Ixvi 



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 interest 

 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 which it has been so long and so unjustly withdrawn ; 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 na- 

 tional 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 the time : 



