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Learned conjecture, though divided on the question whether Homer or Hesiod be the more ancient poet, certainly leans to the. priority of the former. Many volumes have been written to settle the exact period of Hesiod, and even astronomy has been invoked to decide it. But it is still a subject of uncertainty. The round numbers of Herodotus's chronology cannot be taken quite literally in a matter so palpably traditional.* palpably traditional. Nor does the poet's own declaration, that he lived in the fifth or iron age, immediately after the heroic, guide us distinctly to any date, for he is there dividing the epochs of the world with great poetical latitude, and it is impossible to understand him in strictness, declaring that he lived but one generation after heroes, whom he places in the islands of the blessed. But his great antiquity is undeniable. The philologist, in spite of a few differences in language and prosody that have been noticed, still places him at the side of Homer as the poet of old Ionic Greek. Again, the rudeness of his agricultural skill bespeaks a very early state of society. Not a word is mentioned, either of the olive or the beehive, nor of watering land, nor of any species of manure, nor even of the simple expedient of burning the stubble. And his ethics have the same simplicity. On the score of these he is placed as the father of Greek sententious or Gnomic poetry; but in the days of Solon and Theognis, we find the observations of the gnomics on the economy of life pretty various, whilst Hesiod's morality, though honest and generally amiable, is circumscribed and monotonous.

Nevertheless, Dionysius's remarks on the fine and flowing sweetness of our poet's diction leave us to conjecture his age to have been decidedly, though not greatly, later than Homer's. His tone of opinion I conceive also to be more modern. Homer carries us completely back to the soul and sentiments of the heroic ages; and in particular he breathes a regard for monarchy, which shews that form of government to have been still regarded in his time with a share of primitive partiality. But Hesiod evinces no such respect for kings. On the contrary, he threatens and reprobates them as devourers of bribes and workers of evil. This indignant and free feeling with regard to rulers, as well as the sober love of industry, the hatred of rapine, and the

* Herodotus places the age of Hesiod and Homer four hundred years before his own. It would be tedious to transcribe the various dates assigned to both poets, in which the ancients differ as much as the moderns. In general, about nine hundred years B. C. is assumed as the æra of Homer, and half a century later as Hesiod's. As to the fabled poetical strife between them, the passage of the Works and Days alleged in proof of it, does not mention even Homer's name, and is besides thought to be corrupted.

Namely, in Dr. Clarke's edition of the had, in Mr. Knight's Prolegomena, and in the supplement to Sulzer's Algemeiner Theorie des Schönen Könsten. At least in the "Works and Days."

generally calculating spirit of utility, that pervade his poetry, notwithstanding the narrow range of his ethics-all these traits might undoubtedly belong to his individual character, as much as to that of his age. But a poet's sentiments are never popular, unless the public mind meets him half way; and Hesiod's hatred of tyranny may well be imagined to have been a popular feeling in Greece, during that abuse of royal power which paved the way for her republican institutions.

Pausanias mentions a tradition among the Boeotians, possibly deserving more credit than he seems to have attached to it-namely, that Hesiod was the author of none of the poems ascribed to him except the "Works and Days." It is exceedingly improbable that he composed the "Shield of Hercules," and his Theogony has not that kind of beauty by which the ancients describe his genius. It astounds the imagination with the thunder and lightning of the warring gods, and with the chaining and Tartarian imprisonment of the Titans. But his gigantic conceptions want grace and consistency to be majestic; and its monstrosities, such as a father devouring his children, children mutilating their fathers, giants with fifty heads and an hundred arms, the tongues of serpents, and the voices of bulls and lions, whatever they symbolized, are given as dry facts by the poet, and are to us uninteresting chimeras. Eschylus and Milton were indebted to the theogony, but they found in it rather the elements of sublimity than the sublime itself.

Hesiod was called the Ascræan, from the village of Ascra, in Boeotia, where he lived. He calls it a miserable place, though it lay at the foot of the mountain Helicon, and describes its ungenial climate like one who remembered and regretted a better. Strabo says, that he was born at Cuma, a city of Æolia; and the poet himself tells us, that his father had crossed the seas from that place on account of his poverty, in order to settle in Boeotia. After the old man's death, Hesiod lost the greater part of his patrimony in a lawsuit with his brother Perses, through the decision of corrupted judges. To this Perses his poem on the "Works and Days" is addressed, in a tone of advice sufficiently reproachful to indicate that his brother had made his fortune like a knave, and spent it like a fool. He prefaces his moral precepts by viewing the history of man from the stealth of the Promethean fire down to the degeneracy of the iron age-then illustrates, in a general manner, the beauty and temporal blessings of justice and industry; after which, in the second book, he dispenses particular instructions to the husbandman, on his labours, his instruments, and even his garments, on the enjoyments he may allow himself and the habits of decency which he should practise. The third book is a poetical calendar, for distinguishing between holy and other days.

The charm by which the best old critics characterize Hesiod, is that of blandness and amenity. Pliny professes, in reading him, to envy the happy life of the primitive agriculturist; and Virgil, in that high moment of his enthusiasm, when he apostrophizes the Saturnian land, consecrates the Ascræan poet's memory by bestowing that epithet on the intended character of his own immortal song. There is much in

the "Works and Days" corresponding to this beauty of poetic spirit which the ancients ascribe to him, such as the description of the ages of the world, and of the state that flourishes under a righteous government. But there is also much in the poem which I apprehend is really felt by a modern mind as rather humbly pleasant than poetically graceful. When we read, for instance, his advice to the farmer to avoid wasting his time at the smith's forge, the common resort of the village loungers and gossips, we are filled with agreeable interest in a trait of manners so ancient and simple. But in pursuing these and many similar passages, we are at a loss to conceive the necessity for bees to have suckled their author in his infancy. His familiar draughts are not like Homer's, blended with the tenderness or strength of affection: their attraction is rather placid than endearing. It is not pedantry, however, to attach importance to the circumstance of his having been so eminently a favourite with the ancients from the first to the last ages of classic literature. They must have tasted charms in his harmony and diction, to which it is impossible that a modern ear can be equally alive. Many truths on which he harps as a moralist with monotonous effect to us, might be far from common-place to the age in which they were promulgated. He was the poet of sober unimposing virtues, labour, justice, and frugality-the most important to man, but the most difficult to make the means of dazzling his imagination. If he has not given them the highest splendour of poetry, it was much to have arrayed them in a mild and attractive light.

In one respect, his moral spirit may be objected to, namely, in the irrational harshness with which he speaks of women. But this is not the only illiberal trait of sentiment with regard to the sex, that appears as an anomaly in the history of Greek civilization: for republican Greece appears to have been more unjust towards women than the age of Homer. The father of poetry is too simple to be gallant; but he has a natural equity that seems to make no invidious distinction between the rights of the sexes. Hesiod, on the contrary, summarily explains the origin of evil, by throwing all the blame of it on the weaker sext. Superstition has seldom exhibited man in a more ignoble light than as the author of this fiction-a wretched being attempting to wreak his discontentment with life on the character of a timid helpmate dependant on him, more alive to suffering, and doomed to suffer more, than himself. Voltaire says, that there is nothing in Homer equal to this description which Hesiod gives of Pandora. I am glad that the cowardly legend is not in Homer. It may be doing injustice to Egypt to suppose that Greece got it from that quarter; but it seems unworthy even of the equivocal morals of Greek mythology, and only fit to have issued from that country where men fell down before cats and monkeys, and worshipped their superior natures. Assuredly after coining such a fable, and calling it his religion, the lord of the creation might consistently debase himself to the most abject idolatry of the brutes.

An ancient legend respecting Hesiod.

The legend of Pandora occurs in the "Works and Days," and is repeated in the " Theogony."

HAPPINESS.

"This new and gorgeous garment

Sits not so easy on me as you think."

INCESSANT, earnest, ardent, is man's pursuit of Happinessthe philosopher's stone of every age and nation since Eve's transgression drove our first parents from its earthly abode, and rendered its attainment so difficult to their descendants. Ponderous tomes of divinity, huge volumes of philosophy, essays without number, maxims without end, have been written by our fellow-labourers to assist us in the pursuit ; and, certainly, when we lose our way it is not from a deficiency of finger-posts on the road. Yet, stale as the subject is, it can scarcely be uninteresting;-useless as advice may be, it will generally obtain listeners: there are disorders enough in the world to find employment for quacks as well as for physicians; and while men continue subject to head-aches and heart-aches, they will give their attention to every old woman or empiric who promises either cure or alleviation.

There are a few ingredients in the composition of earthly Happiness which are indispensable, and for which no substitute can be admitted: over the lonely inmate of a bed of pain and sickness, whose pangs poverty exasperates, whose once kind nurses death has removed, even religion's holy influence must fail; her angel-smile and soothing whispers of better things to come can only avert despair, and produce a state of patient calmness and quiet hope. Extreme misery, however, is as rare as extreme felicity; and with the exception of those who dig out their own wretchedness as eagerly as if they were digging for diamonds, and of a few others, intended, perhaps, as perennial proofs of a future state of retribution, Happiness is more equally and more generally diffused than is usually imagined. A mighty magician, silent and invisible in his operations, is ever at work to produce this equilibrium; and few are the circumstances of life which can resist the incessant touch of his powerful fingers. This magician is Habit, the friend of heaven, who renders self-denial easy and pleasant to the virtuous; the ally of hell, by whom the wicked are familiarized to crime. It is Habit that takes away their relish from the luxuries of the rich, and makes the coarse fare of the peasant palatable and sweet;-that renders the cloister pleasant to the once weeping nun, the ball-room insipid to the once raptured debutante; that makes the husband gaze uncharmed on the thousand beauties which enchanted the lover, and listen unirritated to those querulous tones and sharp rebukes which, in earlier days, nearly drove him distracted. Habit, wonderful Habit, can teach the proud bride to clasp her diamond necklace without one throb of

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exultation, and the captive or the Corinthian* to wear his fetters or his stays without a groan-can bid us gaze unmoved by wonder or gratitude on suns setting in glory, and heavens spangled by a thousand stars, while a comet or a coronation will set all England in a bustle of admiration and delight.

To those possessed of a clear conscience, of Christian hopes, of health, and ease, and competence, it would appear, that Happiness ought to be a close companion-an inseparable handmaid; yet this is not the case; and we frequently find more fretfulness and complaining, more vapid days and restless nights among the children of affluence, surrounded by a thousand blessings, than among those who rise every morning to a routine of hardship and of labour. A few directions may be of service to those prosperous people in whom "much joy has dried away the balmy dew" of content and gratitude. First, let no one expect ecstasies in this life, but consider the absence of pain as pleasure, seize every moment of calm enjoyment with grateful alacrity, and duly estimate the blessings of peace and of repose. Joy is a wild and transitory feeling, unfitted to our present state of existence ;-so unfitted, that we know not how to denote its excess but by tears. "Few and far between" are its visits. The recovery of a dear friend from dangerous sickness, the return of another after long absence, the first moments of happy love, when doubt and fear fly before the delicious certainty of mutual affection, the first sight of one's offspring, or their noble conduct in after-life ;-these are a few of those bright sunny spots," which, if unshaded by counterpoising sorrows, glitter upon the waste of human life like the fair Oases of the desert. But rare, indeed, are moments of this description, and seldom are we able to resign ourselves to their full enjoyment: they make not up the sum of human life, and those are the wisest among us who, seizing joy gratefully when it comes, look not forward to it with any sanguine expectation; in other words, who are well pleased to see a haunch of venison on their table, but can dine contentedly upon mutton every day.

Again, let us not consider any circumstance as insignificant which can have the slightest effect upon our tempers and comforts. For what is a happy life? Is it not so many happy years and days; and are not days made up of hours and minutes? Every minute, therefore, from which we can subtract dulness or discontent-every trifling arrangement which can stop complaint and impart even momentary pleasure, will have a beneficial effect on the sum total of our annual felicity.

* The ignorant are informed that this more elegant appellation has superseded its predecessor Dandy, once so popular in every rank. Sic transit, &c.

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