than his own words:

The Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams' eyes followed the direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, “Come in, Shelley; it's only our friend Tre just arrived.”

Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands; and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed feminine and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies, he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment; was it possible this mild-looking, beardless boy could be the veritable monster at war with the world? … He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his “sizings.” Mrs. Williams saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had in his hand. His face brightened, and he answered briskly:

“Calderon's Magico Prodigioso; I am translating some passages in it.”

“Oh, read it to us!”

Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly manner in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid interpretation of the story, and the case with which he translated into our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish poet were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After this touch of his quality, I no longer doubted his identity. A dead silence ensued; looking up, I asked, “Where is he?”

Mrs. Williams said, “Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where.”

Could anything be lighter, more graphic, more in accordance with the whole spirit of the scene than that description? It is a prose-poem. And here we may remark that Trelawny's qualifications for a biographer were in many respects high. He seldom or never mentions incidents except as illustrating idiosyncrasies, or contrasting qualities. His one aim appears to be to show people as they are; to make them live again in his pages; to give the individuality of each, and not to string together a collection of characteristics. He is particularly severe in his remarks on Moore's ‘Life of Byron' for failing in what may be called this dramatic quality; he says it is a poor collection of lords and ladies and festive gatherings, and fails utterly in showing the poet as he lived; and it must be owned that, in these fascinating volumes of his, Trelawny steers clear of the faults he condemns in Moore. Crotchety he no doubt was, and his inferences and deductions may often be challenged; but, unless we are to set aside his work as wholly unveracious in its record of facts, we must admit that it is valuable in quite an unique manner as a presentment of the lives of the people it deals with. There is a realistic force about it that will not and cannot be argued with; it has the accuracy of a photograph, and the breadth and character of a portrait by a true artist.

The day after their meeting, Trelawny was taken by Shelley to call on Byron. The Pilgrim advanced to meet them from an inner chamber, quickly, and with short steps, as was his wont; for his lameness made it difficult for him to adopt any other than a half-running gait. He was somewhat embarrassed at seeing a stranger, but welcomed both visitors warmly.

He wore a tartan jacket braided—he said it was the Gordon pattern, and that his mother was of that race; a blue velvet cap with a gold band, and very loose nankeen trousers, strapped down so as to cover his feet; his throat was not bare, as represented in drawings.

In external appearance Byron realised that ideal standard with which imagination adorns genius. He was in the prime of life—thirty-four; of middle height, five feet eight and a half inches; regular features without a stain or furrow on his pallid skin; his shoulders broad, chest open, body and limbs finely proportioned. His small highly-finished head and curly hair had an airy and graceful appearance from the massiveness and length of his throat; you saw genius in his eyes and lips. In short, Nature could do little more than she had done for him, both in outward form and in the inward spirit she had given to animate it.

While the author was taking these observations, the poets were in an animated discussion about some work of Byron's. Presently, Shelley left, and Byron invited Trelawny to stay and join him in a game of billiards. Instantly he dropped the high themes upon which he was ever ready to converse with Shelley (and only with him). Trelawny says: “I had come prepared to see a solemn mystery, and so far as I could judge from the first act, it seemed to me very like a solemn farce.” Yes—there was the Pilgrim of Eternity knocking billiard-balls about; talking incessantly of himself and his own doings great and small; recalling trivial incidents of past years; uttering bitter things; but above and before all, trying to show himself as a gay and fashionable man of the world, for Trelawny tells us there was nothing Byron hated so much as to be considered and treated as a poet. He had been the darling of the Regency. He had drunk deep, and played wildly, and lived recklessly, and had learnt the lesson of the fashionable world, that any expression of real feeling, or any yielding to sentiment, was to be rigidly eschewed. Shelley was the only man who could induce him to talk of literature. His vanity was, as all mankind knows, inordinate; and he wished all to think worse of him than he really was. “Men of genius are not to be measured by the ordinary standard of men; their organisation is different; they stand higher and see farther; we hope to see the diviner part of human nature exemplified in the life of a pre-eminent poet. Byron disenchanted me.” So says Trelawny: but however great the lack of “the diviner part” in Byron's nature, he found that want more than atoned for by the fulness of the divineness of Shelley.

Trelawny was by no means “laudator temporis acti.” He is hard all through these volumes on the failings of the Regency period; and many are the sarcastic allusions to “the good old times.” But neither is he tender to the weaknesses of to-day—to its shams, its sentimentality, its adoration of wealth and rank, its false morality.

His views on Byron's marriage difficulties are of course worth reading. He deals remorselessly with Lady Byron—says she was self-willed, intolerant, jealous, and vindictive, and through some sharply written pages gives us a picture of their married life. Indeed, his remarks on marriage generally are anything but encouraging to those about to take the plunge.

Very pretty books have been written on the “Loves of the Angels,” and “Loves of the Poets,” and “Love Universal”—but when lovers are paired and caged together in holy matrimony, the curtain is dropped, and we hear no more of them. It may be they moult their feathers and lose their song.

And again:

Within certain degrees of affinity marriages are forbidden; so they should be where there is no natural affinity of feelings, habits, tastes or sympathies. It is very kind in the saints to ally themselves to sinners, but in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred it turns out a failure.

Without doubt the most interesting part of the first volume is that which recounts the circumstances attending the death of Shelley and Williams. The world knows the story well enough, and it need not be repeated here. But it is not so well known that Trelawny was the moving spirit in an enterprise that began so brightly and ended in such darkness. He had one day taken Shelley to Leghorn; they had been on board many vessels in the harbour, and the poet had been charmed. He was, as De Quincey beautifully calls him, the “eternal child,” and nothing had for a long time so delighted him as this visit. He saw ships from every country; he was entertained by English, French, Russian, American sailors. He saw the knowing Yankee skipper and contrasted him with the cunning and half-piratical captain of a Levantine trader; his eyes danced with glee as they took in the varied colours of the different sails—the red canvas of the Southern seas, the pure white sail of the Northern ocean, the indigo or brown of other waters. The ships were to him so many living creatures, and their different forms like various kinds of beautiful seabirds. When, therefore, as they drove home, Trelawny said: “You get Byron to join us, and with your family and the Williamses, and books, houses and boats, undisturbed by the botheration of the world, we shall have all that reasonable people require,” Shelley at once agreed. The plan was to form a colony on the Gulf of Spezzia, and Byron fell in with the suggestion eagerly, and at once asked Trelawny to get him a yacht built. In practical matters of every kind Trelawny was indispensable, and this was work after his own heart. At Genoa dwelt an old naval friend of his, Captain Daniel Roberts, and to him was given an order for Byron's yacht and for an open boat for Shelley and Williams. The plans were drawn, the estimates sent in, and the work proceeded. Meanwhile, Williams and Trelawny rode along the coast looking everywhere for a suitable house for the colonists. After much difficulty one was found in the centre of the Bay of Lerici. It was a desolate and deserted building called the Villa Magni, with not much accommodation, and what there was of a kind only to be made suitable after much labour. However, it was taken, and, after some time and money spent in preparing it for habitation, was occupied by the Shelleys, Williamses, and Trelawny. Here in this delightful country, the blue Mediterranean at their feet, the purple Apennines behind them, the dwellers passed some weeks of happiness, and Trelawny tells with much vividness the story of their every-day life.

Nothing is more remarkable than the way in which, from the very first, he seems to have taken his place among them as truly one of them. It is to be supposed they felt the value of his sagacity, his knowledge of men and things, his energy, his practical qualities. It was not for nothing he had been a traveller and an adventurer; there were few things he could not turn his hand to; while, of course, in everything connected with ships he was a past master. He used to give Shelley and Williams lessons in the steering and management of their little vessel, and relates some amusing tales of their “lubberly” qualities. Mr. Rossetti bears witness to Trelawny's value, and says:

One who soon established a position of great prominence and intimacy was Captain E. J. Trelawny. We owe to this gentleman one of the best books extant regarding the poet whom he understood and loved at once … The poet thought Trelawny noble and generous, and Mrs. Shelley soon—too soon—had reason to regard him as the only quite disinterested friend she had at hand.

The dark events of the 5th of July, 1822, are told in the Records with great exactness and much feeling. How little Trelawny knew when he brought about the building of Byron's schooner the Bolivar, and Shelley's boat the Don Juan, that he was preparing in one of them the instrument of death!

It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark,
That sank so low that sacred head of thine:

But he was always eager for anything that promised, in however small a degree, adventure and action; and the freedom from the trammels of the world promised by their new life enchanted him. He went through with anything he had set his mind upon, and had a very decided contempt for Byron's vacillations of purpose. Shelley's failures in temporal matters he viewed with tenderness and almost with awe; for in spite of his own worldly shrewdness, his direct and sailor-like way of coming to the point at once, his manner of looking with undazed eye at things as they really are, and not as poets and idealists see them—as they ought to be—he knew (no man better!) that there is in this world something higher than what we call success, and he felt, he recognised, he bowed before the true divinity of Shelley's soul.

The bodies of the drowned were not found till seven or eight days after that fatal squall. During the long and anxious hours of those days Trelawny exhibited the vigilance and energy that might have been expected of him. He was in the saddle the whole time, riding up the coast and down the coast, organising search parties, directing them, promising rewards, stimulating their exertions by his own powerful example. At last the corpses were washed up, dreadfully disfigured by their long immersion in salt-water and from other causes, and we all know the touching incident of the volume of Keats' last poem, ‘Lamia,’ being found in Shelley's pocket. He had thrust it hastily away when the storm reached them, and had gone—as one may think gladly—to meet him whose early death he had sung in the noblest elegy in our language:

The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Had beaconed from the abode where the Eternal are.

One of the saddest tasks that ever fell to the lot of man was now Trelawny's—he had to break the desolating tidings to the widowed women in the Villa Magni. For days they had been alone, cheered sometimes by a word of hope from the searchers for the dead, but, as we can well imagine, for the most part only hoping against hope. The news came to Trelawny in the dusk of the evening as he was going to the house. He approached the silent dwelling, and for a moment as he stood on the threshold, his heart, as well it might, failed him. He paused, and the Italian maid seeing him in the doorway in the uncertain light, and taking him for an apparition, screamed. He went past her and ascended the stairs. As he entered the chamber Mrs. Shelley rose and, approaching him, looked close into his face. She read her doom in his countenance, but managed to gasp out some question as to what tidings he had brought. How could he speak to her and the other wife words which would desolate their hearts? He found no utterance, and, turning slowly away, in silence left the house.

The bodies were buried above the reach of the waves, and, in agreement with the quarantine laws, quicklime was thrown upon them. And then Trelawny set out to gain the permission of the authorities to build a funeral-pyre on the shore, and burn the corpses in the old classic manner. Many delays took place; our Consul urged the case, and Byron's great name was used. At length leave was given. The pyre was built, the fuel placed, and the torch applied.

Dense clouds of smoke arose from the pyre and hung about; salt, frankincense and wine were used, and presently the clear flames shot upward, and when Shelley's body was consuming, it was noticed that this was the signal for the swift approach of a curlew which flew wailing and screaming round and round the fires, and would not be driven away. Byron, Leigh Hunt, Trelawny and the Italian officials, with many sight-seers, stood and watched, and when the flames were somewhat subsiding, Trelawny snatched from the midst of the fire the heart of Shelley.

The ashes of both bodies were reverently enclosed in caskets, and those of Shelley were, after some time, sent to Rome. There, in a little recess under the pyramid said to be that of Caius Cestius, Trelawny built two sepulchres. One received the ashes of the poet; the other was for Trelawny himself, but it is still empty. The heart—

That heart whose beating blood was running song—

was not buried. It was given to Mrs. Shelley; she gave it to Leigh Hunt, and some years ago his family gave it to Sir Percy Shelley. It now rests, or used to rest, in a beautiful urn on a mantelshelf at Boscombe. The ashes, Trelawny was told (but he did not positively affirm it) were taken from Rome by stealth, and are now in the possession of Lady Shelley.

Trelawny was now about to enter upon a new phase of life. He was thirty years of age, in the very flower of his manhood, and had been living for a year or two a life of a very peaceful and uneventful kind. Not an unfruitful life, however; for his moral and intellectual nature had received impulse and tone from his every-day association with two of the finest spirits that have appeared in this century. But action, great or small, was to him absolutely necessary, and he began by convoying Leigh Hunt and his family from Pisa, by way of Leghorn, to Genoa. He assisted Byron, too, in his removal, and makes some amusing remarks on the helplessness and bustle that prevailed in the poet's household. Hunt had gone to Italy to start the Liberal with Byron, but the enterprise was a failure and was speedily abandoned. Although a man of honest convictions and distinguished, a bold thinker, and a fearless writer, he was a Cockney, and neither Byron nor Trelawny could forgive him this. Besides, the latter says that two minds more differently constituted than Hunt's and the poet's never existed; so no wonder the Liberal died early. Moreover, it is added with a touch of genuine pathos, “The fine spirit that had animated and held us together was gone. Left to our own devices, we degenerated apace.”

The revolutionary war in Greece had been already raging for some years, and now Byron felt the fire kindling within him. He said that everything good he had ever written had been inspired by Greece, and he would fight for her. But his vacillations were tedious in the extreme. Perhaps his health or his lameness retarded him—anyhow, it was generally months before he did what he had long talked of. At last he put himself in communication with the Greek Committee in London, who only too gladly availed themselves of his name and money. To make a long story short, he sent for Trelawny, who was absent on a riding tour in the interior of Italy, to come to him at Albaro and arrange everything. A ship—the brig Hercules, Captain Scott—was chartered, fitted, provisioned and manned, and set sail from Genoa on the 13th of July, 1823. The voyage, after a rough beginning, was prosperous, and Byron in the highest spirits. They passed Stromboli, Etna, Scylla, Charybdis, and through the beautiful Straits of Messina. Of Stromboli he said, “If I live another year, you will see this scene in a fifth canto of ‘Childe Harolde.’” And “Sometimes,” says Trelawny, as they passed the “sunny and fertile coast of Sicily—gliding close by its smooth hills and sheltered coves—Byron would point to some serene nook and exclaim, ‘There I could be happy.’”

Cephalonia was reached on the 3rd of August, but Byron found an excellent reason for more dilatoriness in the fact that Lieutenant Blaquiere, the emissary of the Greek Committee in London, had left Argostoli. It struck the poet that he had been used as a decoy, and he determined to move no further for the present. It was a saying of his: “If I am stopped for six days at any place, I cannot be made to move for six months.” Trelawny, however, and a Mr. Hamilton Browne, who had joined the party at Leghorn, determined to be up and doing. Byron gave them letters to the Greek Government—

if any such constituted authorities could be found, expressing his readiness to serve them when they had satisfied him how he could do so. As I took leave of him, his last words were:

“Let me hear from you often—come back soon. If things are farcical, they will do for ‘Don Juan;’ if heroical, you shall have another canto of ‘Childe Harold.”

“Come back soon!” When Trelawny did come back, it was to see the Pilgrim of Eternity in his coffin.

A transcript of several pages of Trelawny's book ought now to be given; for it is impossible in any other way to convey an idea of the vividness with which he describes the scenes and adventures he and his companion met with. They passed tracts of country strewn with the whitening bones of the insurgents and the Turks; they saw the ashes of what were once happy villages; they beheld fields full of rank weeds where once harvests were bounteous; they gazed on the shattered remains of barricades and fortifications. And these ghastly scenes lay in regions associated forever with historic names that are the blessed heritage of humanity.

Corinth was reached, and there the companions met many of the chieftains of the war.

Thence we crossed to Salamis, and found the legislative and executive bodies of the Provisional Government accusing each other of embezzling the public money … There, too, I saw the first specimens of the super-subtle Phanariotes, pre-eminent in all evil, reared at Constantinople, and trained in the arts of deception by the most adroit professors in the world.

The scheming, the intriguing, the selfishness passed description. ‘Troilus and Cressida’ contains no instance of offended vanity, and dilatoriness and sloth, and deception, that can at all compare with what the Englishmen saw. They left in disgust, sailed for Hydra, and sent deputies from thence to England to arrange for a loan. Hamilton Browne accompanied the deputies, while Trelawny stayed in Greece.

At Athens he met Odysseus, of whom he at once formed a high opinion. “Descended from the most renowned race of Klephtes, he was a master of the art of mountain warfare, and a thorough Greek in cunning; strong-bodied, nimble-witted, and nimble-footed.” In short, Odysseus was a Grecian hero of the old classic type, and, though capable of any shifts or stratagems, incorruptible in the cause of Greek independence. Trelawny joined him in an expedition to Eub a against the Turks; then accompanied him to Salona, where a Congress was to be held; then was sent by him to Missolonghi, where Byron was living at that time (the spring of 1824), to induce the poet and the leaders of Western Greece to attend the Congress.

Missolonghi, on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, was and is the most pestiferous and malarious spot in the whole of Greece. Trelawny knew Byron's predisposition to fever, and feared for his safety directly he heard where he was. On the way from Salona he met a messenger with a small guard going to that town from Missolonghi. He had a foreboding of evil, and his heart sank. He paused: then passed by the escort without exchanging a word, and suffered the messenger to go some distance on his way before he had the courage to turn back and demand his tidings. “Byron was dead!” “Thus, by a stroke of fate, my hopes of being of use in Greece were extinguished.” Yes, and his ambitions too; for it is no secret that he used every exertion to get Byron to Athens, assured that once the poet was there as the dispenser of the English loan and the controller of the lawless chieftains, in a city he loved, whose very atmosphere is inspiration, whose associations would have stirred every fibre of his nature and urged him to loftier endeavours than he had ever yet made—in short, with unbounded power and a stimulus to use it, he would have been offered the crown of Greece. But that was never to be. Death, as Raleigh says, had gathered together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, the ambition of this man, and covered it over with these two narrow words—“hic jacet.”

Once more we have to turn to Trelawny's Records. He arrived at Missolonghi, and going straight to the house where Byron had lived, met the poet's servant Fletcher.

As if he knew my wishes, he led me up a narrow stair into a small room, with nothing in it but a coffin standing on trestles. No word was spoken by either of us; he withdrew the black pall and the white shroud, and there lay the embalmed body of the Pilgrim—more beautiful in death than in life. The contraction of the muscles and skin had effaced every line that time or passion had ever traced on it; few marble busts could have matched its stainless white, the harmony of its proportions, and perfect finish: yet he had been dissatisfied with that body and longed to cast its slough. How often I had heard him curse it! He was jealous of the genius of Shakespeare—that might well be—but where had he seen the face or form worthy to excite his envy?

Then Fletcher is sent away, and Trelawny does the deed for which the blame of most people has unsparingly and, as one must think, justly, fallen upon him. Merely to gratify a curiosity (which had already on one occasion been gratified by Byron himself while they were bathing), or, as Trelawny says, “to confirm or remove my doubts as to the exact cause of his lameness, I uncovered the Pilgrim's feet and was answered.” And then follow exact particulars which might in this case, as in the case of the burning of Shelley's body, where the details given are, in one or two places, simply revolting, have been omitted. It is a pity he did this thing, and a pity he has written of it in the calm, matter-of-fact manner he has used. But then sentiment had only a small part in Trelawny's nature, and the reader of these Records will be struck particularly by one thing, that between the author and Byron there was very little real friendship. The poet failed in tact, temper, judgment, decision, and many other qualities which Trelawny possessed. The latter was therefore necessary to him, and in his turn was naturally and justly proud of being the associate of, perhaps, the most famous man in Europe. He never speaks of Shelley except with genuine affection, while of Byron he says innumerable hard things. Their natures were as far apart as the east is from the west, and nothing could make them amalgamate. In the first shock of Byron's death, Trelawny did indeed write, “the world has lost its greatest man; I my best friend.” But this is tempered down in the Records to, “I had a strong feeling of goodwill towards Byron,” and the impression that his book leaves on the reader's mind, is that the feeling of goodwill was not always a strong one.

He next began a life of great activity, organising, in the first place, and paying out of his own means, a small corps of men. They were a motley crew. Some foreign soldiers, who had been in Byron's pay, joined him. He had also five brass guns with ammunition. The total force was fifty or sixty horses and mules, and a hundred men, among whom only one spoke English, and he was a Scotchman named Fenton.

Many adventures followed in different parts of Greece—chiefly in the east, and while Trelawny was in company with Odysseus—all of which are told in a racy and realistic way.

The history of the Greek War of Independence is a difficult and complicated one, and need not be alluded to in this article, except in so far as it touches on the doings of Odysseus and, through him, Trelawny. The country was, soon after Byron's death, in a state of anarchy. The Government had no control over the military leaders; these seized upon any land from which they had succeeded in expelling the Turks, and held it as their own. But the dwellers in the towns, civilians, jealous of the increasing power of the military chiefs, disputed their right to do this, and began to form a self-constituted government. Mavrocordato, the enemy of Odysseus, Tricoupi, and Colette, took the lead; but the soldiers paid little heed to them, not thinking it possible that a government without money could be very formidable or last long. The Government, did, however, succeed in getting a loan from England—no less than £40,000. They assembled at Nauplia, and at once determined to crush their military rivals.

Odysseus had the command of Eastern Greece before the revolution began. He had succeeded in subduing the brigands in his district, and had persuaded such of them as submitted, to join his forces. His army was small, but his genius for command was great, and, as he told Trelawny, he had for three years, by stratagem and force, and without aid from the Government, kept the Turks out of the Morea. When a National Assembly met at Nauplia, Odysseus stood up and denounced the Government, accusing them of embezzlement and fraud, and saying that the good English gold had gone into their own pockets and not into the channels for which it was intended. That same night his life was attempted, and though the delinquents were arrested and handed over to the Government, they were never punished.

At last affairs became so bad through the disorganisation and plotting and counter-plotting, and embezzlement and treachery, that the brave Klephte chieftain was forced to retire to his own people. They dwelt on and about Mount Parnassus, and were as absolutely loyal to their chief as ever were the members of a Highland clan to theirs. In one of the steep and all but inaccessible crevices of the great mountain was a large cave. This Odysseus had, with much labour and skill, rendered perfectly habitable, and, by the help of a succession of ladders which could be used by those in possession to prevent the access of enemies, tolerably easy of reach. When the war broke out the chieftain had placed there his family and goods, and stored the cave with provisions for some years. It was such a place as one reads of in a romance. Most difficult of access, it was vast in size and absolutely impregnable if a watch were set over the ladders. The entrance to it was thirty feet high, so that it was perfectly light and airy; in front was a wide and smooth terrace of solid rock, which without much difficulty lent itself to purposes of fortification; many galleries and chambers opened out from the main cavern, all of them large enough for habitation. From hidden springs on the crown of Parnassus, filtered through the rock a stream of limpid purity and fell into a large cistern on the terrace. The views were limitless and splendid, and the air you inhaled was the very breath of heaven.

The fortunes of war and his own restless spirit called Odysseus back to Athens. There, some months afterwards, he was imprisoned, most cruelly tortured to make him tell where his treasure was hidden, hamstrung, and at last flung from the tower of his confinement and killed. So perished this brave chieftain—the ablest soldier and perhaps the only honest man of all the Greeks. His own ability and his own honesty had been his ruin; for these he was murdered.

It is not possible to follow, in this article, Trelawny's minute account of the negotiations and scheming of all sorts that now went on in Greece, nor of his life in the cave. At their last parting, Odysseus had called his men together and in their presence given everything over to “this Englishman,” and well Trelawny was qualified for the charge. Treachery, however, found its way to this altitude. Mention has been made of a Scotchman who joined Trelawny's corps when the latter went from Missolonghi to Salona, by name Fenton. This man was a spy, an informer, and a miscreant of the worst type. He had begged hard to be allowed to join the corps, and being an able fellow and full of activity and energy, and having, moreover, a nimble brain and a good address, had by slow degrees gained the confidence of his commander. “I sent him on many missions for money, to the seat of Government, to see what they were doing, and with letters to friendly chiefs … I supplied him with all he wanted—my purse was his.”

But every journey that his man Fenton made was undertaken by him with the secret determination to further the cause he had at heart, and that was—not the deliverance of Greece from the hand of her Turkish oppressors, but the betrayal of Trelawny and his cave and all it contained to the Secretary of War. For a furious jealousy of Odysseus and all his belongings possessed the Government. Sympathy of soul and feeling (if such men have souls and feelings) at once told the schemers that Fenton had his price. The cave was supposed to hold far more treasure than poor Odysseus had ever hoped for or even dreamed of, and the Scotchman's share was to be one-half of everything. The plan was to capture Odysseus and murder Trelawny, and the first part of this plot had been successfully carried out. The rest, however, was not so easy of accomplishment, for the Englishman was both wary and brave, and kept good watch against the approach of enemies from the outside. There was in the cave a weak-minded, bombastic, irresolute, pliable creature named Whitcombe. He had thrown in his lot with Greece simply, as he said, to seek adventures, and Fenton had brought him to Trelawny in the latter part of May 1825. He had been welcomed cordially, and for three days had been treated by the commander as a guest. On the fourth day, after dinner, the three compatriots sat out on the terrace smoking and drinking; every one else had retreated to the inner caves, for it was very hot. Fenton then proposed a shooting match with Whitcombe; a target was arranged, and several shots were fired. Suddenly Fenton turned to Trelawny, and proposed that he should match his pistol against their muskets. He agreed, and taking the pistol from his belt, fired. At the same instant he felt himself shot in the back, and heard both men exclaim, “What a horrid accident.” He said, “Fenton, this must have been accidental,” and Fenton, expressing the deepest sorrow, declared that it was so. The Scotchman then offered to shoot Whitcombe, whose gun had inflicted the wound, but Trelawny forbade him; whereupon Fenton hastily left him, following Whitcombe, who had gone to the entrance porch to make his escape.

But there was another reckoning to be made before they got away. One of the most valuable members of the little community was a noble dog, one of a breed that is found in the mountains of Pindus in Thessalia. Huge in size, they are yet more remarkable for courage and sagacity, and the one in the cave was a splendid specimen.

He would not enter a room; he patrolled the terrace at night, and was best pleased in the winter snowstorms, when the icicles hung on his long, brindled hair and shaggy mane. It was impossible to elude his vigilance or corrupt his fidelity—he could not be bribed. This is more than I can say of any Greek that I had dealings with, during the three years that I lived amongst them.

This dog saw at once that something was wrong, and growling savagely, barred the escape of the miscreants. His warning note was heard in the cavern, and one of the men, a Hungarian, was at his post in an instant. Fenton called to him, “A dreadful accident! will you come down and help?” The Hungarian answered, “No accident, but treachery! If you don't put your carbine down I shall shoot you.” Fenton had already raised his carbine, when the Hungarian fired, and killed him.

Whitcombe attempted to escape by the trap-door; the dog threw him on his back and held him as if he had been a rat. Achmett, a Turk, seized him, bound his arms, dragged him to a crane used for hoisting things from below, put a slip-knot in the rope, and placed it round his ankles to hang him. His convulsive shrieks and the frantic struggles he made as his executioners were hoisting him over the precipice, calling on God to witness that he was innocent, thrilled through my shattered nerves.

Trelawny, suffering as he was the acutest agony, every fibre in his body wrenched with pain, had yet the singular nobleness to stay the execution and, eventually, to forgive this wretched man. What became of him is not related.

And then began an exhibition of endurance and will that must remind readers of a scene that has but lately closed on the other side of the Atlantic. From the first day he was wounded, Trelawny determined to leave everything to nature. Doctors were scarce in Greece, and able ones did not exist at all, and the maimed man had more faith in his own constitution and the splendid mountain air than in fifth-rate surgery. He had been hit by two balls between the shoulders, one wound being close to the spine. One of the bullets found its way, by a tortuous avenue, into his mouth and, as he bent his head, fell with several teeth to the ground, the socket of the teeth was broken and the right arm paralysed. He neither lay down nor quite sat down, but placed himself in a leaning posture against the rock, and there he remained for twenty days. No portion of his dress was removed: no extra covering worn. He refused to be

bandaged, plastered, poulticed, or even washed; nor would I move or allow any one to look at my wound. I was kept alive by yolks of eggs and water for twenty days: it was forty days before there was any sensible diminution of pain; I then submitted to have my body sponged with spirit and water, and my dress partly changed. I was reduced in weight from thirteen stone to less than ten, and looked like a galvanised mummy.

It is a wonderful record of more than Spartan endurance. He next tells how he attempted to take solid food and of the agony of moving his shattered jaw. He tells, with grim humour, how he “refused all wishy-washy or spoon-food and stuck to wild boar, which in turn stuck to me; it spliced my bones and healed my flesh.” But his right arm was still paralysed, and after waiting three months in all, and little progress made, he determined to see a surgeon, for until the ball was extracted, the arm would never regain its muscular force. A Klephte surgeon was brought, and was told that unless he cured the Englishman he would be killed. Trelawny bared his breast, the leech made an incision with a razor and began searching with his finger and thumb for the ball. But it was not to be found, and the wounded man carried that bullet in his body till his death. It may be mentioned that the Greek surgeon was not called upon to pay the penalty of his failure, much, doubtless, to his surprise and delight.

Some time after this an English acquaintance appeared unexpectedly at the cave, having been brought thither by Klephtes. He persuaded Trelawny to take advantage of an offer to embark in an English ship, and brought him word that pressure had been put on the Greek Government, who would not interfere with such a step, although they naturally looked on a friend of Odysseus and an inheritor of his stronghold as an enemy.

Thus end Trelawny's Records for the last twenty pages are not, strictly speaking, within the scope of this article, containing, as they do, little but the author's views on the campaign in Greece, and Sir C. J. Napier's opinion of how the war should have been carried on.

Besides these most interesting Records, Trelawny was also author of a book which in its day made much stir, The Adventures of a Younger Son. It is a collection of the wildest and most romantic episodes told in a most vivid and realistic manner, with descriptive passages of eloquence and beauty. Autobiographical in form, it was supposed also to be true in fact; but as he gave it to the world as a work of fiction, as such, perhaps, it should be taken. It is in this respect much like ‘Vivian Grey’ or ‘David Copperfield,’ which no doubt are historical up to a certain point, but where that point is who but the authors could have said? The reviews spoke highly of the work, the ‘Spectator’ saying “it is the cleverest book of the season (1835) in its line, not excepting ‘Eugene Aram.’ Its freshness and vigour are perfectly surprising, and the various and curious experience it unfolds respecting the East in matter has been equalled by no book of travels, and excelled in no book of poetry.” And the ‘Quarterly’ noticed the book.

The Younger Son says the reviewer, “is not a work of fiction. It is, we are assured, a fragment of an autobiography of a man of remarkable talents, who has chosen to live a most extraordinary life, and to describe its incidents with, considering their character, a most extraordinary measure of fidelity.”

This passage at least may be taken to be true of the author himself:

From my soul, I, who had suffered so much from tyranny, abhorred oppression; [aided with the weak against the strong, and swore to dedicate myself, hand and heart, to war, even to the knife, against the triple alliance of hoary-headed impostors, their ministers and priests. When tyranny had triumphed, I followed the fortunes of those invincible spirits who wandered, exiled outcasts, over the world. Alas! those noble beings are no more.

In spite of this passage, it is probable that Trelawny was a Tory, and a Tory of the old school. Tyranny and oppression no doubt he hated he even fought against them; and priestcraft, whether of the Romish or Greek or English kind, he utterly abhorred. So did many Tories of the old school; so do many of the modern. There is nothing dearer to the heart and soul of a Tory than personal freedom and the power that this gives into the hands of those who are strong enough to seize it. And to an adventurer (using the word in its best sense) like Trelawny, this is the very breath of his existence.

It is impossible to do otherwise than regret that he has gone. One by one the old human links that connect the present day with the mighty infancy and youth of this century are being snapped. He was one of the last of those links, and certainly one who will be not a little missed; for what a great array of talent, splendour, and genius could he not take us back to! Not again to mention Shelley and Byron, we still find historic names connected with his—Leigh Hunt and Godwin, imprisoned for political writing that was hateful to the Government; Rogers, the poet; Tom Moore, whose Hibernian versatility made him a darling of society; John Murray, the publisher of Byron's works; John Cam Hobhouse, the poet's executor and greatest friend; all the Greek revolutionary leaders, Mavrocordato, Odysseus, Canaris and the rest; Jeremy Bentham; and many besides. These men he knew; some of them he influenced, and in turn was influenced by some of them. It cannot be said that he has made a mark in history—restless men never do; but he was the intimate friend of very many who have, and his immense force of character made him a power in any society he chose to enter. He had outlived all the famous friends of his earlier days, and death must have come to him as a welcome messenger. But his departure leaves us the poorer, inasmuch as each who knew him can say that through him, when he spoke of the great spirits of the past,

The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.