'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.