Jupiter, but occasionally to some other deity, or deified hero, the patron of the place where the rhapsodist found himself, or of the festivity at which he assisted. The majority of these hymns are only short invocations. Some of them, however, have a breadth and freedom of narrative that justify our calling them Epic hymns, and in these few we have a species of Greek poetry, agreeably diversified by incident and description, from the wearisome tissue of laudatory epithets in the so called Orphic hymns. It is true that their subjects remind us of fables rather pallingly familiar to our schoolboy memories; such as the wanderings of Latona in quest of a place to bring forth Apollo, the slaughter of Python, the loves of Venus and Anchises, &c. But, stale as those legends may be, they are the outlines of a creed of superstition, for studying the history and spirit of which it is necessary to consult those primitive classics who give them with the greatest degree of the native enthusiastic feeling of Greek imagination. It is thus that the traits of classic mythology are found in the Homeridic hymns-displayed in a less ornate and sophisticated form than by Ovid, yet with an airy grace, a freshness of colouring, and a beauty of outline equally remote from the grotesque and wild theogony of Hesiod. Even when the hymnist may be supposed to have borrowed his materials from that theogony, as in the strain to the Delphian Apollo, he seems to humanize his materials into shapes of new and natural attraction. And widely as the genius of those productions may be distant from the bold and inventive inspiration of Homer, they have nevertheless a charm of indigenous naïveté that makes us acquainted, not only with the outward shape of Hellenic idolatry, but with its inward spirit and essential character, and with the joyousness peculiar to its elastic temperament. The hymn to the Delian Apollo sustains a charming tone of jubilee. It leads us abroad with the inhabitants of Delos, her men, women, and blooming children, scattered over their festive fields, and celebrating games and contests of harmony, with an enthusiasm which the poet describes as throwing an air of immortality over their countenances. Φαίη κ' ἀθανάτους καὶ ἀγηρως εμμεναι αιεί, And whosoe'er had seen the Delian isle Had deem'd those ship-clad shores, that wealthy clime, The hymn to Venus gives a beautiful description of the goddess taming savage nature by her approach, and attracting the pard and the lion to fawn upon her path. Nor is the subject, though luxuriant, treated with indelicacy. The hymn to Mercury certainly exhibits, in the merriment of Jupiter at the lies and knavery of his infant bastard, neither high-wrought traits of pleasantry, nor imposing moral notions of a Pagan heaven. But superstition seems there to sport before us in the gaiety of her childhood, and in that form she is at least as agreeable and harmless as in some that she has assumed in her riper years. 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. 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 bee-hive, 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 mo notonous. 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 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. Clark's edition of the Iliad, in Mr. Knight's Prolegomena, and in the supplement to Sulzer's Algemeiner Theorie des Schönen Könsten. heroic ages; and in particular he breathes a regard for monarchy, which shows 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 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 itnamely, 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 Baotia, 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, * At least in the "Works and Days." 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 sex.t Superstition has seldom ex An ancient legend respecting Hesiod. †The legend of Pandora occurs in the "Works and Days," and is repeated in the "Theogony." hibited 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. 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. |