Feared like a bear just bursting from his cage. If free, all fly his versifying fit, He flays with Recitation limb by limb; Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach, And gorges like a Lawyer or a Leech. On his table were found these words: "What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong." But Addison did not approve"; and if he had, it would not have mended the Platter. He had invited his daughter on the same water-party; but Miss Budgell, by some accident, escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of "Atticus," and the caemy of Pope! [Eustace Budgell (16861737), a friend and relative of Addison's, "leapt into the Thames" to escape the dishonour which attached to him in connection with the } immediate pressure of money_difficulties. He was, more or less, insane. Boswell's Life of Johnson (1886), p. 281.] *If "dosed with," etc. be censured as low, I beg leave to refer to the original for something stul lower; and if any reader will translate Minxerit in patrios cineres," etc. into a decent ATHENS: CAPUCHIN CONVENT, SLOW sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,2 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, Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows; On old Ægina's rock and Hydra's isle 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. ΙΟ Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss Thy glorious Gulf, unconquered Salamis! Their azure arches through the long expanse, More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance, And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course, and own the hues of Heaven; couplet, I will insert said couplet in lieu of the present. [A fragment (111 lines) of The Curse of Minerva, was first published in the New Monthly Magazine, for April, 1815. It was entitled The Malediction of Minerva; or The Athenian Marble Market. The full text was published, in 1815, nominally in Philadelphia, but, probably, in London.] [The lines (1-54) with which the Satire begins, down to "As thus, within the walls of Pallas' fane," first appeared (1814) as the opening stanza of the Third Canto of The Corsair. At that time the publication of The Curse of Minerva had been abandoned. (See Byron's note to The Corsair, Canto III. st. i. 1. 1.)] His lordship's name, and that of one who no longer bears it, are carved conspicuously on the Parthenon; above, in a part not far distant, are the torn remnants of the basso-relievos, destroyed in a vain attempt to remove them. [On the Erechtheum there was deeply cut in a plaster wall the words "QUOD NON FECERUNT GOTI HOC FECERUNT SCOTI."] "Irish bastards," according to Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan. "A wild Irish soldier in the Prussian Army," in Macklin's Love-a-la-Mode (first played December 12, 1759).] Then thousand schemes of petulance and pride Despatch her scheming children far and wide; Some East, some West, some- everywhere but North! In quest of lawless gain, they issue forth. And thus accurséd be the day and year! She sent a Pict to play the felon here. Yet Caledonia claims some native worth, As dull Boeotia gave a Pindar birth; 150 So may her few, the lettered and the brave, Bound to no clime and victors of the grave, Shake off the sordid dust of such a land, And shine like children of a happier 2 [Lines 202-265 are not in the MS.] [Herostratus ог Eratostratus fired the temple of Artemis on the same night that Alexander the Great was born.] 3 [Copenhagen was bombarded by sea by Admiral Lord Gambier, and, by land, by General Lord Cathcart, September 2-8, 1807. The citadel was given up to the English, and the Danes surrendered their fleet, with all the naval stores, and their arsenals and dockyards. The expedition was promptly and secretly equipped by the British Government, with a view to anticipate the seizure and appropriation of the Danish fleet by Napoleon and Alexander.] |