Note 4 — DISSERTATION ON THE LIFE AND ÆRA OF HESIOD, HIS POEMS, AND MYTHOLOGY.

It has been a favourite theory of learned men, that Virgil had access to Sibylline prophecies, which foretold the birth of a Saviour. How came the Sibyls, any more than the Pythonesses of Delphos, to be ranked on a sudden with the really inspired prophets? or is it credible that they should have had either the curiosity, or the power, to inspect the Jewish Scriptures? The “Sibylline Verses” were confessedly interpolated, if not fabricated, by the pious fraud of Monks. The imitations from Isaiah seem no less chimerical. Every description of a golden age among the poets may be wrested into a similar parallel. Nor is it to be conceived that Virgil would have produced so dry a copy of so luxuriant an original. This argument does not affect the extraordinary coincidence of the time of the appearance of this eclogue, with the epoch of the Messiah’s birth; which is exceedingly curious.