of the body is transferred to the sluggish lethargy of nature. To quote a very recent translator of the Georgics, Mr R. D. Blackmore:—
And care a whetstone for the wit of man;
Nor suffered he his own domains to lie
Asleep 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 land
More 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:—
Spontaneous 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
