Note 428 — CANTO THE FOURTH[375]
Reading edition
{366} [Byron's contempt for connoisseurs and dilettanti finds expression in English Bards, etc., lines 1027-1032, and, again, in The Curse of Minerva, lines 183, 184. The "stolen copy" of The Curse was published in the New Monthly Magazine (Poetical Works, 1898, i. 453) under the title of The Malediction of Minerva; or, The Athenian Marble-Market, a title (see line 7) which must have been invented by and not for Byron. He returns to the charge in Don Juan, Canto 11. stanza cxviii. lines 5-9—
" ... a statuary, (A race of mere impostors, when all's done— I've seen much finer women ripe and real, Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal)."
Even while confessing the presence and power of "triumphal Art" in sculpture, one of "the two most artificial of the Arts" (see his letter to Murray, April 26, 1817), then first revealed to him at Florence, he took care that his enthusiasm should not be misunderstood. He had made bitter fun of the art-talk of collectors, and he was unrepentant, and, moreover, he was "not careful" to incur a charge of indifference to the fine arts in general. Among the "crowd" which found their place in his complex personality, there was "the barbarian," and there was "the philistine," and there was, too, the humourist who took a subtle pleasure in proclaiming himself "a plain man," puzzled by subtleties, and unable to catch the drift of spirits finer than his own.]