What! shall it e'er be said by British tongue,
Albion was happy in Athenæ's tears?
Though in thy name the slave her bosom wrung,
Let it not vibrate in pale Europe's ears,[B]
The Saviour Queen, the free Britannia, wears
The last poor blunder of a bleeding land:
That she, whose generous aid her name endears,
Tore down those remnants with a Harpy's hand,
Which Envious Eld forbore and Tyrants left to stand.—[MS. D.][C]
[A] Attila was horned, if we may trust contemporary legends, and the etchings of his visage in Lavater.—[M.S.]
[B] Lines 5-9 in the Dallas transcript are in Byron's handwriting.
[C] Which centuries forgot——.—[D. erased.]
[ea] [{108}] After stanza xiii. the MS. inserts the two following stanzas:—
Come then, ye classic Thieves of each degree,
Dark Hamilton[A] and sullen Aberdeen,
Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see,
All that yet consecrates the fading scene:
Ah! better were it ye had never been,
Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight.
The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen.
House-furnisher withal, one Thomas[B] hight,
Than ye should bear one stone from wronged Athenæ's site.
Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew
Now delegate the task to digging Gell,[C]
That mighty limner of a bird's eye view,
How like to Nature let his volumes tell:
Who can with him the folio's limit swell
With all the Author saw, or said he saw?
Who can topographize or delve so well?
No boaster he, nor impudent and raw,
His pencil, pen, and spade, alike without a flaw.—[D. erased.]
[A] [William Richard Hamilton (1777-1859) was the son of Anthony Hamilton, Archdeacon of Colchester, etc., and grandson of Richard Terrick, Bishop of London. In 1799, when Lord Elgin was appointed Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Hamilton accompanied him as private secretary. After the battle of Ramassieh (Alexandria, March 20, 1801), and the subsequent evacuation of Egypt by the French (August 30, 1801), Hamilton, who had been sent on a diplomatic mission, was successful in recapturing the Rosetta Stone, which, in violation of a specified agreement, had been placed on board a French man-of-war. He was afterwards employed by Elgin as agent plenipotentiary in the purchase, removal, and deportation of marbles. He held office (1809-22) as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and as Minister at the Court of Naples (1822-25). From 1838 to 1858 he was a Trustee of the British Museum. He published, in 1809, Ægyptiaca, or Some Account of the Ancient and Modern State of Egypt; and, in 1811, his Memorandum on the Subject of the Earl of Elgin's Pursuits in Greece. (For Hamilton, see English Bards, etc., line 509; Poetical Works, 1898, i. 336, note 2.)]
[B] Thomas Hope, Esqr., if I mistake not, the man who publishes quartos on furniture and costume.
[Thomas Hope (1770-1831) (see Hints from Horace, line 7: Poetical Works, 1898, i. 390, note 1) published, in 1805, a folio volume entitled, Household Furniture and Internal Decoration. It was severely handled in the Edinburgh Review (No. xx.) for July, 1807.]