AUTHORITIES.--Article on Hesilrige by C. H. Firth in the _Dict. of Nat. Biography_, and authorities there quoted; _Early History of the Family of Hesilrige_, by W. G. D. Fletcher; _Cal. of State Papers, Domestic_, 1631-1664, where there are a large number of important references, as also in _Hist. MSS._, _Comm. Series_, _MSS. of Earl Cowper_, _Duke of Leeds_ and _Duke of Portland_; _Egerton MSS._ 2618, _Harleian_ 7001 f. 198, and in the _Sloane_, _Stowe_ and _Additional_ collections in the British Museum; also S. R. Gardiner, _Hist. of England_, _Hist. of the Great Civil War and Commonwealth_; Clarendon's _History, State Papers and Cal. of State Papers_, J. L. Sanford's _Studies of the Great Rebellion_. His life is written by Noble in the _House of Cromwell_, i. 403. For his public letters and speeches in parliament see the catalogue of the British Museum.
HESIOD, the father of Greek didactic poetry, probably flourished during the 8th century B.C. His father had migrated from the Aeolic Cyme in Asia Minor to Boeotia; and Hesiod and his brother Perses were born at Ascra, near mount Helicon (_Works and Days_, 635). Here, as he fed his father's flocks, he received his commission from the Muses to be their prophet and poet--a commission which he recognized by dedicating to them a tripod won by him in a contest of song (see below) at some funeral games at Chalcis in Euboea, still in existence at Helicon in the age of Pausanias (_Theogony_, 20-34, _W. and D._, 656; Pausanias ix. 38. 3). After the death of his father Hesiod is said to have left his native land in disgust at the result of a law-suit with his brother and to have migrated to Naupactus. There was a tradition that he was murdered by the sons of his host in the sacred enclosure of the Nemean Zeus at Oeneon in Locris (Thucydides iii. 96; Pausanias ix. 31); his remains were removed for burial by command of the Delphic oracle to Orchomenus in Boeotia, where the Ascraeans settled after the destruction of their town by the Thespians, and where, according to Pausanias, his grave was to be seen.
Hesiod's earliest poem, the famous _Works and Days_, and according to Boeotian testimony the only genuine one, embodies the experiences of his daily life and work, and, interwoven with episodes of fable, allegory, and personal history, forms a sort of Boeotian shepherd's calendar. The first portion is an ethical enforcement of honest labour and dissuasive of strife and idleness (1-383); the second consists of hints and rules as to husbandry (384-764); and the third is a religious calendar of the months, with remarks on the days most lucky or the contrary for rural or nautical employments. The connecting link of the whole poem is the author's advice to his brother, who appears to have bribed the corrupt judges to deprive Hesiod of his already scantier inheritance, and to whom, as he wasted his substance lounging in the agora, the poet more than once returned good for evil, though he tells him there will be a limit to this unmerited kindness. In the _Works and Days_ the episodes which rise above an even didactic level are the "Creation and Equipment of Pandora," the "Five Ages of the World" and the much-admired "Description of Winter" (by some critics judged post-Hesiodic). The poem also contains the earliest known fable in Greek literature, that of "The Hawk and the Nightingale." It is in the _Works and Days_ especially that we glean indications of Hesiod's rank and condition in life, that of a stay-at-home farmer of the lower class, whose sole experience of the sea was a single voyage of 40 yds. across the Euripus, and an old-fashioned bachelor whose misogynic views and prejudice against matrimony have been conjecturally traced to his brother Perses having a wife as extravagant as himself.