The adverse decision in the law-suit with his brother must be confessed to be the hinge on which the alleged corruptness of his times perpetually turns: yet as he does not conceal the personal interest which he has in the question, his frankness wins our confidence; and simplicity and candour are so plainly marked in his grave and artless style, that we are insensibly led to form an exception in his favour as to the judgment of the character from the writer; to believe his praises of frugality and temperance sincere; and to coincide with Paterculus, in the opinion that he was a man of a contented and philosophical mind, “fond of the leisure and tranquillity” of rustic life. His countrymen, as Addison expresses it, must have regarded him “as the oracle of the neighbourhood.” Plutarch adverts to his medical knowledge, in the person of Cleodemus the physician; and when we consider that he possessed sufficient astronomy for the purposes of agriculture, and that he carried his zeal for science even into nautical details, of which, notwithstanding, he confesses his inexperience, we shall acknowledge him to have been a man of extraordinary attainments for the times in which he lived. FOOTNOTES [4] It has been a favourite theory of learned men, that Virgil had access to Sibylline prophecies, which foretold the birth of a Saviour. How came the Sibyls, any more than the Pythonesses of Delphos, to be ranked on a sudden with the really inspired prophets? or is it credible that they should have had either the curiosity, or the power, to inspect the Jewish Scriptures? The “Sibylline Verses” were confessedly interpolated, if not fabricated, by the pious fraud of Monks. The imitations from Isaiah seem no less chimerical. Every description of a golden age among the poets may be wrested into a similar parallel. Nor is it to be conceived that Virgil would have produced so dry a copy of so luxuriant an original. This argument does not affect the extraordinary coincidence of the time of the appearance of this eclogue, with the epoch of the Messiah’s birth; which is exceedingly curious. [5] See the epigram; which, for want of an owner, is ascribed by Tzetzes to Pindar: Hail Hesiod! wisest man! who twice the bloom Of youth hast prov’d, and twice approach’d the tomb. [6] The Greeks were extremely fanciful about dolphins. Several stories of persons preserved from drowning by dolphins, and romantic tales of their fondness for children, and their love of music, are related by Plutarch in his “Banquet of Diocles.” [7] See “Specimens of ancient Sculpture,” by the society of Dilettanti. SECTION II. ON THE ÆRA OF HESIOD.