Preface xiii 



cause of "the Westernmost of all European nations and the most Chris- 

 tian," and had held it an honour to be "the first Englishman put in 

 prison for Ireland's sake." He was condemned to two months of that 

 prison life for holding a meeting of protest "against the denial of the 

 right universally claimed by our countrymen to speak where grievances 

 exist." Lady Anne, devoted and heroic, Byron's granddaughter, Ada's 

 daughter, lingered near the gaol until work on his behalf called her to 

 England. He took his punishment with a gallant spirit. Bereft of 

 books he found pleasure in watching the seagulls as they hovered over- 

 head, and the jackdaws and sparrows on the look out for scraps of 

 prison food ; talking of horse flesh with the visiting justices, even find- 

 ing a solace in the oakum-picking "the unravelling of an old tarred rope 

 with a good healthy smell " — (I still possess a strand of this smuggled 

 from the cell, and acting as a marker to my copy of his prison poems 

 "In Vinculis") ; even hiding a bit of rope on Saturday to begile the 

 tedium of the unoccupied Sabbath ; but finding his chief hardship in 

 those January nights, being given but scanty covering as he lay on the 

 plank bed that he found harder than the naked ground of any of his 

 Eastern encampments. But with a hidden scrap of pencil he wrote 

 sonnets on the blank leaves of his prayer book, and some of these are a 

 cry from one who feels real suffering: 



"God knows, 'twas not with a fore-reasoned plan 

 I left the easeful dwellings of my peace 

 And sought this conflict with ungodly Man 

 And ceaseless still through years that do not cease 

 Have warred with Powers and Principalities. 

 My natural soul, ere yet these strifes began, 

 Was as a sister, diligent to please 

 And loving all, and most the human clan. 

 God knows it. And He knows how the world's tears 

 Touched me. And He is witness of my wrath, 

 How it was kindled against murderers 

 Who slew for gold, and how upon their path 

 I met them. Since which day the World in arms 

 Strikes at my life with angers and alarms." 



An "enfant terrible" of politics indeed, he has kept to the resolve 

 recorded in the first page of these Diaries of " pleading the cause of the 

 backward nations of the world " in and out of season. He has never 

 given up his right of protest against injustice in Egypt and elsewhere, 

 denouncing the floggings and hangings of the villagers of Denshawai in 

 1905 ; calling out against the hanging of Dingra, the Hindoo political 

 assassin, in 1909; against the Italian massacres of Arabs in Tripoli 



