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.