His valet Fletcher, too, in a letter to Mr. Murray, announcing the event, says, “Please to excuse all defects, for I scarcely know what I either say or do; for, after twenty years’ service with my Lord, he was more to me than a father, and I am too much distressed to give now a correct account of every particular.”

In speaking of the effect produced on the friends of Greece by this event, Mr. Trelawney says,—­“I think Byron’s name was the great means of getting the Loan.  A Mr. Marshall, with 8000_l_. per annum, was as far as Corfu, and turned back on hearing of Lord Byron’s death.  Thousands of people were flocking here:  some had arrived as far as Corfu, and hearing of his death, confessed they came out to devote their fortunes not to the Greeks, or from interest in the cause, but to the noble poet; and the ‘Pilgrim of Eternity[1]’ having departed, they turned back."[2]

[Footnote 1:  The title given by Shelley to Lord Byron in his Elegy on the death of Keats.

  “The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
  Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
  An early but enduring monument,
  Came veiling all the lightnings of his song
  In sorrow.”]

[Footnote 2:  Parry, too, mentions an instance to the same effect:—­“While I was on the quarantine-house at Zante, a gentleman called on me, and made numerous enquiries as to Lord Byron.  He said he was only one of fourteen English gentlemen, then at Ancona, who had sent him on to obtain intelligence, and only waited his return to come and join Lord Byron.  They were to form a mounted guard for him, and meant to devote their personal services and their incomes to the Greek cause.  On hearing of Lord Byron’s death, however, they turned back.”]

The funeral ceremony, which, on account of the rains, had been postponed for a day, took place in the church of St. Nicholas, at Missolonghi, on the 22d of April, and is thus feelingly described by an eye-witness:—­

“In the midst of his own brigade, of the troops of the Government, and of the whole population, on the shoulders of the officers of his corps, relieved occasionally by other Greeks, the most precious portion of his honoured remains were carried to the church, where lie the bodies of Marco Bozzari and of General Normann.  There we laid them down:  the coffin was a rude, ill-constructed chest of wood; a black mantle served for a pall; and over it we placed a helmet and a sword, and a crown of laurel.  But no funeral pomp could have left the impression, nor spoken the feelings, of this simple ceremony.  The wretchedness and desolation of the place itself; the wild and half-civilised warriors around us; their deep-felt, unaffected grief; the fond recollections; the disappointed hopes; the anxieties and sad presentiments which might be read on every countenance;—­all contributed to form a scene more moving, more truly affecting, than perhaps was ever before witnessed round the grave of a great man.