This is niggardly praise; and is somewhat similar to that which the same critic awards to Apollonius Rhodius;[15] whose picturesque style and impassioned sentiment are honoured with the diluted commendation of “an equable mediocrity.” Who that read the above character would suppose that Hesiod was at all superior to the gnomic or sententious poets; such as Theognis or Phocylides? that he had ever composed his Combat of Giants, or his Ages of Gold and of Iron? If the battle of the Titans be Hesiod’s genuine composition, and if the Shield, as there is reason to believe, contain authentic extracts from his Heroical Genealogies, we shall decide that Hesiod, as compared with Homer, is less rapid; less fervent in action; less teeming with allusions and comparisons; but grand, energetic, occasionally vehement and daring; but more commonly proceeding with a slow and stately march. In the mental or moral sublime I consider Hesiod as superior to Homer. The personification of Prayers in the latter is almost the only allegory that can be compared with the awful prosopopeia of Justice, weeping her wrongs at the feet of the Eternal: while Justice and Modesty, described as virgins in white raiment, ascending out of the sight of men into heaven, and the Holy Dæmons, after having animated the bodies of just men, hovering round the earth, and keeping watch over human actions, are equalled by no conceptions in the Iliad or Odyssey. Addison, with that squeamish artificial taste which distinguishes the age of Anne, as compared with that of Elizabeth, underrates, as might have been expected, the vigorous simplicity of Hesiod. But the strong though simple sketches of the old Ascræan bard are often more striking than the finished paintings of the Mantuan. Critics admire the pastoral board of Virgil’s Corycian husbandman; but there is a far greater charm in the summer-repast of Hesiod: so picturesque in its scenery; so patriarchal in its manners. The winter tempest is a bolder copy of nature than any thing in the Latin Georgics; more fresh in colouring; more circumstantiated in detail. The rising of the north-wind, moving the ocean, rooting the pines and oaks from the tops of the mountains, and strewing them along the valleys, and after a pause, suddenly roaring in its strength through the depths of the forests; the exquisite circumstances of life intermingled with the effects of the storm on inanimate nature; the beasts quaking and grinding their teeth with cold and famine; shuddering at the snowflakes, and shrinking into dens and thickets; the old man bent double with the blast;[16] the delicate contrast of the young virgin, sheltered in a soft chamber under her mother’s roof, and bathing previously to her nightly rest, compose a picture wild, romantic, and interesting in an uncommon degree.