THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

138 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
ing, under no illusion as to the character of the people
he had come to serve. During the autumn of 1823,
he had remained in Cephalonia,
one of the Ionian
islands then under the British flag, to gather information
with a view to seeing where his help could best
be given. To the Greeks, meanwhile, the wealthy
English * milordos ' was interesting mainly as a gold
mine, to be worked for their own personal advantage ;
and, during his residence in the island, nearly every
statesman or general of any pretensions wrote to him
to solicit his favour, his influence, or his money. Kolokotrones
in Salamis, Mavrocordatos in Hydra, and Metaxas
in Missolonghi competed for his presence; for
only where each of them chanced to be could Greece
be served. Petrobey, more naively honest, said,
straight out, that the best way
to save Hellas was to
give him, the Bey of the Maina, a thousand pounds.
'
Of the Greeks/ Byron wrote, ' I can't say much good
hitherto, and I do not like to speak ill of them, though
*
they do of each other.'
In the face of so much disillusion and discouragement,
the attitude of Byron is full of a singular and
Under circumstances which would
pathetic interest.
have crushed the enthusiasm of a man of less
sympathetic
imagination, he displayed a wide-minded geni
Moore's Life of Byron (ed. 1846), p. 601.