Chapter XVI: Introduction: To Hints From Horace (3)

[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