Sacred the fountains, and the seas, esteem, These precepts keep, fond of a virtuous name, BOOK III. THE ARGUMENT. The poet here distinguishes holy days from other, and what are propitious, and what not, for different works, and concludes with a short recommendation of religion and morality. YOUR servants to a just observance train Of ev'ry month, the most propitious day, From sowing, lest your work should prove in vain; VOL. XX. 753 What in the twenty-fourth you do, beware; The work in hand, a day propitious through; O! happy mortal, happy he, and bless'd, OBSERVATIONS ON THE ANCIENT I BELIEVE it will be necessary, for the better light the ancient Greek month, as we may reasonunderstanding the following table, to set in a clear ably conclude it stood in the days of Hesiod, confining ourselves to the last book of his Works and Days. The poet makes the month contain thirty days, which thirty days he divides into three parts: the first he calls ισάμενο, οι ιςαμένο μηνος, in the genitive case, because of some other word which is commonly joined requiring it to be of that case; the root of which, 15 or 15aw, signifies, I erect, I set up, I settle, &c. aud Henry Stephens interprets the words 15 s, ineunte mense, uses them; which entrance is the first decade, or the entrance of the month, in which sense the poet first ten days. The second he calls Matos, 3 € which is from now, I am in the midst, meaning the middle decade of the month. The third part he calls pivovtos, from q0vw, which is from 46w, or Qw, I waste away, meaning the decline, or last decade, of the month. Sometimes these words are used in the nominative case. Before I leave these remarks I shall show the manner of expression, of one day, in each decade, from the last book of our poet, which will give a elear idea of all. Έλλη δ' η μεσση μαλ' ασύμφορος εςι φυτοισιν. Ver. 8. The middle sixth is unprofitable to plants. That is, the sixth day of the middle decade. πεφύλαξε δε θυμω Τελλαδα αλευσθαι φθίνοντος θ' ιςαμένο τε Ver. 33. Keep in your mind to shun the fourth of the entrance, and end, of the month. That is, the fourth of the entrance, or first decade, and the fourth of the end, or last decade. It is proper to observe that those days which are blanks are, by our poet, called indifferent days, days of no importance, either good or bad. It is likewise remarkable, that he makes some days both holy days and working days, as the fourth, fourteenth, and twentieth: but, to clear this, Le Clerc tells us, from our learned countryman Selden, that LEPOV nag, though litterally a holy day, does not always signify a festival, but often a day propitious to us in our undertakings. A TABLE OF THE ANCIENT GREEK MONTH, AS IN THE LAST BOOK OF THE WORKS AND DAYS OF HESIOD. DECADE I. 1. Day of decade I. Holy day. 2. 3. 4. Holy day. Propitious for marriage, and for repairing ships. A day of troubles. 5. In which the Furies take their round. 6. Unhappy for the birth of women. Propitions for the birth of men, for gelding the kid and the ram, and for penning the sheep. 7. The birthday of Apollo. A holy day. 8. Geld the goat, and the steer. 9. Propitious quite through. Happy for the birth of both sexes. A day to plant in. 10. Propitious to the birth of men. 9. Luckiest in the afternon. 10. Happy for the birth of men. Most prop tious in the morning. A holy day. DECADE III. 1. Day of decade III, or 21st of the months 2. 3. 4. 5. 7. 8. 9. Yoke the ox, the mule, and the borse. Fl the vessels. Lanch the ship. 10. Look over the business of the whole month; and pay the servants their wages. Those days which are called holy days in the Table are, in the original, o pag. A VIEW OF THE WORKS AND DAYS Days, it may possibly contribute, in some degret, Now we have gone through the Works and view of the poem as we have it delivered down to to the profit and delight of the reader to take a us. I shall first consider it as an ancient piece, and, in that light, enter into the merit and esteem that it reasonably obtained among the ancients: the authors who have been lavish in their cos mendations of it are many; the greatest of the Roman writers in prose, Cicero, has more than once expressed his admiration for the system of morality contained in it; and the deference the greatest Latin poet has paid to it I shall show in my comparison of the Works and Days with the Latin Georgic: nor is the encomium paid by Ovid, to our poet, to be passed over. And Justin Martyr', one of the most learned fathers in the Christian church, extols the Works and Days of our poet, while he expresses his dislike to the Theogony. While our poet addresses to Perses his brother, he instructs his countrymen in all that is useful to know for the regulating their conduct, both in the business of agriculture, and in their behaviour to each other. He gives us an account of the first ages, according to the common received notion among the Gentiles. The story of Pandora has all the em bellishments of poetry which we can find in Ovid, with a clearer moral than is generally in the fables of that poet. His system of morality is calculated so perfectly for the good of society, that there is scarcely any precept omitted that could be properly 1 In bis second discourse or cohortation to the Greeks. t thought of on that occasion. There is not one of the ten commandments of Moses, which relates to our moral duty to each other, that is not strongly recommended by our poet; nor is it enough, he thinks, to be observant of what the civil government would oblige you to, but, to prove yourself a good man, you must have such virtues as no human laws require of you, as those of temperance, generosity, &c. these rules are laid down in a most proper manner to captivate the reader; here the beauties of poetry and the force of reason combine to make him in love with morality. The poet tells us what effect we are reasonably to expect from such virtues and vices as he mentions; which doctrines are not always to be took in a positive sense: if we should say a continuance of intemperance in drinking, and in our commerce with women, would carry us early to the grave, it is morally true, according to the natural course of things; but a man of a strong and uncommon constitution may wanton through an age of pleasure, and so be an exception to this rule, yet not contradict the moral truth of it. Archbishop Tillotson has judiciously told us in what sense we are to take all doctrines of morality; "Aristotle," says that great divine, "observed, long since, that moral and proverbial sayings are understood to be true generally, and for the most part; and that is all the truth is to be expected in them; as when Solomon says, train up a child in the way wherein he shall go, and when he is old he will not depart from it:' this is not to be taken, as if no child 6 that is piously educated did ever miscarry afterwards, but that the good education of children is the best way to make good men." by all good poets: with this view Hesiod seems to have writ, and must be allowed by all true judges to have wonderfully succeeded in the age in which he rose. This advantage more arises to us from the writings of so old an author; we are pleased with those monuments of antiquity, such parts of the ancient Grecian history, as we find in them. I shall now endeavour to show how far Virgil may properly be said to imitate our poet in his Georgic, and to point out some of those passages in which he has either paraphrased, or literally translated from the Works and Days. It is plain he was a sincere admirer of our poet, and of this poem in particular, of which he twice makes honourable mention, and where it could be only to express the veneration that he bore to the author. The first is in his third pastoral. In medio duo signa, Conon, et quis fuit alter, Dryden. Notwithstanding the commentators have all disputed whoin this interrogation should mean, I am convinced that Virgil had none but Hesiod in his eye. In the next passage I propose to quote, the greatest honour that was ever paid by one poet to another is paid to ours. Virgil, in his sixth pastoral, makes Silenus, among other things, relate how Gallus was conducted by a Muse to Helicon, where Apollo, and all the Muses, arose to welcome him; and Linus, approaching him, addressed him in this manner: -hos tibi dant calamos, en, accipe, Muse, The second book, which comes next under our view, will appear with more dignity when we consider in what esteem the art of agriculture was held in those days in which it was writ: the Georgic did not then concern the ordinary and middling sort of people only, but our poet writ for the instruction of princes likewise, who thought it no disgrace to till the ground which they perhaps had conquered. Homer makes Laertes not only plant but dung his own lands; the best employment he could find for his health, and consolation, in the absence of his son. The latter part of this book, together with all the third, though too mean for poetry, are not unjustifiable in our author. Had he made those religious and superstitious precepts one entire subject of verse, it would have been a ridiculous fancy, but, as they are only a part, and the smallest part, of a regular poem, they are introduced with a laudable intent. After the poet bad laid down proper rules for morality, husbandry, navigation, and the vint-quos antè seni, which they had formerly presented age, he knew that religion towards the gods, and a due observance of what was held sacred in his age, were yet wanted to complete the work. These were subjects, he was sensible, incapable of the embellishments of poetry; but as they were necessary to his purpose he would not omit them. Poetry was not then designed as the empty amusement only of an idle hour, consisting of wanton thoughts, or long and tedious descriptions of nothing, but, by the force of harmony and good sense, to purge the mind of its dregs, to give it a great and virtuous turn of thinking: in short, verse was then but the lure to what was useful; which indeed has been, and ever will be, the end pursued Dryden. The greatest compliment which Virgil thought he could pay his friend and patron, Gallus, was, after all that pompous introduction to the choir of Apollo, to make the Muses present him, from the hands of Linus, with the pipe, or calamos, Ascræo to Hesiod; which part of the compliment to our poet Dryden has omitted in his translation. To return to the Georgic. Virgil can be said to imitate Hesiod in his first and second books only; in the first is scarcely any thing relative to the Georgic itself, the hint of which is not took from the Works and Days; nay more, in some places whole lines are paraphrased, and some literally translated. It must indeed be acknowledged, that the Latin poet has sometimes explained, in his translation, what was difficult in the Greek, as where our poet gives directions for two ploughs: Δια δε θεσθαι αροτρα ποιησάμενος κατα οικον in Jai, &c. what in the Greek is languid, is by auroy he means that which grows naturally Continuò in sylvis magnâ vi flexa domatur Georg. 1. 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 endeavour to obviate the objection which has been frequently made against this precept. Hesiod means to insinuate, that ploughing and sowing are labours which require much industry, and application; and he had doubtless this physical reason for his advice, that where such toil is required it is unhealthful, as well as impossible, to go through with the same quantity of clothes as in works of less 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 satæ: &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, nuuc litora gunt: ་ -quintum fuge; pallidus Orcus, Eumenidesque satæ: tum partu, terra, nefando, Cœumque Japetumque creat, sævumque Ty. phæum, Et conjuratos cælum rescindere fratres: -the fifths be sure to shun, That gave the Furies, and pale Pluto, birth, To scale the steepy battlements of Jove; Dryden. As I have showed where the Roman has followed the Greek, I may be thought partial to my author, if I do not show in what he has excelled him: and first, he has contributed to the Georgic most of the subjects in his two last books; as, in the thir', the management of horses, dogs, &c. and, in the fourth, the management of the bees. His style, through the whole, is more poetical, more abounding with epithets, which are often of themselves 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. 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 examinatica of part of Mr. Addison's Essay on the Georgie: 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 se 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 inentions 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 plan-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 increase of his flocks, and his own progeny! The reason which Mr. Addison gives against rules of norality 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. which is almost literal from Hesiod, on the power of the north wind: μεμυκε င်း 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 was 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: 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 says, as the 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 Cumaan sybil to our poet: Ultima Cumæi venit jam carminis ætas. 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 aliusion 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 accipict. "He shall receive, or lead, the life of gods," as the same poet tells us they did in the reign of Saturn, Ως τε θεοι δ' εζωον. Νόσφιν άτερ τε πονων. They lived like gods, and entirely without labour." -feret omnia tellus; Non rastros patietur humus, non vinea falcem: Robustus quoque jam tauris juga solvet arator. "The earth shall bear all things; there shall be no occasion for instruments of husbandry, to rake the ground, or prune the vine; the sturdy ploughman shall unyoke his oxen, and live in ease;" as they did in the reign of Saturn, as we are told by the same Cumaan poet. καρπον δ' έφερε ζείδωρος αρουρα and in abundance." Here we see several natural allusions to our poet, whence it is not unreasonable, for such as mistake would say to compliment Pollio, on the birth of the country of Hesiod, to imagine, that all Virgil 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 vn church asserts This line, say they, has an allusion to the golden that I cannot avoid quoting it, and making some something so very extraordinary on this head, age of Hesiod; Virgil therefore is supposed to say, few remarks upon it: his words are these, "Virgil "the last age of the Cumaan poet now approaches." By last he means the most remote could not have Hesiod in his eye in speaking of from his time; which Fabricius explains by anti-five ages before the commencement of the golden." the four ages of the world, because Hesiod makes quissima, 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 eclogue of Virgil with some similar passages in Hesiod. To begin, let us therefore read the line before quoted with the two following: And soon after, continues he, "the predictions in the prophet (meaning Daniel) of four successive empires, that should arise in different ages of the world, gave occasion to the poets, who had the knowledge of these things only by in so many ages, and to describe the renovation report, to apply them to the state of the world 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 conwhich will bear this paraphrase: "The remotestceive! First, in that beautiful eclogue, Virgil age mentioned in the verse of the Cumean poet speaks not of the four ages of the world: secondly, Ultima Cumæi venit jam carminis ætas; |