As a legendary mythologist the elegant tale of Pandora, and the Island of the Blessed Spirits, are far beyond any thing of Ovid, and can only be compared with Homer: and as a poetical moralist, the strongest proof of his merit is, that innumerable sentences of Hesiod, as is well remarked by Voltaire in his “Dictionnaire Philosophique” have grown into proverbial axioms. Cicero observes in one of his Epistles; “Let our dear Lepta learn Hesiod, and have by heart ‘the gods have placed before virtue the sweat of the brow.’” His plain and downright rules of decency,[17] his superstitious saws, and his lumber of names, belong to the manners of a semi-barbarous village and the learning of a dark age: his genius and his wisdom are his own. From that which remains, mutilated as it obviously is, we may form a judgment of what he would appear to us, if the whole of his numerous works, complete and unadulterated by foreign mixture, were submitted to our observation. _Ex pede Herculem._ FOOTNOTES [12] The following are enumerated as the lost poems of Hesiod. The Catalogue of Women or Heroines, in five parts, of which the fifth appears to have been entitled “The Herogony.” SUIDAS. The Melampodia; from the sooth-sayer Melampus; a poem on divination. PAUSANIAS, ATHENÆUS. The great Astronomy or Stellar Book. PLINY. Descent of Theseus into Hades. PAUSANIAS. Admonitions of Chiron to Achilles. PAUSANIAS, ARISTOPHANES. Soothsayings and Explications of Signs. PAUSANIAS. Divine Speeches. MAXIMUS TYRIUS. Great Actions. ATHENÆUS. Of the Dactyli of Cretan Ida; discoverers of iron. SUIDAS, PLINY. Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis. TZETZES. Ægimius. ATHENÆUS. _Apocryphal._ Elegy on Batrachus, a beloved youth. SUIDAS. Circuit of the Earth. STRABO. The Marriage of Ceyx. ATHENÆUS, PLUTARCH. On Herbs. PLINY. On Medicine. PLUTARCH.