“After two years’ absence (on the 2d) and some odd
days. I am approaching your country. The day of our arrival you will see by the outside
date of my letter. At present, we are becalmed comfortably, close to Brest Harbour;—I
have never been so near it since I left Duck Puddle, * * * * *
* *
*
We left Malta thirty-four days ago, and have had a tedious passage of it. You
will either see or hear from or of me, soon after the receipt of this, as I pass through
town to repair my irreparable affairs; and thence I want to go to Notts. and raise
rents, and to Lancs, and sell collieries,
| A. D. 1811. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 251 |
“I have brought home some marbles for Hobhouse;—for myself, four ancient Athenian skulls*, dug out of Sarcophagi—a phial of attic hemlock†—four live tortoises—a greyhound (died on the passage)—two live Greek servants, one an Athenian, t’ other a Yaniote, who can speak nothing but Romaic and Italian—and myself, as Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield says, slily, and I may say it too, for I have as little cause to boast of my expedition as he had of his to the fair.
“I wrote to you from the Cyanean Rocks, to tell you I had
swam from Sestos to Abydos—have you received my letter? *
* *
Hodgson, I suppose, is four deep by this time.
What would he have given to have seen, like me, the real
Parnassus, where I robbed the Bishop of
Chrissaæ of a book of geography;—but this I only call plagiarism, as it
was done within an hour’s ride of Delphi.”
