th into fresher morn_,--
[MS. M. erased.]

[426] [The wealth which permitted the Florentine nobility to indulge
their taste for modern, that is, refined luxury was derived from success
in trade. For example, Giovanni de' Medici (1360-1428), the father of
Cosmo and great-grand-father of Lorenzo de' Medici, was a banker and
Levantine merchant. As for the Renaissance, to say nothing of Petrarch
of Florentine parentage, two of the greatest Italian scholars and
humanists--Ficino, born A.D. 1430, and Poliziano, born 1454--were
Florentines; and Poggio was born A.D. 1380, at Terra Nuova on Florentine
soil.]

[mr] _There, too, the Goddess breathes in stone and fills_.--[MS. M.]

[427] [The statue of Venus de' Medici, which stands in the Tribune of
the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, is said to be a late Greek (first or
second century B.C.) copy of an early reproduction, of the Cnidian
Aphrodite, the work, perhaps, of one of his sons, Kephisodotos or
Timarchos. (See _Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque_, par Maxime
Collignon, Paris, 1897, ii. 641.) In a Catalogue Raissonne of _La
Galerie de Florence_, 1804, in the editor's possession, which opens with
an eloquent tribute to the enlightenment of the Medici, _la fameuse
Venus_ is conspicuous by her absence. She had been deported to Paris by
Napoleon, but when Lord Byron spent a day in Florence in April, 1817,
and returned "drunk with Beauty" from the two galleries, the lovely
lady, thanks to the much-abused "Powers," was once more in her proper
shrine.]

[ms]
----_and we draw_
_As from a fountain of immortal hills_.--[MS. M. erased.]

[428] {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,