As the life of these beatified heroes was a renewal of that in the golden age, it is figured by the reign of Saturn or Cronus: the father of post-diluvian time. The era in which, after the waste of the deluge, the vine was planted and corn again sown, was represented by tradition as a time of wonderful abundance and fruitfulness. Hence apparently the fable of the Elysian fields: which some have supposed to originate from the reports of voyagers, who had visited distant fertile regions. Saturn is usually placed in Tartarus: but Tartarus meant the west: from the association of darkness with sunset: and the Blessed Islands were the Fortunate Isles on the Western Coast of Afric. “These heroes, whose equity is so much spoken of, upon a nearer inquiry are found to be continually engaged in wars and murders; and like the specimens exhibited of the former ages, are finally cut off by each other’s hands in acts of robbery and violence: some for stealing sheep, others for carrying away the wives of their friends and neighbours. Such was the end of these laudable banditti: of whom Jupiter, we are told, had so high an opinion, that after they had plundered and butchered one another, he sent them to the island of the Blest to partake of perpetual felicity.” BRYANT. [49] _This iron age of earth._] Les écrivains de tous les tems ont regardé leur siècle comme le pire de tous: il n’y a que Voltaire qui ait dit du sien, O le bon tems que ce siècle de fer! Encore était-ce dans un accès de gaieté: car ailleurs il appelle le dixhuitième siècle, l’égout des siècles. C’est un de ces sujets sur lesquels on dit ce qu’on veut: selon qu’il plait d’envisager tel ou tel côté des objêts. LA HARPE, LYCÉE, tome premier. [50] _For scarcely spring they to the light of day,_ _Ere age untimely strews their temples gray._] Dr. Martyn, in a note on Virgil’s 4th Eclogue, has fallen into the error of the old interpreters; when he quotes Hesiod as describing the iron age “which was to end when the men of that time _grew old and gray_.” Postquam _facti_ circa tempora cani _fuerint_: but the proper interpretation is, quum vix _nati_ canescant: as Grævius has corrected it. The same critic is unquestionably right in his opinion, that the future tenses of this passage in the original are to be understood as indefinite present: μεμψονται, incusabunt: _i. e._ incusare solent: _use_ to revile. Mark, iii. 27. και τοτε την οικιᾶν αυτου διαρπασει: “and then he will spoil his house:” that is, he is accustomed to spoil. The imperfect time has also frequently the same acceptation: as in the same evangelist: ch. xiv. 12. το πασχα εθυον, they _killed_ the passover: they are used to kill it. [51] _Now man’s right hand is law._] Imitated by Milton in the vision of Adam: So violence Proceeded, and oppression, and sword-law Through all the plain. [52] _Leave the broad earth._] Virgil alludes to this passage, Georg. ii. 473.