In this retreat, also, as if in utter defiance of the "genius
loci," he wrote his "Hints from Horace,"--a Satire which, impregnated
as it is with London life from beginning to end, bears the date,
"Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12. 1811."
From the few remaining letters addressed to his mother, I shall
content myself with selecting the two following:--
LETTER 49.
TO MRS. BYRON.
"Athens, January 14, 1811.
"My dear Madam,
"I seize an occasion to write as usual, shortly, but frequently, as
the arrival of letters, where there exists no regular communication,
is, of course, very precarious. I have lately made several small tours
of some hundred or two miles about the Morea, Attica, &c., as I have
finished my grand giro by the Troad, Constantinople, &c., and am
returned down again to Athens. I believe I have mentioned to you more
than once that I swam (in imitation of Leander, though without his
lady) across the Hellespont, from Sestos to Abydos. Of this, and all
other particulars, F., whom I have sent home with papers, &c., will
apprise you. I cannot find that he is any loss; being tolerably master
of the Italian and modern Greek languages, which last I am also
studying with a master, I can order and discourse more than enough for
a reasonable man. Besides, the perpetual lamentations after beef and
beer, the stupid, bigoted contempt for every thing foreign, and
insurmountable incapacity of acquiring even a few words of any
language, rendered him, like all other English servants, an
incumbrance.
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