The Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules / Translated into English rhyme and blank verse; with a dissertation on the life and æra, the poems and mythology of Hesiod, and copious notes.

by Hesiod

These reasonings affect that part of the poem chiefly, which is occupied with the mere description of the Shield; but a single circumstance will show that the passages which represent the action of the poem are both foreign to Hesiod’s manner, and are in the manner of Homer. I allude to the employment of similes and to the character of those similes.

Homer is fond of comparisons; and of such, particularly, as are drawn from animated nature. The Shield of Hercules also abounds with similes, and they are precisely of this sort. But the frequent use of similitudes is so far from being characteristic of Hesiod, that in the whole Battle of the Giants but one occurs; and only one in the Combat of Jupiter and Typhæus; and in both we look in vain for any comparison drawn from lions, or boars, or vultures.

Robinson appears, indeed, conscious of a more crowded and diversified imagery in the Shield than we usually meet with in Hesiod’s poetry; for he is driven to the miserable alternative of supposing that Hesiod may have produced the Shield in his youth, and his other works in his old age. Longinus in the same manner accounts for the comparative quiet simplicity of the Odyssey. The supposition in either case is founded on the erroneous principle, that a poem is beautiful in proportion to the noise and fury of its action, or the accumulation of its ornament. The notion of the genius necessarily declining with the decline of youthful vigour is completely unphilosophical; and is contradicted by repeated experience of the human faculties. It was in his old age that Dryden wrote his “Fables.”

As to that portion of the poem which is properly the Shield, and from which the whole piece takes its title, it is self-evident that this must have been borrowed from the description in the Iliad, or the description in the Iliad from this. I do not allude merely to a whole series of verses being literally the same in each; but to long passages of description, bearing so close a resemblance as to preclude the idea of accidental coincidence; such as the bridal procession, the siege, the harvest, and the vintage.

Robinson admits the imitation; but thinks the partisans of Homer cannot easily show that Homer was not the copyist. It were, however, easy to decide from internal evidence which is the copy.

Where two poems are found so nearly resembling each other as to convey at once the impression of plagiarism, the scale of originality must doubtless preponderate in favour of that which is the more simple in style and invention. Where a poem abounds with florid figures and irregular flights of imagination, it is inconceivable that a copy of that poem should exhibit a chaste simplicity of fancy: but it is highly natural that an imitator should think to transcend his original by the aid of meretricious ornament; that he should mistake bombast for sublimity, and attempt to dazzle and astonish. Of this sort of elaborate refinement a single instance will serve in illustration.

Both poets encircle their bucklers with the ocean. Robinson gives the preference to the author of The Shield of Hercules; alleging that his description is decorated with the utmost beauty of imagery; while that of The Shield of Achilles is naked of embellishment. To the unornamented style of the passage in Homer I appeal, as demonstrating the superiority of his judgment, and as thereby establishing beyond dispute the fact of his originality.

In one condensed verse he pours around the verge of the buckler “the great strength of the ocean stream.” An image of roundness and completeness is here at once presented to the eye, and fills the mind. But the author of the Shield of Hercules, evidently striving to excel Homer, says that “high-soaring swans there clamoured aloud, and many floated on the surface of the billows, and near them fishes were leaping tumultuously.” Who does not perceive that the full image of the rounding ocean is broken and rendered indistinct by this multiplicity of images? The description is, indeed, picturesque; at nunc non erat his locus.

Yet that Hesiod was the plagiarist will scarcely be contended, until the assertion already advanced respecting the epic simplicity of his style shall have been set aside.