The visitation sent from Heaven to man.
In Ascra's wretched hamlet, at the feet
Of Helicon, he fixed his humble seat:
Ungenial clime—in wintry cold severe
And summer heat, and joyless through the year."
—E. 883-894.
An unpromising field, at first sight, for the growth of poesy; but, if the locality is studied, no unmeet "nurse," in its associations and surroundings, "for a poetic child." Near the base of Helicon, the gentler of the twin mountain-brethren towering above the chain that circles Bœotia, Ascra was within easy reach of the grotto of the Libethrian nymphs, and almost close to the spring of Aganippe, and the source of the memory-haunted Permessus. The fountain of Hippocrene was further to the south; but it was near this fountain that the inhabitants of Helicon showed to Pausanias a very ancient copy of the 'Works and Days' of the bard, whose name is inseparably associated with the neighbourhood. Modern travellers describe the locality in glowing colours. "The dales and slopes of Helicon," says the Bishop of Lincoln, in his 'Greece, Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical,'[1] "are clothed with groves of olive, walnut, and almond trees; clusters of ilex and arbutus deck its higher plains, and the oleander and myrtle fringe the banks of the numerous rills that gush from the soil, and stream in shining cascades down its declivities into the plain between it and the Copaic Lake. On Helicon," he adds, "according to the ancient belief, no noxious
- ↑ P. 253, 254.
