xv AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



have to explore the interior of Madagascar ; with 

 permission to visit Monomotapa, and the Sechelles 

 Islands, &c. ; and that a man-of-war would take me 

 out early in October following. This was in the 

 month of May, 1813. The ague still annoying me 

 cruelly, I wrote to Lord Bathurst, and begged to 

 resign the commission. 



Horace once condemned himself for running 

 away, "relicta non bene parmula." It was for 

 me to have condemned myself too on this occasion ; 

 for I never acted so much against my own in- 

 terest as when I declined to go to Madagascar. 

 I ought to have proceeded thither by all means, 

 and to have let the tertian ague take its chance. 

 My commission was a star of the first magnitude. 

 It appeared after a long night of political darkness, 

 which had prevented the family from journeying 

 onwards for the space of nearly three centuries. I can 

 fancy that it beckoned to me, and that a voice from 

 it said, " Come and serve your country; come and 

 restore your family name to the national calendar, 

 'from which it has been so long and so unjustly 

 withdrawn ; come, and show to the world that 

 conscience, and not crime, has hitherto been the 

 cause of your being kept in the background ; come 

 into the national dockyard, and refit your shattered 

 bark, which has been cast on a lee-shore, where 

 merciless wreck-seekers have plundered its stores, 

 and where the patriots of yesterday have looked 

 down upon it with scorn and contempt, and have 

 pronounced it unworthy to bear its country's flag." 

 I ought to have listened to this supposed adviser at 



