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by auroy he means that which grows naturally daλaoui, &c. what in the Greek is languid, iş into the shape of a plough, and by wxTo that by him made brilliant: made by art. Virgil, in his advice to have two ploughs always at hand, has this explanation of αυτογύον;

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-quintum fuge; pallidus Orcus, Eumenidesque satæ: tum partu, terra, nefando, Ceeumque Japetumque creat, sævumque Typhæum,

Et conjuratos cœlum rescindere fratres:
Ter sunt conati, &c.

-the fifths be sure to shun,

That gave the Furies, and pale Pluto, birth,
And arm'd against the skies the sons of earth:
With mountains pil'd on mountains thrice they

strove

To scale the steepy battlements of Jove;
And thrice his light'ning and red thunder play'd,
And their demolish'd works in ruin laid,

Dryden.

Thus we find him imitating the Greek poet in the most minute precepts. Hesiod gives directions for the making a plough; Virgil does the same. Even that which has been the subject of ridicule to many of the critics, viz. plough and sow naked, is translated in the Georgic; nudus ara, sere nudus. Before I proceed any farther, I shall endea- As I have showed where the Roman has followed vour to obviate the objection which has been fre- the Greek, I may be thought partial to my author, quently made against this precept. Hesiod means if I do not show in what he has excelled him: and to insinuate, that ploughing and sowing are labours first, he has contributed to the Georgic most of which require much industry, and application; the subjects in his two last books; as, in the third, and he had doubtless this physical reason for his the management of horses, dogs, &c. and, in the advice, that where such toil is required it is un-fourth, the management of the bees. His style, healthful, as well as impossible, to go through with the same quantity of clothes as in works of tessing with epithets, which are often of themselves fatigue. Virgil doubtless saw this reason, or one of equal force, in this rule, or he would not have translated it. In short, we may find him a strict follower of our poet in most of the precepts of husbandry in the Works and Days. I shall give but one instance more, and that in his superstitious observance of days:

-quintum fuge; pallidus Orcus, Eumenidesque sate: &c.

-the fifths be sure to shun, That gave the Furies, and pale Pluto, birth. Dryden.

If the judgment I have passed from the verses of Manilius, and the second book of the Georgic, in my Discourse on the Writings of Hesiod, be allowed to have any force, Virgil has doubtless been as much obliged to our poet in the second book of his Georgic, as in the first; nor has he imitated him in his precepts only, but in some of his finest descriptions, as in the first book describing the effects of a storm:

-quo, maxima, motu,

Terra tremit, fugere feræ; &c.

and a little lower in the same description:
Nunc nemora, ingenti vento, nunc litora plan-
gunt:

through the whole, is more poetical, more abound

most beautiful metaphors. His invocation on the deities concerned in rural affairs, his address to Augustus, his account of the prodigies before the death of Julius Cæsar, in the first book, his praise of a country life, at the end of the second, and the force of love in beasts, in the third, are what were never excelled, and some parts of them never equalled, in any language.

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Allowing all the beauties in the Georgic, these two poems interfere in the merit of each other so little that the Works and Days may be read with as much pleasure as if the Georgic had never been written. This leads me into an examination of part of Mr. Addison's Essay on the Georgic: in which that great writer, in some places, seems to speak so much at venture, that I am afraid be did not remember enough of the two poems to enter on such a task. Precepts," says he, "of morality, besides the natural corruption of our tempers, which makes us averse to them, are so abstracted from ideas of sense, that they seldom give an opportunity for those beautiful descriptions and images which are the spirit and life of poetry." Had he that part of Hesiod in his eye, where he mentions the temporal blessings of the righteous, and the punishment of the wicked, he would have seen that our poet took an opportunity, from his precepts of morality, to give us "those beautiful descriptions and images which are the spirit and life of poetry." How lovely is the flourishing state of the land of the just there described, the in

which is almost literal from Hesiod, on the power créase of his flocks, and his own progeny! The of the north wind:

μεμύκι δε γαια και ύλη, &c.

Loud groans the earth, and all the forests roar.

I cannot leave this head, without injustice to the Roman poet, before I take notice of the manner in which he uses that superstitious precept palas

reason which Mr. Addison gives against rules of morality in verse is to me a reason for them; for if our tempers are naturally so corrupt as to make us averse to them, we ought to try all the ways which we can to reconcile them, and verse among the rest; in which, as I have observed before, our poet has wonderfully succeeded.

The same author, speaking of Hesiod, says, "the precepts he has given us are sown so very

thick, that they clog the poem too much." The poet, to prevent this, quite through his Works❘ and Days, has staid so short a while on every head, that it is impossible to grow tiresome in either; the division of the work I have given at the beginning of this View, therefore shall not repeat it. Agriculture is but one subject, in many, of the work, and the reader is there relieved with several rural descriptions, as of the north wind, autumn, the country repast in the shades, &c. The rules for navigation are dispatched with the utmost brevity, in which the digression concerning his victory at the funeral games of Amphidamas is natural, and gives a grace to the poem.

I shall mention but one oversight more which Mr. Addison has made, in his essay, and conclude this head: when he condemned that circumstance of the virgin being at home in the winter season free from the inclemency of the weather, I believe he had forgot that his own author had used almost the same image, and on almost the same occasion, though in other words:

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Nec nocturna quidem carpentes pensa puellæ Nescivere hyemem; &c. Georg. 1. The difference of the manner in which the two poets use the image is this. Hesiod makes her with her mother at home, either bathing, or doing what most pleases her; and Virgil såys, young women are plying their evening tasks, they are sensible of the winter season, from the oil sparkling in the lamp, and the snuff hardening." The only apology I can make for the liberty 1 have taken with the writings of so fine an author as Mr. Addison, is that I thought it a part of my duty to our poet, to endeavour to free the reader from such errours as he might possibly imbibe, when delivered under the sanction of so great a

name.

I must not end this View without some observations on the fourth eclogue of Virgil, since Probus, Grævius, Fabricius, and other men of great learning, have thought fit to apply what has there been generally said to allude to the Cumæan sybil to our poet:

Ultima Cumai venit jam carminis ætas.

This line, say they, has an allusion to the golden age of Hesiod; Virgil therefore is supposed to say, "the last age of the Cuman poet now approaches." By last he means the most remote from his time; which Fabricius explains by antiquissima, and quotes an expression from Cornelius Severus, in which he uses the word in the same sense, ultima certamina for antiquissima certamina. The only method by which we can add any weight to this reading is by comparing the clogue of Virgil with some similar passages in Hesiod. To begin, let us therefore read the line before quoted with the two following:

Ultima Cumai venit jam carminis ætas; Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo; Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.

which will bear this paraphrase: "The remotest age mentioned in the verse of the Cumean poet

now approaches; the great order, or round, of ages, as described in the said poet, revolves; now returns the virgin Justice, which, in his iron age, he tells us, left the Earth; and now the reign of Saturn, which is described in his golden age, is come again." If we turn to the golden and iron ages, in the Works and Days, we shall find this. allusion very natural.

Let us proceed in our connection and comparison of the verses. Virgil goes on in his compliment to Pollio on his new-born son:

Ille deûm vitam accipiet.

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"The fertile earth bore its fruit spontaneously, and in abundance."

Here we see several natural allusions to our poet, whence it is not unreasonable, for such as mistake the country of Hesiod, to imagine, that all Virgil would say to compliment Pollio, on the birth of his son, is, that now such a son is born, the golden age, as described by Hesiod, shall return; and granting the word Cumai to carry this sense with it, there is nothing of a prophecy mentioned, or hinted at, in the whole eclogue, any more than Virgil's own, by poetical licence.

A learned prelate of our own church asserts something so very extraordinary on this head, that I cannot avoid quoting it, and making some few remarks upon it: his words are these, "Virgil could not have Hesiod in his eye in speaking of the four ages of the world, because Hesiod makes five ages before the commencement of the golden." And soon after, continues he, "the predictions in the prophet (meaning Daniel) of four suc cessive empires, that should arise in different ages of the world, gave occasion to the poets, who had the knowledge of these things only by report, to apply them to the state of the world in so many ages, and to describe the renovation of the golden age in the expressions of the prophet concerning the future age of the Messias, which in Daniel is the fifth kingdom." Bishop Chandler towards the conclusion of his Vindication of his Defence of Christianity. What this learned parade was introduced for, I am at loss to conceive! First, in that beautiful eclogue, Virgil speaks not of the four ages of the world: secondly,

Hesiod, so far from making five ages before the commencement of the golden, makes the golden age the first: thirdly, Hesiod could not be one of the poets who applied the predictions in the prophet Daniel to the state of the world in so many ages, because he happened to live some hundred years before the time of Daniel.

This great objection to their interpretation of Cumai still remains, which cannot very easily be conquered, that Cuma was not the country of Hesiod, as I have proved in my Discourse on the Life of our poet, but of his father; and, what will be a strong argument against it, all the ancient poets, who have used an epithet taken from his

country, have chose that of Ascræus. Ovid, who mentions him as often as any poet, never uses any other; and, what is the most remarkable, Virgil himself makes use of it in every passage in which he names him; and those monuments of him, exhibited by Ursinus and Boissard, have this inscription;

ΙΣΙΟΔΟΣ
ΔΙΟΥ

ΑΣΚΡΑΙΟΣ.

Ascræan Hesiod, the son of Dios.

THE

THEOGONY OF HESIOD.

TRANSLATED BY COOKE.

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