“Little need be added to the enclosed, which arrived this day, except that I embark to-morrow for Missolonghi. The intended operations are detailed in the annexed documents. I have only to request that the Committee will use every exertion to forward our views by all its influence and credit.
“I have also to request you personally from myself to urge my friend and trustee, Douglas Kinnaird (from whom I have not heard these four
months nearly), to forward to me all the resources of my own we
can
| A. D. 1823. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 699 |
“The supplies of the Committee are, some, useful, and all excellent in their kind, but occasionally hardly practical enough, in the present state of Greece; for instance, the mathematical instruments are thrown away—none of the Greeks know a problem from a poker—we must conquer first, and plan afterwards. The use of the trumpets too may be doubted, unless Constantinople were Jericho, for the Hellenists have no ears for bugles, and you must send us somebody to listen to them.
“We will do our best—and I pray you to stir your English hearts at home to more general exertion; for my part, I will stick by the cause while a plank remains which can be honourably clung to. If I quit it, it will be by the Greeks’ conduct, and not he Holy Allies or the holier Mussulmans—but let us hope better things.
“P.S. I am happy to say that Colonel Leicester Stanhope and myself are acting in perfect harmony together—he is likely to be of great service both to the cause and to the Committee, and is publicly as well as personally a very valuable acquisition to our party on every account. He came up (as they all do who have not been in the country before) with some high-flown notions of the 6th form at Harrow or Eton, &c.; but Col. Napier and I set him to rights on those points, which is absolutely necessary to prevent disgust, or perhaps return; but now we can set our shoulders soberly to the wheel, without quarrelling with the mud which may clog it occasionally.
I can assure you that Col.
Napier and myself are as decided for the cause as any German student of
them all; but like men who have seen the country and human life, there and elsewhere,
we must be
| 700 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1823. |
P.S. As much of this letter as you please is for the Committee, the rest may be ‘entre nous.’”
