WEST OF ENGLAND JOURNAL 



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No. III. JULY, 1835. Vol.1. 



PART II.— LITERATURE. 



ESSAY ON THE WRITINGS OF HESIOD, 



PHIXCIPALLY COMPILED FROM SOME MS. LECTUKES DELIVERED AT OXFORD 

 BY THE REV. J. J. CONYBEARE, PROFESSOR OF POETRY. 



Communicated by his brother, the Rev. TV, D. Conybeare. 



ON THE THEOGONY. 



CContinued from p. 47. J 



We now proceed to the body of the work. Hesiod assumes as the uni- 

 versal origin of things, the "rude and undigested mass" of chaos, like all 

 the other ancient writers of Cosmogony who, as we have already said, had 

 (with the single exception of the inspired author of Genesis,) no idea of 

 any proper creation of matter itself. The first series of divine, or rather 

 physical principles emanating from, or rather perhaps coexistent with 

 Chaos, is then enumerated thus, — the Earth, Tartarus, and Love.* From 

 Chaos sprung Night and Erebus, and Night in turn gave birth to /Ether 

 and Day. In most of these allegorical personifications we observe the 

 mere images of natural and sensible objects. Love, as among the primal 

 causes of things, must be here understood in the philosophical sense of the 

 great principle of union among things, wiiether animate or inanimate, and 



• In a well-known pasRage in the birds of Aristophanes, 1. C94, is a sketch of a 

 somewhat similar cosmogony ; but here Chaos, Night, Erebus, and Tartarus, are 

 the primeval principles. Night brings forth an egg, whence Love appears, who 

 mingles the elements and produces Heaven and Earth. The Phoenician cosmogony, 

 as deliv-ered by I'hilo Byblius, very nearly resembles this passage of Aristophanes. 

 Homer might appear to have had a different Thcogony, for (II. E. 200.) he makes 

 Ocean the father and Thctys the mother of the gods ; but perhaps he is here only 

 speaking of the Occanides. 



No. 3.— Vol. I. M* 



