“I have obtained from the Greeks the release of eight-and-twenty Turkish prisoners, men, women, and children, and sent them to Patras and Prevesa at my own charges.  One little girl of nine years old, who prefers remaining with me, I shall (if I live) send, with her mother, probably, to Italy, or to England.  Her name is Hato, or Hatagee.  She is a very pretty, lively child.  All her brothers were killed by the Greeks, and she herself and her mother merely spared by special favour and owing to her extreme youth, she being then but five or six years old.

“My health is now better, and I ride about again.  My office here is no sinecure, so many parties and difficulties of every kind; but I will do what I can.  Prince Mavrocordato is an excellent person, and does all in his power, but his situation is perplexing in the extreme.  Still we have great hopes of the success of the contest.  You will hear, however, more of public news from plenty of quarters; for I have little time to write.

“Believe me yours, &c. &c.  N. BN.”

The fierce lawlessness of the Suliotes had now risen to such a height that it became necessary, for the safety of the European population, to get rid of them altogether; and, by some sacrifices on the part of Lord Byron, this object was at length effected.  The advance of a month’s pay by him, and the discharge of their arrears by the Government, (the latter, too, with money lent for that purpose by the same universal paymaster,) at length induced these rude warriors to depart from the town, and with them vanished all hopes of the expedition against Lepanto.

LETTER 548.  TO MR. MOORE.

“Missolonghi, Western Greece, March 4. 1824.

“My dear Moore,

“Your reproach is unfounded—­I have received two letters from you, and answered both previous to leaving Cephalonia.  I have not been ‘quiet’ in an Ionian island, but much occupied with business,—­as the Greek deputies (if arrived) can tell you.  Neither have I continued ‘Don Juan,’ nor any other poem.  You go, as usual, I presume, by some newspaper report or other.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Proceeding, as he here rightly supposes, upon newspaper authority, I had in my letter made some allusion to his imputed occupations, which, in his present sensitiveness on the subject of authorship, did not at all please him.  To this circumstance Count Gamba alludes in a passage of his Narrative; where, after mentioning a remark of Byron’s, that “Poetry should only occupy the idle, and that in more serious affairs it would be ridiculous,” he adds—­ “——­, at this time writing to him, said, that he had heard that ’instead of pursuing heroic and warlike adventures, he was residing in a delightful villa, continuing Don Juan.’  This offended him for the moment, and he was sorry that such a mistaken judgment had been formed of him.”