PEEFACE.

THE life of Hesiod, remote from towns, and far away up the gulf of time, and his poetry devoid of sensation and excitement in its almost impersonal didacticism, place the writer who deals with them at a disadvan- tage, as compared with one whose theme is an ancient epic, or a Greek or Roman historian. He lacks, in a great measure, the choice of parallels by aid of which he may abridge the distance between the shadowy past and the living present. He cannot easily per- suade himself or his readers to realise, in the inspired rustic of Ascra, " a heart once pregnant with celestial fire," when he reflects how foreign to the wildest dreams of an English ploughman would be the reduc- tion to verse of his rural experiences, or, still more, of his notions about the divine governance of the universe. Yet this is scarcely an excuse for over- looking the possible contemporary of Homer, the poet