Chapter V: “hints From Horace” and “the Curse of Minerva”

On July 2, 1809, Byron, accompanied by his friend, John Cam Hobhouse, sailed from Falmouth for Lisbon on a trip that was to take him to Spain, Malta, Greece, and Turkey. When he returned to England in July, 1811, after two years of travel and adventure, he brought with him “4000 lines of one kind or another,” including the first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ and two satires, _Hints from Horace_ and _The Curse of Minerva_. _Hints from Horace_, written in March, 1811, during the poet’s second visit to Athens, is dated March 14, 1811, on the last page of the most authentic manuscript. It was composed at the Capuchin Convent in Athens, where he had met accidentally with a copy of Horace’s epistle _Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica_, commonly known as the _Ars Poetica_.

The history of the fortunes of this work is perhaps worth relating. Byron, on his arrival, handed it over at once to Dallas, without giving him a hint of _Childe Harold_; indeed, only the latter’s obvious disappointment induced the poet to show him the _Pilgrimage_, which then seemed of little importance to its author. On September 4, 1811, Byron requested Dallas to aid him in correcting the proofs of _Hints from Horace_, and “in adapting the parallel passages of the imitation in such places to the original as may enable the reader not to lose sight of the allusion.”[125] There is, however, no reason for thinking that Dallas actually undertook the task, for on October 13th Byron complained to Hodgson that the labor of editing was still hanging fire, and begged the latter to assist him. Shortly after, owing partly to the adverse criticism of Dallas, and partly to Murray’s wish not to endanger the success of _Childe Harold_, the idea of immediate publication was put aside for some years. In 1820, Byron, then resident in Italy, was reminded of his unprinted satire, and wrote Murray to inform him that the manuscript had been left, among various papers, with Hobhouse’s father in England.[126] At intervals he expressed anxiety about the proofs, which Murray, exercising his discretion, delayed sending. From this revived project Byron was, for a time, dissuaded by the wise counsel of Hobhouse, who suggested that the poem would require much revision. Nevertheless on January 11, 1821, he informed Murray that he saw little to alter,[127] and accused him of having neglected to comply with his orders. A postscript to a letter of February 16, 1821, indicates that he was contemplating printing the _Hints_ with its Latin original.[128] After March 4, 1822, there is no further allusion to the satire in his correspondence, and the question of printing it seems to have been forgotten. Although a few selections, amounting to 156 lines, were inserted in Dallas’s _Recollections_ (1824), the poem did not appear complete until the _Works_ were published by Murray in 1831.

_Hints from Horace_, through a curious perversity of judgment, was always a great favorite with Byron, and was estimated by him as one of his finest performances. His mature opinion of it and a possible cause for his preference are given in a letter to Murray, March 1, 1821: “Pray request Mr. Hobhouse to adjust the Latin to the English: the imitation is so close that I am unwilling to deprive it of its principal merit--its closeness. I look upon it and my Pulci as by far the best things of my doing.”[129] On September 23, 1820, when he had published portions of his masterpiece, _Don Juan_, he said, referring to the period of _Hints from Horace_: “I wrote better then than now.”[130] No intelligent reader will be likely to agree with Byron’s preposterous verdict on his own work, for _Hints from Horace_, although designed as a sequel to _English Bards_, is so much less vigorous and brilliant that it suffers decidedly by a comparison with the earlier satire. The poet, far from the scenes and associations where his rage had been aroused, has lost the angry inspiration which raised _English Bards_ above mere ranting, and the white heat of his passion has cooled with the flight of time. The praise which Byron bestowed upon his poem is additional testimony to the often repeated assertion that authors are incompetent critics of their own productions.

Byron’s boastful claim for the accuracy of _Hints from Horace_ as a version of the _Ars Poetica_ may possibly lead to some misconceptions. Professor A. S. Cook, in his _Art of Poetry_, has pointed out some particular passages in which the English poet imitated his model, and has proved that he followed Horace, in places, with reasonable closeness. But _Hints from Horace_ is far from being, like Byron’s version of the first canto of Pulci’s _Morgante Maggiore_, a mere translation. It must be remembered that Byron, in his secondary title, defined the _Hints_ in three different ways in as many manuscripts, as “an Allusion,” as an “Imitation,” and as a “Partial Imitation.” The fact seems to be that the work conforms, in general, to the structure and argument of the _Ars Poetica_, in many cases translating literally the phrasing of the original, but altering and reorganizing the satire to fit current conditions.

The idea of thus preserving the continuity of Horace’s poem, while revising and readapting its text, was probably first conceived by Oldham in his English version of the _Ars Poetica_. In his preface Oldham stated his design as follows: “I resolved to alter the scene from Rome to London, and to make Use of English Names of Men, Places, and Customs, where the Parallel would decently permit, which I conceived would give a kind of New Air to the Poem, and render it more agreeable to the Relish of the Present Age.” Accordingly, while keeping roughly to the text of Horace, he introduced plentiful references to English poets. Byron also gives his satire a modern setting, but in so doing, takes more liberties than Oldham. He substitutes Milton for Homer as the classic example of the epic poet; he makes Shakspere instead of Æschylus the standard writer of drama. He inserts many passages, such as the remarks on the Italian Opera, on Methodism, and on the versification of _Hudibras_, which have no counterparts in the _Ars Poetica_. Oldham had refrained from satirising his contemporaries; Byron improves every opportunity for assailing his old antagonists. Allusions to “Granta” and her Gothic Halls, to “Cam’s stream,” to Grub-street, and to Parliament make _Hints from Horace_ a thoroughly modern poem. We may apply to it Warburton’s comment on Pope’s _Imitations_: “Whoever expects a paraphrase of Horace, or a faithful copy of his genius, or manner of writing ... will be much disappointed.” Byron restates, without much alteration, the critical dicta which Horace had established as applicable to poetry in all times and countries; he takes the plan of the _Ars Poetica_ as a rough guide for his English adaptation; but he introduces so many digressions and changes so many names that his satire is firmly stamped with his own individuality.

There is no ground for supposing that any one of the scores of translations and imitations of the _Ars Poetica_ had ever met Byron’s eye[131]; the nearest prototypes in English poetry of _Hints from Horace_ are probably Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_ and _Epistle to Augustus_. Certain superficial resemblances have led critics to the inference that Pope’s _Essay_ is accountable for much of Byron’s _Hints_. It is remarkable that the two authors, born just a century apart, should have attempted satires so similar in tone at ages approximately the same. Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_, composed probably in 1709, was printed in 1711, a hundred years before Byron wrote _Hints from Horace_. In this work Pope tried to do for criticism what Horace had done for poetry: that is, to codify and express in compact form some generally accepted principles of the art. Pope, however, saw fit to introduce incidentally some conventional precepts concerning the subject-matter of literary criticism, borrowing them from Horace, and Horace’s French imitator, Boileau. Thus in Pope’s _Essay_ are to be found many of the maxims which Byron transferred into _Hints from Horace_ from the Latin source. The correspondence between such passages in the _Essay_ and their counterparts in _Hints from Horace_ has led Weiser to conclude, from a study of parallel ideas, that Byron’s poem is based, to a large extent, on Pope’s work.[132] His thesis, however, has been all but conclusively refuted by Levy, who shows that in the nine instances of parallelism adduced by Weiser as evidence, the lines quoted from _Hints from Horace_ are really much closer to lines from the _Ars Poetica_ than they are to the citations from the _Essay on Criticism_.[133] Undoubtedly there are couplets in the _Hints_ that recall the _Essay_; but in view of Byron’s specific statement of his obligation to Horace, it would be rash to assume that Pope’s influence was more than a general one, the natural result of Byron’s careful study of his style and manner. Pope’s _Epistle to Augustus_, a paraphrase of Horace’s Book II, Epistle 1, is, in several respects, not unlike _Hints from Horace_. It pursues the same method in substituting English names for Greek and Roman ones, and in replacing classical references by allusions to contemporary life. Moreover the _Epistle_, with its judgment on English writers, its criticism of the drama, and its estimate of the age, is structurally more akin to _Hints from Horace_ than is ordinarily supposed.

It would be superfluous to attempt to add anything to Professor Cook’s work in outlining the instances in which Byron merely translated Horace. A single illustration will suffice to show how the same Latin lines were treated by Pope, and, later, by Byron. Horace’s counsel:--

“Vos exemplaria Græca
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna”[134]

is paraphrased roughly in the _Essay on Criticism_ as,

“Be Homer’s works your study and delight,
Read them by day and meditate by night.”[135]

In this case Byron’s version,

“Ye who seek finished models, never cease
By day and night to read the works of Greece,”[136]

is slightly more literal.

Horace’s treatise, technically an epistle, suffers from a want of coherence. In plan it is merely a group of maxims, with illustrations and amplifications. _Hints from Horace_ is even more muddled and formless. It is like a collection of detached thoughts in verse, with each single observation jotted down almost at haphazard without regard to what comes before or after. It is no exaggeration to say that whole sections of the satire might be lifted bodily from one page to another without perceptibly affecting the continuity of thought. This defect, obscured in Horace and Pope by the epigrammatic brilliancy of separate phrases and the lift of “winged words,” has, in Byron’s poem, few counterbalancing virtues. _Hints from Horace_ lacks the finished perfection of style which distinguishes the _Ars Poetica_ and the _Epistle to Augustus_. Its versification is, except in isolated lines, feeble and careless, far inferior to that of _English Bards_, and even sinking at times, as in the passage on _Hudibras_,[137] into bare prosing. One finds in the poem confirmation of Byron’s confession to Lord Holland in 1812:--“Latterly, I can weave a nine-line stanza faster than a couplet, for which measure I have not the cunning.”[138] If the dates furnished by the poet are correct, 722 lines, at least, of the satire must have been composed in two weeks, a speed which may explain some of the defects in execution. Certainly, even with due allowance for Byron’s strange fondness, it must be considered one of his poorest works in structure, diction, and versification.

Nor can it, viewed merely as a medium for satire, claim a high rank. It is too obviously didactic in its purpose and too general in its attacks. It does not even possess the special interest which attaches to _English Bards_ because of the references to contemporary and famous writers in the latter work. Only a few lines are devoted to personal satire, and these seldom do more than repeat or amplify the criticism embodied in the earlier poem. The result is that _Hints from Horace_, taken as a satire only, is open to a charge of futility, in that its motive is not definite and its satire is too scattered. It cannot go straight to the mark, because it is aiming at no particular target.

As in _English Bards_, a large proportion of the satire is placed in prose notes. The longest passage of satire in verse is that directed at Jeffrey. The lines:--

“On shores of Euxine or Ægean sea,
My hate, untraveiled, fondly turned to thee,”

show that Byron’s rage at that critic was still smouldering. Repeating the bombastic challenge uttered in the postscript to the second edition of _English Bards_, the satirist taunts Jeffrey with disinclination or inability to reply to the assault made upon him. It is probable that the Scotchman never saw this passage in _Hints from Horace_; at any rate he did not deign to answer Byron’s abuse, and maintained a discreet silence during the period of the latter’s anger.

The lines on Southey reiterate in a commonplace fashion what Byron had said before on the same subject, a long prose note dwelling on the heaviness of Southey’s epics, particularly of _The Curse of Kehama_ (1810), which had recently appeared. Another elaborate note is aimed at the “cobbler-laureates,” Bloomfield and Blackett, whom Byron still mentions with contempt. Scott and Bowles receive some passing uncomplimentary remarks; Fitzgerald is referred to once as “Fitz-scribble”; Wordsworth is barely alluded to, and Coleridge is not spoken of at all. The review of the drama is uninteresting and dull. Byron persists in his condemnation of the Opera on the ground of its immorality, although, somewhat inconsistently, he defends plays against the prudish censure of “Methodistic men.”

An occasional line suggests a similar passage from other English satirists. Thus Byron’s couplet,

“Satiric rhyme first sprang from selfish spleen.
You doubt--see Dryden, Pope, St. Patrick’s Dean,”

recalls the words of Cowper,

“But (I might instance in St. Patrick’s Dean)
Too often rails to gratify his spleen.”[139]

The reference to Pitt’s skill in coining words may have been remembered from many jests on the subject in the _Rolliad_ and the Works of Peter Pindar. The scorn of “French flippancy and German sentiment” re-echoes the violent opposition of the _Anti-Jacobin_ to the spread of foreign ideas. A note on “the millennium of the black letter”[140] calls to mind the hatred of Mathias for antiquaries and searchers for old manuscripts[141] and another note[142] reinforces Gifford in abusing T. Vaughan, Esq., the “last of the Cruscanti.”

The single striking feature of _Hints from Horace_ is its summary of “Life’s little tale,” based upon a corresponding passage in the _Ars Poetica_, in which Byron describes graphically the career of a young nobleman under the Georges, from his “simple childhood’s dawning days” to the time when “Age palsies every limb,” and he sinks into his grave “crazed, querulous, forsaken, half-forgot.” Despite some obvious exaggerations and some traces of affected pessimism, the poet was undoubtedly drawing largely upon his own experience. The tone of the lines is bitter, unrelieved by sympathy or humor, paralleled in Byron’s work only in the _Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog_.

_The Curse of Minerva_, composed at approximately the same time as _Hints from Horace_,--it is dated from the Capuchin Convent at Athens, March 17, 1811--was actually printed in 1812, but not for public circulation. The first edition, probably unauthorized, was brought out in Philadelphia in 1815. Meanwhile the 54 introductory lines, beginning:--

“Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea’s hills the setting sun,”

had appeared in Canto III of the _Corsair_ (1814). A fragmentary version of 111 lines, entitled _The Malediction of Minerva, or the Athenian Marble-Market_, signed “Steropes” and published in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for April, 1815, was disowned by Byron as a “miserable and villanous copy.”[143] The stanzas on Lord Elgin in _Childe Harold_[144] had already expressed Byron’s condemnation of the conduct of that nobleman, and the poet doubtless believed that nothing was to be gained by again airing his indignation. Possibly, too, as Moore suggests,[145] a remonstrance from Lord Elgin or some of his relatives may have been an inducement to sacrifice a work which could add little to his reputation.

_The Curse_, unlike _Hints from Horace_, has the advantage of a definite and undivided aim. It is an exposure and denunciation of Lord Elgin, who, appointed in 1799 to the embassy from England at the Porte, had interested himself in the remains of Greek architecture and sculpture on the Acropolis and had secured the services of the Neapolitan painter, Lusieri, to sketch the ruins. In 1801 he obtained a firman from the Sultan allowing him to carry away “any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon,” and accepting this as a guaranty against molestation in his project, he at once proceeded, at his own expense, to dismantle the Parthenon and to ship the finest specimens to England. Although he left Turkey in 1803, the work continued through his agents until 1812. His collection, the cost of accumulating which was estimated at 74,000 pounds, was purchased by the nation for 35,000 pounds in 1816, and now forms part of the so-called “Elgin Marbles” in the British Museum.

Although opinions as to the propriety of Elgin’s actions differed widely at the time, it is now fairly well established that his foresight prevented the ultimate destruction of the statuary by war and the elements. Byron’s conclusions, formed on the spot where the operations were being carried on, have, however, some justification. He felt that it was the degradation of Greece at the hands of a foreign despoiler, and he resented the intrusion as interference in the affairs of a helpless people. In _English Bards_ he had mentioned Elgin, along with Aberdeen, as fond of “misshaped monuments and maimed antiques,” and had ridiculed him for making his house a mart,

“For all the mutilated works of art.”

When later he saw the havoc that had been caused at Athens, his mood changed from raillery to seriousness, and he burst out with fury at the man whom he considered a wanton plunderer and at the nation which could tolerate his depredations. Under this stimulus he wrote the stanzas on Elgin in _Childe Harold_, but his rage found a better outlet in _The Curse of Minerva_. This satire contains only 312 lines, but it goes straight to its goal, with a directness and a concentration which distinguish it above any of the other early satires, even above _English Bards_, superior as that poem is to it in more important respects.

The satire has a narrative basis, with a plot which is simple and unified. The beautiful opening description of an evening at Athens precedes, and accentuates by contrast, the ensuing indictment by Minerva of Elgin, the desecrator of all this loveliness. The poet’s reply to the accusing goddess disclaims any responsibility for the vandalism on England’s part, and lays the blame on Scotland, Elgin’s fatherland. Minerva’s answering curse and prophecy extend the scope of the satire beyond mere personal malice, and give it a broad application to England’s policy as oppressor and devastator. Her speech ends somewhat abruptly, and the poem closes.

Although Byron was, by his own admission, “half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one,”[146] he joined, in _The Curse of Minerva_, the long line of satirists from the authors of _Eastward Ho!_ to Cleveland with his grim couplet,

“Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;
Not forced him wander but confined him home,”

and to Dr. Johnson, who have jeered at the Scotch and Scotland. Byron’s antipathy for his early home evidently developed from his quarrel with the Scotch reviewers. _English Bards_ had contained scattered references to “Northern wolves” and to the “oat-fed phalanx” of the critic clan, and had alluded scornfully to the children of Dun-edin who “write for food--and feed because they write.” In _The Curse of Minerva_, a new occasion for dislike having arisen, the attack on the Scotch is more vicious and intolerant. Many passages have their counterparts in portions of Churchill’s _Prophecy of Famine_ (1763), a pastoral in the form of a dialogue, with the motto, “Nos patriam fugimus,” ingeniously applied to the Scotch in the translation, “We all get out of our country as fast as we can.” Churchill, who, it will be remembered, hated the Scotch critic, Smollett, as ferociously as Byron hated Jeffrey, had been aroused also by the growing influence of Bute and other Scotchmen at the court of George III, and his poem, accordingly, became a severe political invective, interspersed with vilification of the Scotch climate and the Scotch people. It is interesting to compare Churchill’s description of the barrenness and dampness of Scotland with Byron’s picture of that country as “a land of meanness, sophistry, and mist.” The former poet calls Scotchmen “Nature’s bastards”; Byron refers to Scotland as “that bastard land.” Both writers have caustic lines on the shrewdness, importunity, and avarice of the Scotch people, wherever they settle. Although the similarities between the satires warrant no deduction, there is a possibility that Byron, who undoubtedly had read the _Prophecy of Famine_, may have recollected certain passages in a poem the spirit of which is very like his own.[147]

Basing his argument chiefly on the fact that a couplet of Pope[148] is parodied in Byron’s lines,

“‘Blest paper-credit!’ who shall dare to sing?
It clogs like lead Corruption’s weary wing,”

Weiser has endeavored to prove that Byron borrowed something from Pope’s _Epistle to Lord Bathurst_. A verbal comparison of the two passages in question fails to bring out any striking resemblance. Pope continues with a comment on the ease with which paper money may be used in bribery; Byron, after quoting Pope, does not touch on this point, and his lines seem to be merely a passing quotation, not closely connected with what comes before or after. In no other place in _The Curse of Minerva_ are there phrases which have even a remote likeness to the language of Pope’s _Epistle_. On such grounds as Weiser advances it might be shown that Byron, in _Beppo_, is imitating Cowper, because he quotes a line from that poet.

Byron’s attack on Lord Elgin in _Childe Harold_ had been animated by a love for Greece and a pity for her forlorn state among the nations, as well as by resentment of England’s cold-blooded attitude in allowing such depredations. In the passage Byron had covered Elgin with abuse:--

“Cold as the crags upon his native coast,
His mind as barren and his head as hard,
Is he whose head conceived, whose hand prepared,
Aught to displace Athena’s poor remains.”[149]

These lines were published in March, 1812. In 1813, James and Horace Smith, famous through their _Rejected Addresses_, appeared again as authors in _Horace in London_, a series of imitations of the first two books of the _Odes_ of Horace. In this volume, Ode XV, _The Parthenon_, modelled fairly closely in plot on Horace’s _Prophecy of Nereus_, treats of the controversy concerning Elgin. A clear reference to Byron in the poem makes it certain that the Smiths had read _Childe Harold_ and that they concurred with his expressed disapproval of Elgin’s conduct.

_The Parthenon_, owing perhaps to mere coincidence, perhaps to the possibility that the Smiths may have had access to _The Curse of Minerva_ in manuscript, is in its outlines and especially in the general features of Minerva’s curse, singularly like Byron’s satire. The Smiths, following Horace, describe Elgin’s ship as hastening homeward, laden with the “guilty prize.” Suddenly Minerva rises, like Nereus, from the sea and, with the language of a prophet, pronounces a curse on the destroyer, predicting that Elgin will suffer misfortunes and go down through the ages remembered for his shamelessness. The poem, like Byron’s, closes with Minerva speaking. Certain lines in _The Parthenon_:--

“Goth, Vandal, Moslem, had their flags unfurl’d
Around my still unviolated fane,
Two thousand summers had with dews impearl’d
Its marble heights nor left a mouldering stain;
’T was thine to ruin all that all had spared in vain,”[150]

epitomize a longer passage in _The Curse of Minerva_.[151] In _Childe Harold_ Byron had made no mention of the fact that Elgin’s marriage had been dissolved by act of Parliament in 1818, but in _The Curse of Minerva_ he made the goddess allude to the domestic scandal. A similar passage is introduced into Minerva’s prophecy in _The Parthenon_. These resemblances in structure and sometimes in phrasing may, of course, have occurred independently, or may have arisen from the chance that Byron, as well as the Smiths, was thinking of Horace’s _Ode_. On the other hand, there is a possibility that the Smiths, already familiar with the lines on Elgin in _Childe Harold_, may have read _The Curse of Minerva_ in manuscript and have unconsciously reproduced some of its features in their poem.

By a natural transition Minerva, in Byron’s satire, leaves Elgin and turns to England in the words,

“Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son
To do what oft Britannia’s self had done.”

This introduces a survey of England’s foreign affairs, designed to expose that country’s despotic policy towards her weaker rivals and dependents. The goddess treats briefly of England’s treachery to Denmark in the battle of Copenhagen, of the recent uprisings of the natives in India, and of the misfortunes of the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, and finally, touching upon domestic matters, uncovers the distress and misery of the laboring classes in England and the inefficiency of the government in dealing with internal problems. She ends with a picture of the Furies waving their kindled brands above the distracted realm, while ascending fires shake their “red shadow o’er the startled Thames.” Such a fate, says Minerva, and Byron with her, is deserved by a nation which had lit pyres “from Tagus to the Rhine.”

This passage, commonplace enough in its style, is significant in that it shows Byron almost for the first time taking a keen and active interest in politics, and posing as an adverse critic of England’s foreign policy. It was easy for the man who could condemn England’s conduct towards Denmark and India to develop into an outspoken radical.

In neglecting and partly disowning _The Curse of Minerva_, Byron was probably acting with good judgment. It is assuredly unworthy of the author of _Childe Harold_. Only the opening passage is notable for its genuine poetry, and the satire, except in structure, is inferior to _English Bards_. It is equally true, however, that it is superior in most respects to _Hints from Horace_ and _The Waltz_. _The Curse of Minerva_, with its narrative basis, is a variation from the other early classical satires; but it has the same elaborate machinery of notes, the same method of direct attack--although in this instance it is conveyed through the mouth of a third character--and the same extravagance and bitterness of tone. In managing the heroic couplet, Byron never surpassed his skill in _English Bards_. After 1811 his acquired ability to handle other measures withdrew his attention from the metre of Pope, with the result that his versification in the ensuing classical satires shows signs of deterioration and weakness. It is to this period of decline that _Hints from Horace_ and _The Curse of Minerva_ belong.