In my dissertation I had ventured to call in question the judgment of commentators in exalting their favourite author: and had doubted whether the meek forgiving temper of Hesiod towards his brother, whom he seldom honours with any better title than “fool,” was very happily chosen as a theme for admiration. On this the _old_ Critical Reviewer exclaimed “as if that, and various other gentle expressions, for example _blockhead_, _goose-cap_, _dunderhead_, were not frequently terms of endearment:” and he added his suspicion that “like poor old Lear, I did not know the difference between a bitter fool and a sweet one.” But, as the clown in Hamlet says, “’twill away from me to you.” The critic is bound to prove, 1st, that νηπις is ever used in this playful sense; which he has not attempted to do: 2dly, that it is so used with the aggravating prefix of ΜΕΓΑ νηπιε: 3dly, that it is so used by Hesiod. Hector’s babe on the nurse’s bosom is described as νηπιος; and Patroclus weeping is compared by Achilles to κουρη νηπιη. These words may bear the senses of “poor innocent;” and of “fond girl;” the former is tender, the latter playful; but in both places the word is usually understood in its primitive sense of “infant.” Homer says of Andromache preparing a bath for Hector, Νηπιη! ουδ’ ενοησεν ο μιν μαλα τηλε λοετων Χερσιν Αχιλληος δαμασεν γλαυκωπις Αθηνη: Il. xxii. Fond one! she knew not that the blue-eyed maid Had quell’d him, far from the refreshing bath, Beneath Achilles’ hand. But this is in commiseration: or would the critic apply to Andromache the epithet of _goose-cap_? After all, who in his senses would dream of singling out a word from an author’s context, and delving in other authors for a meaning? The question is, not how it is used by other authors, but how it is used by Hesiod. Till the Critic favours us with some proofs of Hesiod’s namby-pamby tenderness towards the brother who had cheated him of his patrimony, I beg to return both the quotation and the _appellatives_ upon his hands.[2] The London Reviewer censures my choice of blank-verse as a medium for the ancient hexameter, on the ground that the closing adonic is more fully represented by the rounding rhyme of the couplet: but it may be urged, that the flowing pause and continuous period of the Homeric verse are more consonant with our blank measure. In confining the latter to dramatic poetry, as partaking of the character of the Greek Iambics, he has overlooked the visible distinction of structure in our dramatic and heroic blank verse. With respect to the particular poem, I am disposed to concede that the general details of the Theogony might be improved by rhyme: but the more interesting passages are not to be sacrificed to those which cannot interest, be they versified how they may: and as the critic seems to admit that a poem whose action passes “Beyond the flaming bounds of time and space”