PREFACE.
The remains of Hesiod are not alone interesting to the antiquary, as tracing a picture of the rude arts and manners of the ancient Greeks. His sublime philosophic allegories; his elevated views of a retributive Providence; and the romantic elegance, or daring grandeur, with which he has invested the legends of his mythology, offer more solid reasons than the accident of coeval existence for the traditional association of his name with that of Homer.
Hesiod has been translated in Latin hexameters by Nicolaus Valla, and by Bernardo Zanagna. A French translation by Jacques le Gras bears date 1586. The earliest essay on his poems by our own countrymen appears in the old racy version of "The Works and Days," by George Chapman, the translator of Homer, published in 1618. It is so scarce that Warton in "The History of English Poetry" doubts
