TO HIS GRACE JOHN DUKE OF ARGYLL AND GREENWICH, &c. MY LORD, As this is the only method by which men of genius and learning, though small perhaps my claim to either, can show their esteem for persons of extraordinary merit, in a superior manner to the rest of mankind, I could never embrace a more favourable opportunity to express my veneration for your grace than before a translation of so ancient and valuable an author as Hesiod. Your high descent, and the glory of your illustrious ancestors, are the weakest foundations of your praise; your own exalted worth attracts the admiration, and I may say the love, of all virtuous and distinguishing souls; and to that only I dedicate the following work. The many circumstances which contributed to the raising you to the dignities which you now enjoy, and which render you deserving the greatest favours a prince can bestow, and, what is above all, which fix you ever dear in the affection of your country, will be no small part of the English history, and shall make the name of Argyll sacred to every generation; nor is it the least part of your character, that the nation entertains the highest opinion of your taste and judgment in the polite arts. You, my lord, know how the works of genius lift up the head of a nation above her neighbours, and give it as much honour as success in arms; among these we must reckon our translations of the classics; by which, when we have naturalized all Greece and Rome, we shall be so much richer than they were, by so many original productions as we shall have of our own. By translations, when performed by able hands, our countrymen have an opportunity of discovering the beauties of the ancients, without the trouble and expense of learning their languages; which are of no other advantage to us than for the authors who have writ in them; among which the poets are in the first rank of honour, whose verses are the delightful channels through which the best precepts of morality are conveyed to the mind; they have generally something in them so much above the common sense of mankind, and that delivered with such dignity of expression, and in such harmony of numbers, all which put together constitute the os divinum, that the reader is inspired with sentiments of honour and virtue, he thinks with abhorrence of all that is base and trifling; I may say, while he is reading, he is exalted above himself. You, my lord, I say, have a just sense of the benefits arising from works of genius, and will therefore pardon the zeal with which I express myself concerning them and great is the blessing, that we waut not persons who have hearts equal to their power to cherish them and here I must beg leave to pay a debt of gratitude to one, who, I dare say, is as highly thought of by all lovers of polite learning as by myself, I mean the c... of Pembroke; whose notes I have used in the words in which he gave them to me, and distinguished them by a particular mark from the rest. Much would I say in commendation of that great man; but I am checked by the fear of offending that virtue which every one admires. The same reason makes me dwell less on the praise of your grace than my heart inclines me to. The many obligations which I have received from a lady, of whose virtues I can never say too much, make it a duty in me to mention her in the most grateful manner ; and particularly before a translation, to the perfecting which I may with propriety say she greatly conduced by her kind solicitations in my behalf, and her earnest recommendation, of me to several persons of distinction. I believe your grace will not charge me with vanity, if I confess myself ambitions of being in the least degree of favour with so excellent a lady as the marchioness of Annandale. I shall conclude, without troubling your grace with any more circumstances relating to myself, sincerely wishing what I offer was more worthy your patronage; and at the same time I beg it may be received as proceeding from a just sense of your eminence in all that is great and Jaudable. I am, A DISCOURSE ON THE LIFE OF HESIOD. THE He lives of few persons are confounded with so many incertainties, and fabulous relations, as those of Hesiod and Homer; for which reason, what may possibly be true is sometimes as much disputed as the romantic part of their stories. The first has been more fortunate than the other, in furnishing us, from his writings, with some circumstances of himself and family, as the condition of his father, the place of his birth, and the extent of his travels; and he has put it out of dispute, though he has not fixed the period, that he was one of the earliest writers of whom we have any account. He tells us, in the second book of his Works and Days, that his father was an inhabitant of Cuma, in one of the Æolian isles; from whence he removed to Ascra, a village in Bocotia, at the foot of mount Helicon; which was doubtless the place of our poet's birth, though Suidas, Lilius Gyraldus, Fabricius, and others, say he was of Cuma. Hesiod himself seems, and not undesignedly, to have prevented any mistake about his country; he tells us positively, in the same book, he never was but once at sea, and that in a voyage from Aulis, a seaport in Boeotia, to the island Euboea. This, connected with the former passage of his father sailing from Cuma to Boeotia, will leave us in no doubt concerning his country. Of what quality his father was we are not very certain; that he was drove from Cuma to Ascra, by misfortunes, we have the testimony of Hesiod. Some tell us he fled to avoid paying a fine; but what reason they have to imagine that I know not. It is remarkable that our poet, in the first book of his Works and Days, calls his brother dov yevos; we are told indeed that the name of his father was Dios, of which we are not assured from any of his writings now extant; but if it was, I rather believe, had he designed to call his brother of the race of Dios, he would have used Aloyevns or Air yevos; he must therefore by διον γενος intend to call him of race divine. Le Clerc observes, on this passage, that the old poets were always proud of the epithet divine, and brings an instance from Homer, who styled the swineherd of Ulysses so; in the same remark he says, he thinks Hesiod debases the word in his application of it, having spoke of the necessitous circumstances of his father in the following book. I have no doubt but Le Clerc is right in the meaning of the word dov, but at the same time I think his observation on it trifling; because, if his father was reduced to poverty, we are not to infer from thence he was never rich, or, if he was always poor, that is no argument against his being of a good family; nor is the word divine in the least debased by being an epithet to the swineherd, but a proof of the dignity of that office in those times. We are supported in this reading by Tzetzes: and Valla, and Frisius, have took the word in the same sense, in their Latin translations of the Works and Days: -Frater ades (says Valla) generoso e sanguine Perse. And Frisius calls him, Perse divine. The genealogy likewise which the author of the contention betwixt Homer and Hesiod gives us very much countenances this interpretation: we are told in that work, that Linus was the son of Apollo and of Thoose the daughter of Neptune; king Pierus was the son of Linus, Õeagrus of Pierus and the nymph Methone, and Orpheus of Oeagrus and the muse Calliope; Orpheus was the father of Othrys, Othrys of Harmonides, and Harmonides of Philoterpus; from him sprung Euphemus, the father of Epiphrades, who begot Menalops, the father of Dios; Hesiod and Perses were the sons of Dios by Pucamede, the daughter of Apollo; Perses was the father of Mæon, whose daughter, Crytheis, bore Homer to the river Meles. Homer is here made the great grandson of Perses the brother of Hesiod. I do not give this account with a view it should be much depended on; for it is plain, from the poetical etymologies of the names, it is a fictitious generation; yet, two useful inferences may be |