Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1869-12-11
Fofa lie Deformities.

In the Stowe-Byron controversy refer
ence has repeatedly been made TO that
deformity of the poet of which he was 30
nervously sensitive-his club foot, or
rather feet. When Mr.. Trelawney un-
covered the corpse of Byron, at Misso-
longhi, he saw that both of his feet were
clubbed and withered to the knee; the
form and face of an Appolo, with the
feet and legs of sylvan satyr" Re-
collections ". From note in Moore's
Life" it seems that Byrap, when at
Harrow, at the speech-making, spoke as
Latimio, and would have spoken as
Frances, but feared the taunt, pedibusque
fugneibus, would derive point from mis-
lameness. This little lame boy was al
ready q poet; and it is a curious coinci-
denee that his great cotemporary, Scott
who, when Byron was at Harrow, was
then about thirty years of age, and was
establishing his fame as the author ofthe
"Minstrelsy Of the Scottish Border" was
also lame; when little lame boy be, too,
had scribbed verse, and at Sandy Knowe
and Kelso. had found a recompense in
Percy's "Reliques for those youthful
sports from which he was denied by his in
trinity from participating. The poet
Home pitied the child with the with
cred limb" which, he thought, doomed
him ITO life of inertness and mortiica.
tion." Yet Scott grew up to be stout and
sturdy walker, and Byron's powers as
swimmer were almost unsurpassed, al
though lone day, after bathe, he held
out his right leg to Mr.. Trelawney, say
ing, hope this accursed limb will be
knocked off during the war;" Scott
seemed to have accepted his bodily in
trinity with resignation, Byron with i'm
patience; although both these lame poets
and brilliant contemporaries could use
their feet, either on the land or 10 the
water, with such effective power. In the
year before the lame Scott was born,
there died another lame poet, Mark AIKEN.
side, the author of the "Pleasures of
Imagination" who was as acutely sensi-
tive as Byron himself to his own lame
ness, though from very different cause
to that which troubled the spirit of the
well-born lord for Akenside was the son
Of butcher at Newc castle e-on-Tyne; and
when he was child his fathers cleaver
fell upon his foot and lsmed him for life,
Akenside, therefore, bushed with false
pride, regarding his lameness as a per-
petual reminder of his lowly BIRTH Per-
haps the most remarkable case of lame
ness on record is that of the Archbishop
Laud, who tells US, in his diary, that he
was famed in one leg "by the biting of
bugs" Medical knowledge has made
rapid strides since the not very distant
day when the eminent surgeon, Chesel-
don, said thst he knew of no way to cure
q club-foot; and, since the year lS40,
when the Orthore1ic Hospital was
founded, such deiormity as that from
which Lord Byron suffered has been, in
numerous cases, removed, and in many
more instances alleviated Mechanical
inventions have also been wonderfully
advanced; and, thanks to the aid af-
forded by one of these ingenious devices,
Mile Csrlotta Patti was enabled to con-
ceal her lsmeRess and to appear for the
first time lin 1862, at the Academy Of
Music, New York, in the character of
"Amina" in La Somnambula. When
Samuel Foote was famed by broken leg
he received, in compensation, the patent
of "the little theater" in the Haymar-
ket.