“Awake!—­not Greece:  she is awake!—­
        Awake, my spirit! think through whom
      Thy life-blood tastes its parent lake,
                        And then strike home!”

* * * * *

     “Seek out—­less often sought than found—­
        A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;
      Then look around, and choose thy ground,
                        And take thy rest!”

Vexations, disappointments, and exposure to the rains of February so wrought upon Byron’s eager spirit and weakened body that he was attacked by convulsive fits.  The physicians, in accordance with the custom of that time, bled their patient several times, against the protest of Byron himself, which reduced him to extreme weakness.  He rallied from the attack for a time, and devoted himself to the affairs of Greece, hoping for the restoration of his health when spring should come.  He spent in three months thirty thousand dollars for the cause into which he had so cordially entered.  In April he took another cold from severe exposure, and fever set in,—­to relieve which bleeding was again resorted to, and often repeated.  He was now confined to his room, which he never afterwards left.  He at last realized that he was dying, and sent incoherent messages to his sister, to his daughter, and to a few intimate friends.  The end came on the 19th of April.  The Greek government rendered all the honor possible to the illustrious dead.  His remains were transferred to England.  He was not buried in Westminster Abbey, however, but in the church of Hucknal, near Newstead, where a tablet was erected to his memory by his sister, the Hon. Augusta Maria Leigh.

     “So Harold ends in Greece, his pilgrimage
      There fitly ending,—­in that land renowned,
      Whose mighty genius lives in Glory’s page,
      He on the Muses’ consecrated ground
      Sinking to rest, while his young brows are bound
      With their unfading wreath!  To bands of mirth
      No more in Tempe let the pipe resound! 
      Harold, I follow to thy place of birth
    The slow hearse,—­and thy last sad pilgrimage on earth.”

I can add but little to what I have already said in reference to Byron, either as to his character or his poetry.  The Edinburgh Review, which in Brougham’s article on his early poems had stung him into satire and aroused him to a sense of his own powers, in later years by Jeffrey’s hand gave a most appreciative account of his poems, while mourning over his morbid gloom:  “‘Words that breathe and thoughts that burn’ are not merely the ornaments but the common staple of his poetry; and he is not inspired or impressive only in some happy passages, but through the whole body and tissue of his composition.”  The keen insight and exceptional intellect of the philosopher-poet Goethe recognized in him “the greatest talent of our century.”  His marvellous poetic genius was universally acknowledged in his