When teased with creditors' continual claims, "To die like Cato," 1 leapt into the Thames! And therefore be it lawful through the town For any Bard to poison, hang, or drown. Who saves the intended Suicide receives Small thanks from him who loathes the life he leaves;1 And, sooth to say, mad poets must not lose Nor is it certain that some sorts of verse Prick not the Poet's conscience as a curse; ii. i. Small thanks, unwelcome life he quickly leaves; ii. Nor is it clearly understood that verse The young, the old, the simpleton and wit.—[MS. L. (a).] 831 1. 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 matter. He had invited his daughter on the same waterparty; but Miss Budgell, by some accident, escaped this last paternal attention. Thus fell the sycophant of "Atticus," and the enemy of Pope! [Eustace Budgell (1686-1737), a friend and relative of Addison's, "leapt into the Thames" to escape the dishonour which attached to him in connection with Dr. Tindal's will, and the immediate pressure of money difficulties. He was, more or less, insane. "We talked (says Boswell) of a man's drowning himself. the case of Eustace Budgell. Suppose, sir,' said I, 'that a man is absolutely sure that, if he lives a few days longer, he shall be detected in a fraud, the consequence of which will be utter disgrace, and expulsion from society?' JOHNSON. 'Then, sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him VOL. I. 2 G I put Dosed1 with vile drams on Sunday he was found, Or got a child on consecrated ground! And hence is haunted with a rhyming rage- Fatal at once to Simpleton or Wit: But him, unhappy! whom he seizes,—him He flays with Recitation limb by limb; 840 Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach, go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.""-Boswell's Life of Johnson (1886), p. 281.] I. If" dosed with," etc. be censured as low, I beg leave to refer to the original for something still lower; and if any reader will translate "Minxerit in patrios cineres," etc. into a decent couplet, I will insert said couplet in lieu of the present. [The last page of MS. M. is dated BYRON, Capuchin Convent, Athens. March 14th, 1811. The following memorandum, in Byron's handwriting, is also inscribed on the last page: "722 lines, and 4 inserted after and now counted, in all 726.-B. Since this several lines are added.-B. June 14th, 1811. "Copied fair at Malta, May 3rd, 1811.-B." BYRON, March 11th and 12th, Athens. 1811.—[MS. L. (a).] BYRON, March 14th, 1811. Athens, Capuchin Convent.-[MS. L. (b).]] THE CURSE OF MINERVA. "Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas Immolat, et pœnam scelerato ex sanguine sumit." Eneid, lib. xii. 947, 948. 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" (ie. 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). exhibits the following variants from the quarto of 1813 : It 199. Loath'd throughout lifescarce pardon'd in the dust. 203. Erostratus and Elgin, etc. 233. While Lusitania The following variants may also be noted : Line. 1. Slow sinks now lovely, etc.—[Hone.] 110. The Gothic monarch and the British and his fit compeer.—[Wilson.] 131. And well I know within that murky land. -[H.] Dispatched her reckoning children far and wide.—[H.] Where starving Avarice keeps her chosen band; Or sends their hungry numbers eager forth. And aye accursed, etc.—[W.] 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. 66 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 III 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 |