Fabricius (Bibliotheca Græca) supposes the two latter subjects to be alluded to as incidental topics in other works of Hesiod. But the passages quoted by him from Pliny and Plutarch seem to justify the opinion that they meant to advert to distinct poems. There is nothing in the works extant which favours the former idea. Mallows and asphodel are the only herbs mentioned: and that merely as synonymous with a frugal meal: like the _cichorea levesque malvæ_ of Horace: nor is there anything medical; for the passages respecting bathing, children, &c. are mere superstitions, unconnected with health. Athenæus (book iii.) quotes some verses as ascribed to Hesiod respecting the fishes fit for salting; but says they seem to be rather the verses of a cook than of a poet; and adds that cities are mentioned in them which were posterior to Hesiod’s time. Lilius Gyraldus states that the fables of Æsop have been assigned to Hesiod. Plutarch, indeed, observes that Æsop might himself have profited by Hesiod’s apologue of the Hawk and the Nightingale; and Quintilian mentions Hesiod, and not Æsop, as the earliest fabulist; which passages may have been strained to bear the above meaning. As to the Greek fables, extant under the name of Æsop, they are proved to be spurious. See Bentley’s Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, &c. and the fables of Æsop. [13] Manilius, describing the subjects of Hesiod, has a line Atque iterum patrio nascentem corpore Bacchum, excellently rendered by Creech, a translator now too fastidiously undervalued, And twice-born Bacchus burst the Thunderer’s thigh: but this tale, which Ovid and Nonnus have related, is not found in the present theogony. [14] In the same poem, which is a love-elegy to his mistress Leontium on the sufferings of lovers, Homer is made to visit Ithaca, “sighing like furnace” for the chaste Penelope. [15] The Quarterly Reviewer, in his critique on my “Specimens of the Classic Poets,” conceives it strange that I should prefer the Medea of Apollonius to Virgil’s Dido; and talks of critical heresies. The deliberation of Medea on her purposed suicide, and her interview with Jason in the temple of Hecate, place the matter beyond all question; except with those who may be frightened by the word _heresy_ into a surrender of their judgments to vulgar prejudice and traditional error. [16] This fine natural image is ridiculously parodied by Addison, “The old men, too, _are bitterly pinched by the weather_.” Essay on Virgil’s Georgics. [17] These were excluded from the first edition of my translation, but are now reinstated, as curiously illustrative of manners. SECTION IV. ON THE MYTHOLOGY OF HESIOD.