such disclosures he might not be
conveying a calumnious impression of himself, a stronger instance
could hardly be given than is to be found in a conversation held by
him with Mr. Trelawney, as reported by this latter gentleman, when
they were on their way together to Greece. After some remarks on the
state of his own health[1], mental and bodily, he said, "I don't know
how it is, but I am so cowardly at times, that if, this morning, you
had come down and horsewhipped me, I should have submitted without
opposition. Why is this? If one of these fits come over me when we
are in Greece, what shall I do?"--"I told him (continues Mr.
Trelawney) that it was the excessive debility of his nerves. He said,
'Yes, and of my head, too. I was very heroic when I left Genoa, but,
like Acres, I feel my courage oozing out at my palms.'"

[Footnote 1: "He often mentioned," says Mr. Trelawney, "that he
thought he should not live many years, and said that he would die in
Greece." This he told me at Cephalonia. He always seemed unmoved on
these occasions, perfectly indifferent as to when he died, only
saying that he could not bear pain. On our voyage we had been reading
with great attention the life and letters of Swift, edited by Scott,
and we almost daily, or rather nightly, talked them over; and he more
than once expressed his horror of existing in that state, and
expressed some fears that it would be his fate.]

It will hardly, by those who know any thing of human nature, be
denied that such misgivings and heart-sinkings as are here described
may, under a similar depression of spirits, have found their way into
the thoughts of some of the gallantest hearts that ever
breathed;--but then, untold and unremembered, even by the sufferer
himself, they passed off with the passing infirmity that produced
them, leaving neither to truth to record them as proofs of want of
health, nor to calumny to fasten upon them a suspicion of want of
bravery. The assertion of some one that all men are by nature
cowardly would seem to be countenanced by the readiness with which
most men believe others so. "I have lived," says the Prince de Ligne,
"to hear Voltaire called a fool, and the great Frederick a coward."
The Duke of Marlborough in his own times, and Napoleon in ours, have
found persons not only to assert but believe the same charge against
them. After such glaring instances of the tendency of some minds to
view greatness only through an inverting med