Chapter 28

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xliv:

'Appalls an audience with the work of Death-- To gaze when Hubert simply threats to sere.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xlv:

'Nor call a Ghost, unless some cursed hitch Requires a trapdoor Goblin or a Witch.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xlvi:

'This comes from Commerce with our foreign friends These are the precious fruits Ausonia sends.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote xlvii:

'Our Giant Capital where streets still spread Where once our simpler sins were bred.'

['MS. L. (a).']

'Our fields where once the rustic earned his bread.'

['MS. L. (b)'.]]

[Footnote xlviii:

'Aches with the Orchestra he pays to hear.

[MS. M.']]

[Footnote xlix:

'Scarce kept awake by roaring out encore.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote l:

'Ere theatres were built and reverend clerks Wrote plays as some old book remarks.'

[MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote li:

'Who did what Vestris--yet, at least,--cannot, And cut his kingly capers "Sans culotte."'

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote lii:

'Who yet squeaks on nor fears to be forgot If good Earl Grosvenor supersede them not'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]

'Who still frisk on with feats so vastly low 'Tis strange Earl Grosvenor suffers such a show'.

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote liii:

'Suppressing Peer! to whom all vice gives place, Save Gambling--for his Lordship loves a Race'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

[Footnote liv:

'Hobhouse, since we have roved through Eastern climes, While all the Ægean echoed to our rhymes, And bound to Momus by some pagan spell Laughed, sang and quaffed to "Vive la Bagatelle!'"--

['MS. L'. ('a').]

'Hobhouse, with whom once more I hope to sit And smile at what our Stage retails for wit. Since few, I know, enjoy a laugh so well Sardonic slave to "Vive la Bagatelle" So that in your's like Pagan Plato's bed They'll find some book of Epigrams when dead'.

['MS. L'. ('b').]]

[Footnote lv:

'My wayward Spirit weakly yields to gloom, But thine will waft thee lightly to the Tomb, So that in thine, like Pagan Plato's, bed They'll find some Manuscript of Mimes, when dead'.

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote lvi:

'And spite of Methodism and Collier's curse'.

['MS. M'.]

'He who's seduced by plays must be a fool'

'If boys want teaching let them stay at school'.

[MS. L. (a).]]

[Footnote lvii:

'Whom Nature guides so writes that he who sees Enraptured thinks to do the same with ease'.

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote lviii:

'But after toil-inked thumbs and bitten nails Scratched head, ten quires--the easy scribbler fails'.--

['MS. L'. ('a').]

[Footnote lix:

'The one too rustic, t'other too refined'.

['MS. L'. ('a' and 'b').]]

[Footnotes lx:

'Offensive most to men with house and land Possessed of Pedigree and bloody hand'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

Footnote lxi:

'Composed for any but the lightest strain'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

Footnote lxii:

'And must I then my'--

['MS.L'. ('a').]

[Footnote lxiii:

'Ye who require Improvement'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

[Footnote lxiv:

'And Tragedy, whatever stuff he spoke Now wants high heels, long sword and velvet cloak'.--

['MS. L'. ('a') 'erased'.]]

[Footnote lxv:

'Curtail or silence the offensive jest'.

['MS. M'.]

'Curtail the personal or smutty jest'.

['MS. L'. ('a') 'erased'.]]

[Footnote lxvi:

'Overthrow whole books with all their hosts of faults'.--

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

[Footnotes lxvii:

'So that not Hellebore with all its juice'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

[Footnote lxviii:

'I'll act instead of whetstone--blunted, but Of use to make another's razor cut'.

['MS. L.' ('a').]]

[Footnote lxix:

'From Horace show the better arts of song'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

[Footnote lxx:

'To Trade, but gave their hours to arms and arts'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]

'With traffic'.

['MS. L'. ('b').]]

[Footnote lxxi:

'Babe of old Thelusson' [A]----.

['MS. L'. ('a' and 'b').]]

[Sub-Footnote A: [Peter Isaac Thellusson, banker (died July 21, 1797), by his will directed that his property should accumulate for the benefit of the unborn heir of an unborn grandson. The will was, finally, upheld, but, meanwhile, on July 28, 1800, an act (39 and 40 Geo. III.c.98) was passed limiting such executory devises.]]

[Footnote lxxii:

'A groat--ah bravo! Dick's the boy for sums He'll swell my fifty thousand into plums'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]]

[Footnote lxxiii:

'Are idle dogs and (damn them!) always poor'.--

['MS. L'. ('a' and 'b').]]

[Footnote lxxiv:

'Unlike Potosi holds no silver mine'.

['MS. L'. ('a').]

'Keeps back his ingots like'} 'Is rather costive--like' } 'an Irish Mine'. 'Is no Potosi, but' }

['MS. L'. ('b').]]

[Footnote lxxv:

'Write but recite not, e'en Apollo's song Mouthed in a mortal ear would seem too long, Long as the last year of a lingering lease, When Revel pauses until Rents increase'.

['MS. M. erased'.]]

[Footnote lxxvi:

'To finish all'.

['MS. L'. ('b').]

'That Bard the mask will fit'.

['MS. L'. ('b').]]

[Footnote lxxvii:

'Revenge defeats its object in the dark And pistols (courage bullies!) miss their mark.'

['MS. L. (a).']

And pistols (courage duellists!) miss their mark.

['MS. L. (b)'.]]

[Footnote lxxviii:

'Though much displeased.'

['MS. L. (a and b)'.]]

[Footnote lxxix:

'The scrutiny.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote lxxx:

'Oh ye aspiring youths whom fate or choice.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

[Footnote lxxxi:

'All are not Erskines who adorn the bar.'

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote lxxxii:

'With very middling verses to offend The Devil and Jeffrey grant but to a friend.'

['MS. L. (a).']

'Though what "Gods, men, and columns" interdict, The Devil and Jeffrey [A] pardon--in a Pict.'

['MS. M.']]

[Sub-Footnote A: "The Devil and Jeffrey are here placed antithetically to gods and men, such being their usual position, and their due one--according to the facetious saying, 'If God won't take you, the Devil must;' and I am sure no one durst object to his taking the poetry, which, rejected by Horace, is accepted by Jeffrey. That these gentlemen are in some cases kinder,--the one to countrymen, and the other from his odd propensity to prefer evil to good,--than the 'gods, men, and columns' of Horace, may be seen by a reference to the review of Campbell's 'Gertrude of Wyoming'; and in No. 31 of the 'Edinburgh Review' (given to me the other day by the captain of an English frigate off Salamis), there is a similar concession to the mediocrity of Jamie Graham's 'British Georgics'. It is fortunate for Campbell, that his fame neither depends on his last poem, nor the puff of the 'Edinburgh Review'. The catalogues of our English are also less fastidious than the pillars of the Roman librarians. A word more with the author of 'Gertrude of Wyoming'. At the end of a poem, and even of a couplet, we have generally 'that unmeaning thing we call a thought;' so Mr. Campbell concludes with a thought in such a manner as to fulfil the whole of Pope's prescription, and be as 'unmeaning' as the best of his brethren:--

'Because I may not 'stain' with grief The death-song of an Indian chief.'

"When I was in the fifth form, I carried to my master the translation of a chorus in Prometheus, wherein was a pestilent expression about 'staining a voice,' which met with no quarter. Little did I think that Mr. Campbell would have adopted my fifth form 'sublime'--at least in so conspicuous a situation. 'Sorrow' has been 'dry' (in proverbs), and 'wet' (in sonnets), this many a day; and now it ''stains',' and stains a sound, of all feasible things! To be sure, death-songs might have been stained with that same grief to very good purpose, if Outalissi had clapped down his stanzas on wholesome paper for the 'Edinburgh Evening Post', or any other given hyperborean gazette; or if the said Outalissi had been troubled with the slightest second sight of his own notes embodied on the last proof of an overcharged quarto; but as he is supposed to have been an improvisatore on this occasion, and probably to the last tune he ever chanted in this world, it would have done him no discredit to have made his exit with a mouthful of common sense. Talking of ''staining'' (as Caleb Quotem says) 'puts me in mind' of a certain couplet, which Mr. Campbell will find in a writer for whom he, and his school, have no small contempt:--

'E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, The last and greatest art--the art to 'blot'!'"

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote lxxxiii:

'And mustard rarely pleases in a pie.'

['MS. L. '(a).]]

[Footnote lxxxiv:

'At the Sessions'.

['MS. L.' (b), 'in pencil'.] ]

[Footnote lxxxv: Lines 647-650--

Whose character contains no glaring fault... Shall I, I say.

[MS. L. (a).]]

[Footnote lxxxvi: After 660--

'But why this hint-what author e'er could stop His poems' progress in a Grocers shop.'

['MS. L. (a).'] ]

[Footnote lxxxvii:

'As lame as I am, but a better bard.'

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote lxxxviii:

'Apollo's song the fate of men foretold.'

['MS. L. (a).']]

[Footnote lxxxix:

'Have studied with a Master day and night'.

['MS. L. (a, b).']]

[Footnote xc:

'They storm Bolt Court, they publish one and all'.--

['MS. M. erased.']]

[Footnote xci:

'Rogers played this prank'.

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote xcii:

'There see their sonnets first--but Spring--hot prest Beholds a Quarto--Tarts must tell the Rest.'

['MS. M. erased.']]

[Footnote xciii:

'To fuddled Esquires or to flippant Lords.'

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote xciv:

'Till lo! that modern Midas of the swains-- Feels his ears lengthen--with the lengthening strains'.--

['MS. M. erased'.]]

[Footnote xcv:

'Adds a week's growth to his enormous ears'.

['MS. M. erased.']]

[Footnote xcvi:

'But what are these? Benefits might bind Some decent ties about a manly mind'.

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote xcvii:

'Our modern sceptics can no more allow.'

['MS. L. (a).']]

[Footnote xcviii:

'Some rhyming peer--Carlisle or Carysfort.'[A]

['MS. M.']]

[Sub-Footnote A: [To variant ii. (p. 444) (this footnote) is subjoined this note:

"Of 'John Joshua, Earl of Carysfort,' I know nothing at present, but from an advertisement in an old newspaper of certain Poems and Tragedies by his Lordship, which I saw by accident in the Morea. Being a rhymer himself, he will forgive the liberty I take with his name, seeing, as he must, how very commodious it is at the close of that couplet; and as for what follows and goes before, let him place it to the account of the other Thane; since I cannot, under these circumstances, augur pro or con the contents of his 'foolscap crown octavos.'"

[John Joshua Proby, first Earl of Carysfort, was joint postmaster-general in 1805, envoy to Berlin in 1806, and ambassador to Petersburgh in 1807. Besides his poems ('Dramatic and Miscellaneous Works', 1810), he published two pamphlets (1780,1783), to show the necessity of universal suffrage and short parliaments. He died in 1828.]]

[Footnote xcix:

'Hoarse with bepraising, and half choaked with lies, Sweat on his brow and tear drops in his eyes.'

['MS. L. (a).']]

[Footnote c:

'Then sits again, then shakes his piteous head As if the Vicar were already dead.'

['MS. L. (a).']]

[Footnote ci:

'But if you're too conceited to amend.'

['MS. L. (a).]']

[Footnote cii:

'On pain of suffering from their pen or tongues.'

['MS. M. erased.']

'--fly Fitzgerald's lungs.'

['MS. M.']]

[Footnote ciii:

'Ah when Bards mouth! how sympathetic Time Stagnates, and Hours stand still to hear their rhyme.'

['MS. M. erased'.]]

[Footnote civ:

'Besides how know ye? that he did not fling Himself there--for the humour of the thing.'

['MS. M'.]]

[Footnote cv:

'Small thanks, unwelcome life he quickly leaves; And raving poets--really should not lose.'

['MS. M'.]

[Footnote cvi:

'Nor is it clearly understood that verse Has not been given the poet for a curse; Perhaps he sent the parson's pig to pound, Or got a child on consecrated ground; But, be this as it may, his rhyming rage Exceeds a Bear who strives to break his cage. If free, all fly his versifying fit; The young, the old, the simpleton and wit.'

['MS. L. (a)'.]]

THE CURSE OF MINERVA.

--"Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas Immolat, et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit."

_Aeneid_, lib. xii, 947, 948.

NOTE I.

In 'The Malediction of Minerva (New Monthly Magazine', vol. iii. p. 240) additional footnotes are appended

(1) to line 106, recording the obliteration of Lord Elgin's name, "which had been inscribed on a pillar of one of the principal temples," while that of Lady Elgin had been left untouched; and

(2) to line 196, giving quotations from pp. 158, 269, 419 of Eustace's 'Classical Tour in Italy'.

After line 130, which reads, "And well I know within that murky land" ('i.e'. Caledonia), the following apology for a hiatus was inserted:

"Here follows in the original certain lines which the editor has exercised his discretion by suppressing; inasmuch as they comprise national reflections which the bard's justifiable indignation has made him pour forth against a people which, if not universally of an amiable, is generally of a respectable character, and deserves not in this case to be censured 'en masse' for the faults of an individual."

NOTE II.

The text of 'The Curse of Minerva' is based on that of the quarto printed by T. Davison in 1813. With the exception of the variants, as noted, the text corresponds with the MS. in the possession of Lord Stanhope. Doubtless it represents Byron's final revision. The text of an edition of 'The Curse, etc'., Philadelphia, 1815, 8vo [printed by De Silver and Co.], was followed by Galignani (third edit., 1818, etc.). The same text is followed, but not invariably, in the selections printed by Hone in 1816 (111 lines); Wilson, 1818 (112 lines); and Knight and Lacy, 1824 (111 lines). It exhibits the following variants from the quarto of 1813:--

Line. Variant.

56.----'lands and main.' 81. 'Her helm was deep indented and her lance.' 94. 'Seek'st thou the cause? O mortal, look around.' 102. 'That Hadrian----' 116. 'The last base brute----' 143. 'Ten thousand schemes of petulance and pride.' 152. '----victors o'er the grave.' 162. '----Time shall tell the rest.' 199. 'Loath'd throughout life--scarce pardon'd in the dust.' 203. 'Erostratus and Elgin, etc.' 206. '----viler than the first. 222. 'Shall shake your usurpation to its base.' 233. 'While Lusitania----' 273. 'Then in the Senates----' 290. '----decorate his fall.'

The following variants may also be noted:--

Line. Variant. Publisher

1. 'Slow sinks now lovely, etc.' Hone

110. 'The Gothic monarch and the British----.' Wilson '----and his fit compeer.'

131. 'And well I know within that murky land. ... Dispatched her reckoning children far and wide. Hone

And well I know, albeit afar, the land, Where starving Avarice keeps her chosen band; Or sends their hungry numbers eager forth. ... And aye accursed, etc.' Wilson

INTRODUCTION TO _THE CURSE OF MINERVA_

'The Curse of Minerva', which was written at Athens, and is dated March 17, 1811, remained unpublished, as a whole, in this country, during Byron's life-time. The arrangement which had been made with Cawthorn, to bring out a fifth edition of 'English Bards', included the issue of a separate volume, containing 'Hints from Horace' and 'The Curse of Minerva;' and, as Moore intimates, it was the withdrawal of the latter, in deference to the wishes of Lord Elgin or his connections, which led to the suppression of the other satires.

The quarto edition of The 'Curse of Minerva', printed by T. Davison in 1812, was probably set up at the same time as Murray's quarto edition of 'Childe Harold', and reserved for private circulation. With or without Byron's consent, the poem as a whole was published in Philadelphia by De Silver and Co., 1815, 8vo (for variants, see p. 453, 'note'). In a letter to Murray, March 6, 1816, he says that he "disowns" 'The Curse, etc.', "as stolen and published in a miserable and villainous copy in the magazine." The reference is to 'The Malediction of Minerva, or The Athenian Marble-Market', which appeared in the 'New Monthly Magazine' for April, 1818, vol. iii. 240. It numbers 111 lines, and is signed "Steropes" (The Lightner, a Cyclops). The text of the magazine, with the same additional footnotes, but under the title of 'The Curse', etc., was republished in the eighth edition of 'Poems on His Domestic Circumstances', W. Hone, London, 1816, 8vo, and, thenceforth, in other piratical issues. Whatever may have been his feelings or intentions in 1812, four years later Byron was well aware that 'The Curse of Minerva' would not increase his reputation as a poet, while the object of his satire--the exposure and denunciation of Lord Elgin--had been accomplished by the scathing stanzas (canto ii. 10-15), with their accompanying note, in 'Childe Harold'. "Disown" it as he might, his words were past recall, and both indictments stand in his name.

Byron was prejudiced against Elgin before he started on his tour. He had, perhaps, glanced at the splendid folio, 'Specimens of Ancient Sculpture', which was issued by the Dilettanti Society in 1809. Payne Knight wrote the preface, in which he maintains that the friezes and metopes of the Parthenon were not the actual work of Phidias, "but ... architectural studies ... probably by workmen scarcely ranked among artists." So judged the leader of the 'cognoscenti', and, in accordance with his views, Elgin and Aberdeen are held up to ridicule in 'English Bards' (second edition, October, 1809, 1. 1007, and 'note') as credulous and extravagant collectors of "maimed antiques." It was, however, not till the first visit to Athens (December, 1809-March, 1810), when he saw with his own eyes the "ravages of barbarous and antiquarian despoilers" (Lord Broughton's 'Travels in Albania', 1858, i. 259), that contempt gave way to indignation, and his wrath found vent in the pages of 'Childe Harold'.

Byron cared as little for ancient buildings as he did for the authorities, or for patriotic enterprise, but he was stirred to the quick by the marks of fresh and, as he was led to believe, wanton injury to "Athena's poor remains." The southern side of the half-wrecked Parthenon had been deprived of its remaining metopes, which had suffered far less from the weather than the other sides which are still in the building; all that remained of the frieze had been stripped from the three sides of the cella, and the eastern pediment had been despoiled of its diminished and mutilated, but still splendid, group of figures; and, though five or six years had gone by, the blank spaces between the triglyphs must have revealed their recent exposure to the light, and the shattered edges of the cornice, which here and there had been raised and demolished to permit the dislodgment of the metopes, must have caught the eye as they sparkled in the sun. Nor had the removal and deportation of friezes and statues come to an end. The firman which Dr. Hunt, the chaplain to the embassy, had obtained in 1801, which empowered Elgin and his agents to take away 'qualche pezzi di pietra', still ran, and Don Tita Lusieri, the Italian artist, who remained in Elgin's service, was still, like the 'canes venatici' (Americané, "smell-dogs") employed by Verres in Sicily (see 'Childe Harold', canto ii. st. 12, 'note'), finding fresh relics, and still bewailing to sympathetic travellers the hard fate which compelled him to despoil the temples 'malgré lui'. The feelings of the inhabitants themselves were not much in question, but their opinions were quoted for and against the removal of the marbles. Elgin's secretary and prime agent, W.R. Hamilton, testifies, from personal knowledge, that, "so far from exciting any unpleasant sensations, the people seemed to feel it as the means of bringing foreigners into the country, and of having money spent there" ('Memoir on the Earl of Elgin's Pursuits in Greece', 1811). On the other hand, the traveller, Edward Daniel Clarke, with whom Byron corresponded (see 'Childe Harold', canto ii. st. 12, 'note'), speaks of the attachment of the Turks to the Parthenon, and their religious veneration for the building as a mosque, and tells a pathetic story of the grief of the Disdar when "a metope was lowered, and the adjacent masonry scattered its white fragments with thundering noise among the ruins" ('Travels in Various Countries', part ii, sect. ii, p. 483).

Other travellers of less authority than Clarke--Dodwell, for instance, who visited the Parthenon before it had been dismantled, and, afterwards, was present at the removal of metopes; and Hughes, who came after Byron (autumn, 1813)--make use of such phrases as "shattered desolation," "wanton devastation and avidity of plunder." Even Michaelis, the great archaeologist, who denounces 'The Curse of Minerva' as a "'libellous' poem," and affirms "that only blind passion could doubt that Lord Elgin's act was an act of preservation," admits that "the removal of several metopes and of the statue from the Erechtheion had severely injured the surrounding architecture" ('Ancient Marbles in Great Britain', by A. Michaelis, translated by C.A.M. Fennell, 1882, p. 135). Highly coloured and emotional as some of these phrases may be, they explain, if they do not justify, the 'sæva indignatio' of Byron's satire.

It is almost, if not quite, unnecessary to state the facts on the other side. History regards Lord Elgin as a disinterested official, who at personal loss (at least thirty-five thousand pounds on his own showing), and in spite of opposition and disparagement, secured for his own country and the furtherance of art the perishable fragments of Phidian workmanship, which, but for his intervention, might have perished altogether. If they had eluded the clutches of Turkish mason and Greek dealer in antiquities--if, by some happy chance, they had escaped the ravages of war, the gradual but gradually increasing assaults of rain and frost would have already left their effacing scars on the "Elgin marbles." As it is, the progress of decay has been arrested, and all the world is the gainer. Byron was neither a prophet nor an archaeologist, and time and knowledge have put him in the wrong. But in 1810 the gaps in the entablature of the Parthenon were new, the Phidian marbles were huddled in a "damp dirty penthouse" in Park Lane (see 'Life of Haydon', i. 84), and the logic of events had not justified a sad necessity.

THE CURSE OF MINERVA.

Pallas te hoc Vulnere Pallas Immolat et poenam scelerato ex Sanguine Sumit.

ATHENS: CAPUCHIN CONVENT, _March_ 17, 1811.

Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, [1] Along Morea's hills the setting Sun; Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, But one unclouded blaze of living light; O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws, [i] Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows; On old Ægina's rock and Hydra's isle [2] The God of gladness sheds his parting smile; O'er his own regions lingering loves to shine, Though there his altars are no more divine. [ii] 10 Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss Thy glorious Gulf, unconquered Salamis! Their azure arches through the long expanse, [iii] More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance, And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course, and own the hues of Heaven; Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep, Behind his Delphian rock he sinks to sleep. [iv]