the factions.
Among these there were brought to him hints that the Greeks wanted a king,
and he is reported to have said, "If they make me the offer, I will
perhaps not reject it."

The position would doubtless have been acceptable to a man who never--amid
his many self-deceptions--affected to deny that he was ambitious: and who
can say what might not have resulted for Greece, had the poet lived to add
lustre to her crown? In the meantime, while faring more frugally than a
day-labourer, he yet surrounded himself with a show of royal state, had
his servants armed with gilt helmets, and gathered around him a body-guard
of Suliotes. These wild mercenaries becoming turbulent, he was obliged to
despatch them to Mesolonghi, then threatened with siege by the Turks and
anxiously waiting relief. During his residence at Cephalonia, Byron was
gratified by the interest evinced in him by the English residents. Among
these the physician, Dr. Kennedy, a worthy Scotchman, who imagined himself
to be a theologian with a genius for conversion, was conducting a series
of religious meetings at Argostoli, when the poet expressed a wish to be
present at one of them. After listening, it is said, to a set of
discourses that occupied the greater part of twelve hours, he seems, for
one reason or another, to have felt called on to enter the lists, and
found himself involved in the series of controversial dialogues afterwards
published in a substantial book. This volume, interesting in several
respects, is one of the most charming examples of unconscious irony in the
language, and it is matter of regret that our space does not admit of the
abridgment of several of its pages. They bear testimony, on the one hand,
to Byron's capability of patience, and frequent sweetness of temper under
trial; on the other, to Kennedy's utter want of humour, and to his
courageous honesty. The curiously confronted interlocutors, in the course
of the missionary and subsequent private meetings, ran over most of the
ground debated between opponents and apologists of the Calvinistic faith,
which Kennedy upheld without stint. The _Conversations_ add little to what
we already know of Byron's religious opinions; nor is it easy to say where
he ceases to be serious and begins to banter, or vice versa. He evidently
wished to show that in argument he was good at fence, and could handle a
theologian as skilfully as a foil. At the same time he wished if possible,
though, as appear