The Works of Lord Byron Volume I Part 123

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 princ.i.p.al 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 'Cla.s.sical 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 ma.s.se' 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 t.i.tle of 'The Curse', etc., was republished in the eighth edition of 'Poems on His Domestic Circ.u.mstances', 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 s.p.a.ces 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 emba.s.sy, had obtained in 1801, which empowered Elgin and his agents to take away 'qualche pezzi di pietra', still ran, and Don t.i.ta Lusieri, the Italian artist, who remained in Elgin's service, was still, like the 'canes venatici' (Americane, "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 'malgre 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).