The Hancock Jeffersonian. [volume] (Findlay, Ohio) 1857-1870, 1869-12-03
DefOrlned Great Men.

In the Stowe Byron controversy
reference has repeatedly bsen made
to that deformIty of the poet t.
which he was so nervously sensitive
his club-foot, or rather, feet. Wher
Mr.. Trelawney uncovered the corpse
of Byron, at Missolonghi, he saw
that "both his feet were dubbed and
withered to the knee; the form and
face of an Apolla, with the feet and
legs OF sylvan satyr,' ("Recollec
tions.'') From a note in Moore's
"Life,' it seems that Byron, when al
Harrow, at the speech-msking, spoke
as Latimio, and would have spoken
as Draness, but feared the taunt,
psdi6usqe fxgacikas, would derive
point from his iameness. This little
lame boy was already poet; and,
it is a curious coincidence that his
great contemporary Scott-who.
when Byron was at Harrow, was
then about thirty years of age, and
was establishing his fame rs the
author of the "Minstrelsy OF the Scot
tish Border'--was also lame; and,
when little lame boy, be, too, had
scribbled verse. and, at Sandy-Knowe
and KeIso, had found recompense
in Percy's "Reliques' for those
youthful sports from which he was
denied by his infirmity from partici-
psting. The poet Home pitied the
child ''with the withered limb"
which, he thought, doomed him "to
life of inertness and notification
Yet, Scott grew up to be stout and
sturdy walker; and Byron's powers
as a swimmer we're almost unsur-
passed, although "oue day, after a
bath, he held out his right leg to Mr..
Trelawney, saying, Il hope this &C
cursed limb will be knocked off in
the war,'' Scott would seem to
have accepted his bodily infirmity
with resignation, Byron with impa-
tience; although both these lame
poets and brilliant contemporaries,
could use their feet, either on the
land or in the water, with such efec
tive power. In the year before the
lame poet, Scott, was born, there
died another lame poet, Mark AIKEN
side, the author of "The Pleasures of
Imagination,' who was as aeutely
sensitive as Byron himself to his own
lameness, though from a very differ
ent cause to that which troubled the
spirit of the wellb born lord. For
Akenside was the son of butcher
at Newcastle-on-Tyne and, when he
was a child, his fathers cleaver fell
upon his foot snG lamed him for
life. Akenside, therefore, blushed
with false pride, regarding his lame
ness as perpetual reminder of his
lowly birth. Perhaps the most re
markable case OF lameness on record,
is that Of Archbishop Land, who tells
US, in his diary. that he was famed
IN one leg "py the biting OF bugs"
Medical knowledge has made rapid
strides since the not very distant day
when the eminent surgeon. Chesel-
den, said that he knew of no way to
cure 4 club-foot and, since the year
IS40, when the OrthopGdic Hospital
was founded, such deformity as that
from which Lord Byron suffered, has
been, in numerous cases, removed,
and in many more cases alleviated
Mechanisal inventions have also been
wonderously advanced ; and, thanks
to the aid afforded by one of these
ingenious devices, Mdlle Cariotta
Patti was enabled to conceal her
lameness and to appear for the first
time, lin 1862, at the Academy of
Music, New York, in the character
in the character of Amina, in LA
Somnambula.' When Samuel Foote
was lamed by broken leg, he re-
ceived, in compensation, the patent
of "the little theater" in the Hay
market.