rates 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[Sec.2] hight,
Than ye should bear one stone from wronged Athenae's site.

Or will the gentle Dilettanti crew
Now delegate the task to digging Gell,[Sec.3]
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.]

[Sec.1] [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, _AEgyptiaca, 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.)]

[Sec.2] 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.]

[Sec.3] It is rumoured Gell is coming out to dig in Olympia. I wish him
more success than he had at Athens. According to Lusieri's account, he
began digging most furiously without a firmann