Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/129

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IMITATORS OF HESIOD.
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of the body is transferred to the sluggish lethargy of nature. To quote a very recent translator of the Georgics, Mr R. D. Blackmore:—

"'Twas Jove who first made husbandry a plan,And care a whetstone for the wit of man;Nor suffered he his own domains to lieAsleep in cumbrous old-world lethargy.Ere Jove, the acres owned no master swain,None durst enclose nor even mark the plain;The world was common, and the willing landMore frankly gave with no one to demand."—Georg. i. 121-128.

In the same spirit Virgil, in the second book of the Georgics, idealises the serenity of a rural existence, when he says of him who lives it:—

"Whatever fruit the branches and the meadSpontaneous bring, he gathers for his need."—Georg. ii. 500.

It is the idea of this spontaneity of boon nature which he has caught from Hesiod, as worth transferring; and the task is achieved with grace, and without encumbrance. In the description of the process of making a plough, Virgil appears to copy Hesiod more closely than in the above passage; and if we may accept Dr Daubeny's translation of the passage in the Georgics, the accounts correspond with a nicety almost incredible, considering the interval between the two poets. The curved piece of wood (or buris) of Virgil; the eight-foot pole (temo) joined by pins to the buris (or basse, as it is called in the south of France); the bent handle (stiva) and the wooden share (dentale),—have

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