“I have arrived here in four days from Constantinople, which is considered as singularly quick, particularly for the season of the year. You northern gentry can have no conception of a Greek summer; which, however, is a perfect frost compared with Malta and Gibraltar, where I reposed myself in the shade last year, after a gentle gallop of four hundred miles, without intermission, through Portugal and Spain. You see, by my date, that I am at Athens again, a place which I think I prefer, upon the whole, to any I have seen. * * *
“My next movement is to-morrow into the Morea, where I shall probably remain a month or two, and then return to winter here, if I do not change my plans, which, however, are very variable, as you may suppose; but none of them verge to England.
“The Marquis of Sligo, my
old fellow collegian, is here, and wishes to accompany me into the Morea. We shall go
together for that purpose. Lord S. will afterwards pursue his way to the capital; and
Lord B. having seen all the wonders in that quarter, will let you know what he does
next, of which at present he is not quite certain. Malta is my perpetual post-office,
from which my letters are forwarded to all parts of the habitable globe:—by the by, I
have now been in Asia, Africa, and the east of Europe, and, indeed, made the most of my
time, without hurrying over the most interesting scenes of the ancient world. F * *, after having been toasted, and roasted
and baked, and grilled, and eaten by all sorts of creeping things, begins to
philosophize, is grown a refined as well as resigned character, and promises at his
return to become an ornament to his own parish, and very prominent person in the future
family pedigree of the F * *s, who I take to be Goths by their
accomplishments, Greeks by their acuteness, and ancient Saxons by their appetite. He
(F * *) begs leave to send half a dozen sighs to Sally
his spouse, and wonders (though I do not) that his ill written and worse spelt letters
| A. D. 1810. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 237 |
“I trust you like Newstead, and agree with your neighbours; but you know you are a vixen—is not that a dutiful appellation? Pray, take care of my books, and several boxes of papers in the hands of Joseph; and pray leave me a few bottles of champagne to drink, for I am very thirsty;—but I do not insist on the last article, without you like it. I suppose you have your house full of silly women prating scandalous things. Have you ever received my picture in oil from Sanders, London? It has been paid for these sixteen months: why do you not get it? My suite, consisting of two Turks, two Greeks, a Lutheran, and the nondescript, Fletcher, are making so much noise that I am glad to sign myself
