d Lord Byron's own mind, that
he even expressed himself "rather glad of his fever, as it might cure
him of his tendency to epilepsy." To Fletcher, however, it appears,
he had professed, more than once, strong doubts as to the nature of
his complaint being so slight as the physician seemed to suppose it,
and on his servant renewing his entreaties that he would send for Dr.
Thomas to Zante, made no further opposition; though still, out of
consideration for those gentlemen, he referred him on the subject to
Dr. Bruno and Mr. Millingen. Whatever might have been the advantage
or satisfaction of this step, it was now rendered wholly impossible
by the weather,--such a hurricane blowing into the port that not a
ship could get out. The rain, too, descended in torrents, and between
the floods on the land-side and the sirocco from the sea, Missolonghi
was, for the moment, a pestilential prison.

It was at this juncture that Mr. Millingen was, for the first time,
according to his own account, invited to attend Lord Byron in his
medical capacity,--his visit on the 10th being so little, as he
states, professional, that he did not even, on that occasion, feel
his Lordship's pulse. The great object for which he was now called
in, and rather, it would seem, by Fletcher than Dr. Bruno, was for
the purpose of joining his representations and remonstrances to
theirs, and prevailing upon the patient to suffer himself to be
bled,--an operation now become absolutely necessary from the increase
of the fever, and which Dr. Bruno had, for the last two days, urged
in vain.

Holding gentleness to be, with a disposition like that of Byron, the
most effectual means of success, Mr. Millingen tried, as he himself
tells us, all that reasoning and persuasion could suggest towards
attaining his object. But his efforts were fruitless:--Lord Byron,
who had now become morbidly irritable, replied angrily, but still
with all his accustomed acuteness and spirit, to the physician's
observations. Of all his prejudices, he declared, the strongest was
that against bleeding. His mother had obtained from him a promise
never to consent to being bled; and whatever argument might be
produced, his aversion, he said, was stronger than reason. "Besides,
is it not," he asked, "asserted by Dr. Reid, in his Essays, that less
slaughter is effected by the lance than the lancet:--that minute
instrument of mighty mischief!" On Mr. Millingen observing that this
remark related t