Chapter 40

"February 23.

"My health seems improving, especially from riding and the warm bath. Six Englishmen will be soon in quarantine at Zante; they are artificers[1], and have had enough of Greece in fourteen days. If you could recommend them to a passage home, I would thank you; they are good men enough, but do not quite understand the little discrepancies in these countries, and are not used to see shooting and slashing in a domestic quiet way, or (as it forms here) a part of housekeeping.

[Footnote 1: The workmen who came out with Parry; and who, alarmed by the scene of confusion and danger they found at Missolonghi, had resolved to return home.]

"If they should want any thing during their quarantine, you can advance them not more than a dollar a day (amongst them) for that period, to purchase them some little extras as comforts (as they are quite out of their element). I cannot afford them more at present."

The following letter to Mr. Murray,--which it is most gratifying to have to produce, as the last completing link of a long friendship and correspondence which had been but for a short time, and through the fault only of others, interrupted,--contains such a summary of the chief events now passing round Lord Byron, as, with the assistance of a few notes, will render any more detailed narrative unnecessary.