Page:The Remains of Hesiod the Ascraean, including the Shield of Hercules - Elton (1815).djvu/92

The food of man in deep concealment lies:^[1]
The angry gods have hid it from our eyes.
Else had one day bestow'd sufficient cheer,
And, though inactive, fed thee through the year.
Then might thy hand have laid the rudder by,^[2]
In blackening smoke for ever hung on high;

del in some other work: as he is said to have spoken of it as a native of the woods.

1. The food of man in deep concealment lies.] The meaning of this passage resembles that of the passage in Virgil's first Georgic:
   The sire of gods and men with hard decrees
   Forbade our plenty to be bought with ease.
   Dryden.
   
   
2. Have laid the rudder by.] It seems the vice of commentators to refine with needless subtleties on plain passages. Le Clerc explains this to mean that "in one day's fishing you might have caught such an abundance of fish, as to allow of the rudder being laid by for a long interval." The common sense of the passage, however, is that, were the former state of existence renewed, the rudder, which it was customary after a voyage to hang up in the smoke, might remain there for ever. You needed not have crossed the sea for merchandise. The custom of suspending the helms of ships in chimneys, to preserve them from decay, is adverted to again among the nautical precepts.

   The well-framed rudder in the smoke suspend.

   Virgil recommends the same process with respect to the timber hewn for the plough: Georg. 1.
   Hung where the chimney's curling fumes arise,
   The searching smoke the harden'd timber dries.