If we allow the authenticity of the proem to the Theogony, Hesiod tended sheep in the vallies of Helicon; for it is not in the spirit of ancient poetry to feign this sort of circumstance; and no education could be conceived more natural for a bard who sang of husbandry. From the fiction of the Muses presenting him with a laurel-bough, we may infer also that he was not a minstrel or harper, but a rhapsodist; and sang or recited to the branch instead of the lyre. La Harpe, in his Lycée, _ou Cours de Littérature_, asserts that Hesiod was a priest of the temple of the Muses. I find the same account in Gale’s Court of the Gentiles; book iii. p. 7. vol. i. who quotes Carion’s Chronicle of Memorable Events. For this, however, I can find no ancient authority. On referring to Pausanias, he mentions, indeed, that the statue of Hesiod was placed in the temple of the Muses on Mount Helicon: and in the Works and Days Hesiod mentions having dedicated to the Muses of Helicon the tripod which he won in the Eubœan contest; and observes Th’ inspiring Muses to my lips have giv’n The love of song, and strains that breathe of heaven. From the conjunction of this passage with the account of Pausanias, has probably arisen a confused supposition that Hesiod was actually a priest of the Heliconian temple. The circumstance, although destitute of express evidence, is however probable, from his acquaintance with theogonical traditions and his tone of religious instruction. Guietus rejects the whole passage as supposititious, which respects the voyage to Eubœa, and the contest in poetry at the funeral games of Amphidamas. Proclus supposes Plutarch to have also rejected it: because he speaks of the contest as τα εωλα πραγματα: which some interpret trite or threadbare tales: others old wives’ stories. But if the latter sense be the correct one, Plutarch may have meant to intimate his disbelief only of Hesiod and Homer having contended; not altogether of a contest in which Hesiod took part. In fact it seems reasonable to infer the authenticity of the passage from this very tradition of Homer and Hesiod having disputed a prize in poetry. In the pseudo-history entitled “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” is an inscription purporting to be that on the tripod which Hesiod won from Homer in Eubœa: This Hesiod vow’d to Helicon’s blest nine, Victor in Chalcis crown’d o’er Homer, bard divine. Now that the passage in “The Works” was extant long before this piece was in existence, is susceptible of easy proof: but if we conceive with the credulity of Barnes, that the piece is a collection of scattered traditionary matter of genuine antiquity, that the passage was not constructed on the narration may be inferred from the former wanting the name of Homer. The nullity of purpose in such a forgery seems to have struck those, who in the indulgence of the same fanciful whim have substituted, as Proclus states, for the usual reading in the text of Hesiod,