TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS,
was the most remarkable of the Roman writers, as he united the precision of the philosopher to the fire and fancy of the poet; and, while he seems to have had no perfect model [pg 251]among the Greeks, has left a production unrivalled, (perhaps not to be rivalled,) by any of the same kind in later ages.
Of the life of Lucretius very little is known: He lived at a period abounding with great political actors, and full of portentous events—a period when every bosom was agitated with terror or hope, and when it must have been the chief study of a prudent man, especially if a votary of philosophy and the Muses, to hide himself as much as possible amid the shades. The year of his birth is uncertain. According to the chronicle of Eusebius, he was born in 658, being thus nine years younger than Cicero, and two or three younger than Cæsar. To judge from his style, he might be supposed older than either: but this, as appears from the example of Sallust, is no certain test, as his archaisms may have arisen from the imitation of ancient writers; and we know that he was a fond admirer of Ennius.
A taste for Greek philosophy had been excited at Rome for a considerable time before this era, and Lucretius was sent, with other young Romans of rank, to study at Athens. The different schools of philosophy in that city seem, about this period, to have been frequented according as they received a temporary fashion from the comparative abilities of the professors who presided in them. Cicero, for example, who had attended the Epicurean school at Athens, and became himself an Academic, intrusted his son to the care of Cratippus, a peripatetic philosopher. After the death of its great founder, the school of Epicurus had for some time declined in Greece: but at the period when Lucretius was sent to Athens, it had again revived under the patronage of L. Memmius, whose son was a fellow-student of Lucretius; as were also Cicero, his brother Quintus, Cassius, and Pomponius Atticus. At the time when frequented by these illustrious youths, the Gardens of Epicurus were superintended by Zeno and Phædrus, both of whom, but particularly the latter, have been honoured with the panegyric of Cicero. “We formerly, when we were boys,” says he, in a letter to Caius Memmius, “knew him as a profound philosopher, and we still recollect him as a kind and worthy man, ever solicitous for our improvement[430].”
One of the dearest, perhaps the dearest friend of Lucretius, was this Memmius, who had been his school-fellow, and whom, it is supposed, he accompanied to Bithynia, when appointed to the government of that province[431]. The poem De Rerum Natura, if not undertaken at the request of Memmius, was doubtless much encouraged by him; and Lucretius, in a dedication [pg 252]expressed in terms of manly and elegant courtesy, very different from the servile adulation of some of his great successors, tells him, that the much desired pleasure of his friendship, was what enabled him to endure any toil or vigils—
“Sed tua me virtus tamen, et sperata voluptas
Suavis amicitiæ, quemvis ecferre laborem
Suadet, et inducit nocteis vigilare serenas.”
The life of the poet was short, but happily was sufficiently prolonged to enable him to complete his poem, though, perhaps, not to give some portions of it their last polish. According to Eusebius, he died in the 44th year of his age, by his own hands, in a paroxysm of insanity, produced by a philtre, which Lucilia, his wife or mistress, had given him, with no design of depriving him of life or reason, but to renew or increase his passion. Others suppose that his mental alienation proceeded from melancholy, on account of the calamities of his country, and the exile of Memmius,—circumstances which were calculated deeply to affect his mind[432]. There seems no reason to doubt the melancholy fact, that he perished by his own hand.
The poem of Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, which he composed during the lucid intervals of his malady, is, as the name imports, philosophic and didactic, in the strictest acceptation of these terms. Poetry, I think, may chiefly be considered as occupied in three ways.—1. As describing the passions of men, with the circumstances which give birth to them.—2. As painting images or scenery.—3. As communicating truth. Of these classes of poetry, the most interesting is the first, in which we follow the hero placed at short intervals in different situations, calculated to excite various sympathies in our heart, while our imagination is at the same time amused or astonished by the singularity of the incidents which such situations produce. Those poems, therefore, are the most attractive, in which, as in the Odyssey and Orlando, knights or warriors plough unknown seas, and wander in strange lands—where, at every new horizon which opens, we look for countries inhabited by giants, or monsters, or wizards of supernatural powers—where, whether sailing on the deep, or anchoring on the shore, the hero dreads—
“Lest Gorgons, rising from infernal lakes,
With horrors armed, and curls of hissing snakes,
Should fix him, stiffened at the monstrous sight,
A stony image in eternal night.”
These are the themes of surest and most powerful effect: It is by these that we are most truely moved; and it is the choice of such subjects, if ably conducted, which chiefly stamps the poet—
“Humanæ Dominum mentis, cordisque Tyrannum.”
So strongly, indeed, and so universally, has this been felt, that in the second species of poetry, the Descriptive, our sympathy must be occasionally awakened by the actions or passions of human beings; and, to ensure success, the poet must describe the effects of the appearance of nature on our sensations. “In the poem of the Shipwreck,” says Lord Byron, “is it the storm or the ship which most interests?—Both much, undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for the tempest[433]?” Virgil had early felt, that without Lycoris, the gelidi fontes and mollia prata would seem less refreshing and less smooth—he had found that the grass and the groves withered at the departure, but revived at the return of Phyllis. The most soothing and picturesque of the incidents of a woodland landscape,—the blue smoke curling upwards from a cottage concealed by the trees, derives half its softening charm, by reminding us—
“That in the same did wonne some living wight.”
Of all the three species above enumerated, Philosophical poetry, which occupies the mind with minute portions of external nature, is the least attractive. Mankind will always prefer books which move to those which instruct—ennui being more burdensome than ignorance. In philosophic poetry, our imagination cannot be gratified by the desert isles, the boundless floods, or entangled forests, with all the marvels they conceal, which rise in such rapid and rich succession in the fascinating narrative of the sea tost Ulysses[434]; nor can we there have our curiosity roused, and our emotions excited, by such lines as those with which Ariosto awakens the attention of his readers—
“Non furo iti duo miglia, che sonare
Odon la selva, che gli cinge intorno,
Con tal rumor et strepito che pare
Che tremi la foresta d’ogni intorno.”
Besides, as has been observed by Montesquieu, reason is sufficiently chained, though we fetter her not with rhyme; and, on the other hand, poetry loses much of its freedom and lightness, if clogged with the bonds of reason. The great object of poetry (according to a trite remark,) is to afford pleasure; but philosophic poetry affords less pleasure than epic, descriptive, or dramatic. The versifier of philosophic subjects is in danger of producing a work neither interesting enough for the admirers of sentiment and imagination, nor sufficiently profound for philosophers. He will sometimes soar into regions where many of his readers are unable to follow him, and, at other times, he will lose the suffrage of a few, by interweaving fictions amid the severe and simple truth.
It is the business of the philosopher to analyze the objects of nature. He must pay least attention to those which chiefly affect the sense and imagination, while he minutely considers others, which, though less striking, are more useful for classification, and the chief purposes he has in view. The poet, on the other hand, avoiding dry and abstract definitions, rather combines than analyzes, and dwells more on the sensible phænomena of nature, than her mysterious and scientific workings. Thus, what the botanist considers is the number of stamina, and their situation in a flower, while the Muse describes only its colours, and the influence of its odours—
“She loves the rose, by rivers loves to dream,
Nor heeds why blooms the rose, why flows the stream—
She loves its colours, though she may not know,
Why sun-born Iris paints the showery bow.”
But though philosophic poetry be, of all others, the most unfavourable for the exertion of poetical genius, its degree of beauty and interest will, in a great measure, depend on what parts of his subject the poet selects, and on the extent and number of digressions of which it admits. It is evident, that the philosophic poet should pass over as lightly as may be, all dry and recondite doctrines, and enlarge on the topics most susceptible of poetical ornament. “Le Tableau de la Nature Physique,” says Voltaire, “est lui seule d’une richesse, d’une varieté, d’une etendue à occuper des siécles d’étude; mais tous les details ne sont pas favorable à la poésie. On n’ exige pas du poete les meditations du physicien et les calculs de l’astronomie: c’est à l’observateur à déterminer l’attraction et les mouvemens des corps celestes; c’est au poete à peindre leur balancement, leur harmonie, et leurs immuables révolutions. L’un distinguera les classes nombreuses d’etres organisés qui peuplent les elémens divers; l’autre décririra [pg 255]d’un trait hardi, lumineux et rapide cette echelle immense et continue, ou les limites des regnes se confondent. Que le confident de la nature develope le prodige de la greffe des arbres—c’est assez pour Virgile de l’exprimer en deux beaux vers—
“Exiit ad cœlum ramis felicibus arbos,
Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma[435].”
With regard, again, to digressions, Racine, (le Fils) in speaking of didactic poetry, says there are two sorts of episodes which may be introduced into it, and which he terms episodes of narrative and of style, (De Recit et de Style,) meaning by the former the recital of the adventures of individuals, and by the latter, general reflections suggested by the subject[436]. Without some embellishment of this description, most philosophic poems will correspond to Quintilian’s account of the poem of Aratus on astronomy, “Nulla varietas, nullus affectus, nulla persona, nulla cujusquam, est oratio[437].” From what has already been said concerning the extreme interest excited by the introduction of sentient beings, with all their perils around, and all their passions within them, it follows, that where the subject admits, episodes of the first class will best serve the purposes of poetry, and if the poet choose such dry and abstruse topics as cosmogony, or the generation of the world, he ought to follow the example of Silenus[438], by embellishing his subject with tales of Hylas, and Philomela, and Scylla, and the gardens of the Hesperides—the themes which induce us to listen to the lay of the poet—
“Cogere donec oves stabulis, numerumque referre,
Jussit, et invito processit Vesper Olympo.”
It is, however, with the second class of episodes—with declamations against luxury and vice—reflections on the beauty of virtue—and the delights of rural retirement, that Lucretius hath chiefly gemmed his verses.
The poem of Lucretius contains a full exposition of the theological, physical, and moral system of Epicurus. It has been remarked by an able writer, “that all the religious systems of the ancient Pagan world were naturally perishable, from the quantity of false opinions, and vicious habits, and ceremonies that were attached to them.” He observes even [pg 256]of the barbarous Anglo Saxons, that, “as the nation advanced in its active intellect, it began to be dissatisfied with its mythology. Many indications exist of this spreading alienation, which prepared the northern mind for the reception of the nobler truths of Christianity[439].” A secret incredulity of this sort seems to have been long nourished in Greece, and appears to have been imported into Rome with its philosophy and literature. The more pure and simple religion of early Rome was quickly corrupted, and the multitude of ideal and heterogeneous beings which superstition introduced into the Roman worship led to its total rejection[440]. This infidelity is very obvious in the writings of Ennius, who translated Euhemerus’ work on the Deification of Human Spirits, while Plautus dramatized the vices of the father of the gods and tutelary deity of Rome. The doctrine of materialism was introduced at Rome during the age of Scipio and Lælius[441]; and perhaps no stronger proof of its rapid progress and prevalence can be given, than that Cæsar, though a priest, and ultimately Pontifex Maximus, boldly proclaimed in the senate, that death is the end of all things, and that beyond it there is neither hope nor joy. This state of the public mind was calculated to give a fashion to the system of Epicurus[442]. According to this distinguished philosopher, the chief good of man is pleasure, of which the elements consist, in having a body free from pain, and a mind tranquil and exempt from perturbation. Of this tranquility there are, according to Epicurus, as expounded by Lucretius, two chief enemies, superstition, or slavish fear of the gods, and the dread of death[443]. In order to oppose these two foes to happiness, he endeavours, in the first place, to shew that the world was formed by a fortuitous concourse [pg 257]of atoms, and that the gods, who, according to the popular theology, were constantly interposing, take no concern whatever in human affairs. We do injustice to Epicurus when we estimate his tenets by the refined and exalted ideas of a philosophy purified by faith, without considering the superstitious and polluted notions prevalent in his time. “The idea of Epicurus,” (as is observed by Dr Drake,) “that it is the nature of gods to enjoy an immortality in the bosom of perpetual peace, infinitely remote from all relation to this globe, free from care, from sorrow, and from pain, supremely happy in themselves, and neither rejoicing in the pleasures, nor concerned for the evils of humanity—though perfectly void of any rational foundation, yet possesses much moral charm when compared with the popular religions of Greece and Rome. The felicity of their deities consisted in the vilest debauchery; nor was there a crime, however deep its dye, that had not been committed and gloried in by some one of their numerous objects of worship[444].” Never, also, could the doctrine, that the gods take no concern in human affairs, appear more plausible than in the age of Lucretius, when the destiny of man seemed to be the sport of the caprice of such a monster as Sylla.
With respect to the other great leading tenet of Lucretius and his master—the mortality of the soul, still greater injustice is done to the philosopher and poet. It is affirmed, and justly, by a great Apostle, that life and immortality have been brought to light by the gospel; and yet an author who lived before this dawn is reviled because he asserts, that the natural arguments for the immortality of the soul, afforded by the analogies of nature, or principle of moral retribution, are weak and inconclusive! In fact, however, it is not by the truth of the system or general philosophical views in a poem, (for which no one consults it,) that its value is to be estimated; since a poetical work may be highly moral on account of its details, even when its systematic scope is erroneous or apparently dangerous. Notwithstanding passages which seem to [pg 258]echo Spinosism, and almost to justify crime[445], the Essay on Man is rightly considered as the most moral production of our most moral poet. In like manner, where shall we find exhortations more eloquent than those of Lucretius, against ambition and cruelty, and luxury and lust,—against all the dishonest pleasures of the body, and all the turbulent passions of the mind.
In versifying the philosophical system of Epicurus, Lucretius appears to have taken Empedocles as his model. All the old Grecian bards of whom we have any account prior to Homer, as Orpheus, Linus, and Musæus, are said to have written poems on the driest and most difficult philosophical questions, particularly the generation of the world. The ancients evidently considered philosophical poetry as of the highest kind, and its themes are invariably placed in the mouths of their divinest songsters[446]. Whether Lucretius may have been indebted to any such ancient poems, still extant in his age, or to the subsequent productions of Palæphatus the Athenian, Antiochus, or Eratosthenes, who, as Suidas informs us, wrote poems on the structure of the world, it is impossible now to determine; but he seems to have considerably availed himself of the work of Empedocles. The poem of that sumptuous, accomplished, and arrogant philosopher, entitled Περι φυσεως, and inscribed to his pupil Pausanias, was chiefly illustrative of the Pythagorean philosophy, in which he had been initiated. Aristotle speaks on the subject of the merits of Empedocles in a manner which does not seem to be perfectly consistent[447]; but we know that his poem was sufficiently celebrated to be publicly recited at the Olympic games, along with the works of Homer. Only a few fragments of his writings remain; from which, perhaps, it would be as unfair to judge him, as to estimate Lucretius by extracts from the physical portions of his poem. Those who have collected the detached fragments of his production[448], think that it had been [pg 259]divided into three books; the first treating of the elements and universe,—the second of animals and man,—the third of the soul, as also of the nature and worship of the gods. His philosophical system was different from that of Lucretius; but he had discussed almost all the subjects on which the Roman bard afterwards expatiated. In particular, Lucretius appears to have derived from his predecessor his notion of the original generation of man from the teeming earth,—the production, at the beginning of the world, of a variety of defective monsters, which were not allowed to multiply their kinds,—the distribution of animals according to the prevalence of one or other of the four elements over the rest in their composition,—the vicissitudes of matter between life and inanimate substance,—and the leading doctrine, “mortem nihil ad nos pertinere,” because absolute insensibility is the consequence of dissolution[449].
If Lucretius has in any degree benefited by the works of Empedocles, he has in return been most lavish and eloquent in his commendations. One of the most delightful features in the character of the Latin poet is, the glow of admiration with which he writes of his illustrious predecessors. His eulogy of the Sicilian philosopher, which he has so happily combined with that of the country which gave him birth, affords a beautiful example of his manner of infusing into everything a poetic sweetness, Musæo contingens cuncta lepore,—
“Quorum Agragantinus cum primis Empedocles est:
Insula quem Triquetris terrarum gessit in oris:
Quam fluitans circum magnis anfractibus, æquor
Ionium glaucis aspergit virus ab undis,
Angustoque fretu rapidum, mare dividit undis
Æoliæ terrarum oras a finibus ejus:
Hîc est vasta Charybdis, et hîc Ætnæa minantur
Murmura, flammarum rursum se conligere iras,
Faucibus eruptos iterum ut vis evomat igneis,
Ad cœlumque ferat flammäi fulgura rursum.
Quæ, quum magna modis multis miranda videtur
Gentibus humanis regio, visundaque fertur,
Rebus opima bonis, multa munita virûm vi;
Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro præclarius in se,
Nec sanctum magis, et mirum, carumque, videtur.
Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris ejus
Vociferantur, et exponunt præclara reperta;
Ut vix humana videatur stirpe creatus.”—Lib. I. 717.
It was formerly mentioned, that Ennius had translated into Latin verse the Greek poem of Epicharmus, which, from the fragments preserved, appears to have contained many speculations with regard to the productive elements of which the world is composed, as also concerning the preservative powers of nature. To the works of Ennius our poet seems to have been indebted, partly as a model for enriching the still scanty Latin language with new terms, and partly as a treasury or storehouse of words already provided. Him, too, he celebrates with the most ardent and unfeigned enthusiasm:—
“Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amæno
Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,
Per genteis Italas hominum quæ clara clueret.
Et si præterea tamen esse Acherusia templa
Ennius æternis exponit versibus edens;
Quo neque permanent animæ, neque corpora nostra;
Sed quædam simulacra modis pallentia miris;
Unde, sibi exortam, semper florentis Homeri
Commemorat speciem, lacrumas et fundere salsas
Cœpisse, et rerum naturam expandere dictis.”—I. 122.
These writers, Empedocles and Ennius, were probably Lucretius’ chief guides; and though the most original of the Latin poets, many of his finest passages may be traced to the Greeks. The beautiful lamentation,—
“Nam jam non domus accipiet te læta, neque uxor
Optuma, nec dulceis occurrent oscula nati
Præripere, et tacitâ pectus dulcedine tangunt,” ——
is said to be translated from a dirge chaunted at Athenian funerals; and the passage where he represents the feigned tortures of hell as but the workings of a guilty and unquiet spirit, is versified from an oration of Æschines against Timarchus.
In the first and second books, Lucretius chiefly expounds the cosmogony, or physical part of his system—a system which had been originally founded by Leucippus, a philosopher of the Eleatic sect, and, from his time, had been successively improved by Democritus and Epicurus. He establishes in these books his two great principles,—that nothing can be made from nothing, and that nothing can ever be annihilated or return to nothing; and, that there is in the universe a void or space, in which atoms interact. These [pg 261]atoms he believes to be the original component parts of all matter, as well as of animal life; and the arrangement of such corpuscles occasions, according to him, the whole difference in substances.
It cannot be denied, that in these two books particularly, (but the observation is in some degree applicable to the whole poem,) there are many barren tracts—many physiological, meteorological, and geological details—which are at once too incorrect for the philosophical, and too dry and abstract for the poetical reader. It is wonderful, however, how Lucretius contrives, by the beauty of his images, to give a picturesque colouring and illustration to the most unpromising topics. Near the beginning of his poem, for example, in attempting to prove a very abstract proposition, he says,—
“Præterea, quur vere rosam, frumenta calore,
Viteis auctumno fondi suadente videmus.”
Thus, by the introduction of the rose and vines, bestowing a fragrance and freshness, and covering, as it were, with verdure, the thorns and briars of abstract discussion. In like manner, when contending that nothing utterly perishes, but merely assumes another form, what a lovely rural landscape does he present to the imagination!
—— “Pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater Æther
In gremium matris Terräi præcipitavit:
At nitidæ surgunt fruges, ramique virescunt
Arboribus; crescunt ipsæ, fœtuque gravantur.
Hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum;
Hinc lætas urbeis puerûm florere videmus,
Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique sylvas;
Hinc, fessæ pecudes, pingues per pabula læta,
Corpora deponunt, et candens lacteus humor
Uberibus manat distentis; hinc nova proles
Artubus infirmis teneras lasciva per herbas
Ludit, lacte mero menteis percussa novellas.”
“Whoever,” says Warton, “imagines, with Tully, that Lucretius had not a great genius[450], is desired to cast his eye on two pictures he has given us at the beginning of his poem,—the first, of Venus with her lover Mars, beautiful to the last [pg 262]degree, and more glowing than any picture painted by Titian; the second, of that terrible and gigantic figure the Demon of Superstition, worthy the energetic pencil of Michael Angelo. I am sure there is no piece by the hand of Guido, or the Carracci, that exceeds the following group of allegorical personages:
“It Ver, et Venus; et, veris prænuncius, ante
Pennatus graditur Zephyrus, vestigia propter,
Flora quibus Mater, præspargens ante viäi,
Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.”
In spite, however, of the powers of Lucretius, it was impossible, from the very nature of his subject, but that some portions would prove altogether unsusceptible of poetical embellishment. Yet it may be doubted, whether these intractable passages, by the charm of contrast, do not add, like deserts to Oases in their bosom, an additional deliciousness in proportion to their own sterility. The lovely group above-mentioned by Warton, are clothed with additional beauty and enchantment, from starting, as it were, like Armida and her Nymphs, from the mossy rind of a rugged tree. The philosophical analysis, too, employed by Lucretius, impresses the mind with the conviction, that the poet is a profound thinker, and adds great force to his moral reflections. Above all, his fearlessness, if I may say so, produces this powerful effect. Dryden, in a well-known passage, where he has most happily characterized the general manner of Lucretius, observes, “If I am not mistaken, the distinguishing character of Lucretius—I mean, of his soul and genius—is a certain kind of noble pride, and positive assertion of his own opinions. He is everywhere confident of his own reason, and assuming an absolute command, not only over his vulgar readers, but even his patron, Memmius.... This is that particular dictatorship which is exercised by Lucretius; who, though often in the wrong, yet seems to deal bona fide with his reader, and tells him nothing but what he thinks.... He seems to disdain all manner of replies; and is so confident of his cause, that he is before-hand with his antagonists, urging for them whatever he imagined they could say, and leaving them, as he supposes, without an objection for the future. All this, too, with so much scorn and indignation, as if he were assured of the triumph, and need only enter into the lists.” Hence while, in other writers, the eulogy of virtue seems in some sort to partake of the nature of a sermon—to be a conventional language, and words of course—we listen to Lucretius as to one who will fearlessly speak out; who had shut his ears to [pg 263]the murmurs of Acheron: and who, if he eulogizes Virtue, extols her because her charms are real. How exquisite, for example, and, at the same time, how powerful and convincing, his delineation of the utter worthlessness of vanity and pomp, contrasted with the pure and perfect delights of simple nature!
“Si non aurea sunt juvenum simulacra per ædes,
Lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris,
Lumina nocturnis epulis ut suppeditentur,
Nec domus argento fulget auroque renidet,
Nec citharæ reboant laqueata aurataque tecta;
Quum tamen inter se, prostrati in gramine molli,
Propter aquæ rivum, sub ramis arboris altæ,
Non magnis opibus jucunde corpora curant:
Præsertim, quum tempestas arridet, et anni
Tempora conspargunt viridantes floribus herbas:
Nec calidæ citius decedunt corpore febres,
Textilibus si in picturis, ostroque rubenti,
Jaceris, quam si plebeiâ in veste cubandum est.”—II. 24.
The word Præsertim, in this beautiful passage, affords an illustration of what has been remarked above, that the kind of philosophical analysis employed by Lucretius gives great force to his moral reflections. He seems, as it were, to be weighing his words; and, which is the only solid foundation of just confidence, to be cautious of asserting anything which experience would not fully confirm. One thing very remarkable in this great poet is, the admirable clearness and closeness of his reasoning. He repeatedly values himself not a little on the circumstance, that, with an intractable subject, and a language not yet accommodated to philosophical discussions, and scanty in terms of physical as well as metaphysical science, he was able to give so much clearness to his argument[451]; which object it is generally admitted he has accomplished, with little or no sacrifice of pure Latinity[452]. As a proof at once of the perspicuity and closeness of his reasoning, and the fertility of his mind in inventing arguments, there might be given his long discussion, in the third book, on the materiality of the human soul, and its incapability of surviving the ruin of the corporeal frame. Never were the arguments for materialism marshalled with such skill—never were the [pg 264]diseases of the mind, and the decay of memory and understanding, so pathetically urged, so eloquently expressed. The following quotation contains a specimen of the lucid and logical reasoning of this philosophic poet; and the two first verses, perhaps, after all that has been written, comprehend the whole that is metaphysically or physiologically known upon the subject:
“Præterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, et unà
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere, mentem.
Nam, velut infirmo pueri, teneroque, vagantur
Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis;
Inde, ubi robustis adolevit viribus ætas,
Consilium quoque majus, et auctior est animî vis.
Post, ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi
Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,
Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque mensque;
Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt:
Ergo, dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animäi
Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aëris auras;
Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus
Crescere; et, ut docui, simul, ævo fessa, fatisci.”—III. 446.
Lucretius having, by many arguments, endeavoured to establish the mortality of the soul, proceeds to exhort against a dread of death. The fear of that “last tremendous blow,” appears to have harassed, and sometimes overwhelmed, the minds of the Romans[453]. To them, life presented a scene of high duties and honourable labours; and they contemplated, in a long futurity, the distant completion of their serious and lofty aims. They were not yet habituated to regard life as a banquet or recreation, from which they were cheerfully to rise, in due time, sated with the feast prepared for them; nor had they been accustomed to associate death with those softening ideas of indolence and slumber, with which it was the design of Lucretius to connect it. He accordingly represents it as a privation of all sense,—as undisturbed by tumult or terror, by grief or pain,—as a tranquil sleep, and an everlasting repose. How sublime is the following passage, in which, to illustrate his argument, that the long night of the grave can be no more painful than the eternity before our birth, he introduces the war with Carthage; and what a picture does it convey of the energy and might of the combatants!
“Nil igitur Mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.
Et, velut ante acto nil tempore sensimus ægrî,
Ad confligundum venientibus undique Pœnis;
Omnia quum, belli trepido concussa tumultu,
Horrida contremuere sub altis ætheris auris:
In dubioque fuere, utrorum ad regna cadundum
Omnibus humanis esset, terràque, màrique.
Sic, ubi non erimus, quum corporis atque animäi
Discidium fuerit, quibus e sumus uniter apti;
Scilicet haud nobis quidquam, qui non erimus tum,
Accidere omnino poterit, sensumque movere:
Non si terra mari miscebitur, et mare cœlo.”—III, 842.
From this admirable passage till the close of the third book there is an union of philosophy, of majesty, and pathos, which hardly ever has been equalled. The incapacity of the highest power and wisdom, as exhibited in so many instances, to exempt from the common lot of man, the farewell which we must bid to the sweetest domestic enjoyments, and the magnificent prosopopœia of Nature to her children, rebuking their regrets, and the injustice of their complaints, are altogether exceedingly solemn, and affecting, and sublime.
The two leading tenets of Epicurus concerning the formation of the world and the mortality of the soul, are established by Lucretius in the first three books. A great proportion of the fourth book may be considered as episodical. Having explained the nature of primordial atoms, and of the soul, which is formed from the finest of them, he announces, that there are certain images (rerum simulacra,) or effluvia, which are constantly thrown off from the surface of whatever exists. On this hypothesis he accounts for all our external senses; and he applies it also to the theory of dreams, in which whatever images have amused the senses during day most readily recur. Mankind being prone to love, of all the phantoms which rush on our imagination during night, none return so frequently as the forms of the fair. This leads Lucretius to enlarge on the mischievous effects of illicit love; and nothing can be finer than the various moral considerations which he enforces, to warn us against the snares of guilty passion. It must, however, be confessed, that his description of what he seems to consider as the physical evils and imperfect fruition of sensual love, forms the most glowing picture ever presented of its delights. But he has atoned for his violation of decorum, by a few beautiful lines on connubial happiness at the conclusion of the book:
“Nam facit ipsa suis interdum femina factis,
Morigerisque modis et mundo corpore culta,
Ut facile assuescat secum vir degere vitam.
Quod super est, consuetudo concinnat amorem;
Nam, leviter quamvis, quod crebro tunditur ictu,
Vincitur id longo spatio tamen, atque labascit:
Nonne vides, etiam guttas, in saxa cadenteis,
Humoris longo in spacio pertundere saxa?”—IV. 1273.
The principal subject of the fifth book—a composition unrivalled in energy and richness of language, in full and genuine sublimity—is the origin and laws of the visible world, with those of its inhabitants. The poet presents us with a grand picture of Chaos, and the most magnificent account of the creation that ever flowed from human pen. In his representation of primeval life and manners, he exhibits the discomfort of this early stage of society by a single passage of most wild and powerful imagery,—in which he describes a savage, in the early ages of the world, when men were yet contending with beasts for possession of the earth, flying through the woods, with loud shrieks, in a stormy night, from the pursuit of some ravenous animal, which had invaded the cavern where he sought a temporary shelter and repose:
—— “Sæcla ferarum
Infestam miseris faciebant sæpe quietem;
Ejecteique domo, fugiebant saxea tecta
Setigeri suis adventu, validique leonis;
Atque intempestâ cedebant nocte, paventes,
Hospitibus sævis instrata cubilia fronde.”—V. 980.
One is naturally led to compare the whole of Lucretius’ description of primeval society, and the origin of man, with Ovid’s Four Ages of the World, which commence his Metamorphoses, and which, philosophically considered, certainly exhibit the most wonderful of all metamorphoses. In his sketch of the Golden Age, he has selected the favourable circumstances alluded to by Lucretius—exemption from war and sea voyages, and spontaneous production of fruits by the earth. There is also a beautiful view of early life and manners in one of the elegies of Tibullus[454]; and Thomson, in his picture of what he calls the “prime of days,” has combined the descriptions of Ovid and the elegiac bard. Most of the poets, however, who have painted the Golden Age, and Ovid in particular, have represented mankind as growing more vicious and unhappy with advance of time—Lucretius, more philosophically, as constantly improving. He has fixed on connubial love as the first great softener of the human breast; and neither Thomson nor Milton has described with more tenderness, truth, and purity, the joys of domestic union. He follows the progressive improvement of mankind occasioned by their [pg 267]subjection to the bonds of civil society and government; and the book concludes with an account of the origin of the fine arts, particularly music, in the course of which many impressive descriptions occur, and many delicious scenes are unfolded:
“At liquidas avium voces imitarier ore
Ante fuit multo, quam lævia carmina cantu
Concelebrare homines possent, aureisque juvare.
Et zephyri, cava per calamorum, sibila primum
Agrestes docuere cavas inflare cicutas.
Inde minutatim dulces didicere querelas
Tibia quas fundit, digitis pulsata canentûm,
Avia per nemora ac sylvas saltusque reperta,
Per loca pastorum deserta, atque otia dia.”—V. 1378.
In consequence of their ignorance and superstitions, the Roman people were rendered perpetual slaves of the most idle and unfounded terrors. In order to counteract these popular prejudices, and to heal the constant disquietudes that accompanied them, Lucretius proceeds, in the sixth book, to account for a variety of extraordinary phænomena both in the heavens and on the earth, which, at first view, seemed to deviate from the usual laws of nature:—
“Sunt tempestates et fulmina clara canenda.”
Having discussed the various theories formed to account for electricity, water-spouts, hurricanes, the rainbow, and volcanoes, he lastly considers the origin of pestilential and endemic disorders. This introduces the celebrated account of the plague, which ravaged Athens during the Peloponnesian war, with which Lucretius concludes this book, and his magnificent poem. “In this narrative,” says a late translator of Lucretius, “the true genius of poetry is perhaps more powerfully and triumphantly exhibited than in any other poem that was ever written. Lucretius has ventured upon one of the most uncouth and repressing subjects to the muses that can possibly be brought forward—the history and symptoms of a disease, and this disease accompanied with circumstances naturally the most nauseating and indelicate. It was a subject altogether new to numerical composition; and he had to strive with all the pedantry of technical terms, and all the abstruseness of a science in which he does not appear to have been professionally initiated. He strove, however, and he conquered. In language the most captivating and nervous, and with ideas the most precise and appropriate, he has given us the entire history of this tremendous pestilence. There is not, perhaps, [pg 268]a symptom omitted, yet there is not a verse with which the most scrupulous can be offended. The description of the symptoms, and also the various circumstances of horror and distress attending this dreadful scourge, have been derived from Thucydides, who furnished the facts with great accuracy, having been himself a spectator and a sufferer under this calamity. His narrative is esteemed an elaborate and complete performance; and to the faithful yet elegant detail of the Greek historian, the Roman bard has added all that was necessary to convert the description into poetry.”
In the whole history of Roman taste and criticism, nothing appears to us so extraordinary as the slight mention that is made of Lucretius by succeeding Latin authors; and, when mentioned, the coldness with which he is spoken of by all Roman critics and poets, with the exception of Ovid. Perhaps the spirit of free-thinking which pervaded his writings, rendered it unsuitable or unsafe to extol even his poetical talents. There was a time, when, in this country, it was thought scarcely decorous or becoming to express high admiration of the genius of Rousseau or Voltaire.
The doctrines of Lucretius, particularly that which impugns the superintending care of Providence, were first formally opposed by the Stoic Manilius in his Astronomic poem. In modern times, his whole philosophical system has been refuted in the long and elaborate poem of the Cardinal Polignac, entitled, Anti-Lucretius, sive de Deo et Natura. This enormous work, though incomplete, consists of nine books, of about 1300 lines each, and the whole is addressed to Quintius, an atheist, who corresponds to the Lorenzo of the Night Thoughts. Descartes is the Epicurus of the poem, and the subject of many heavy panegyrics. In the philosophical part of his subject, the Cardinal has sometimes refuted, at too great length, propositions which are manifestly absurd—at others, he has impugned demonstrated truths—and the moral system of Lucretius he throughout has grossly misunderstood. But he has rendered ample justice to his poetical merit; and, in giving a compendium of the subject of his great antagonist’s poem, he has caught some share of the poetical spirit with which his predecessor was inspired:—
“Hic agitare velit Cytheriam inglorius artem:
Hic myrtum floresque legat, quos tinxit Adonis
Sanguine, dilectus Veneri puer; aut Heliconem,
Et colles Baccho, partim, Phœboque sacratos
Incolat. Hic, placidi latebris in mollibus antri,
Silenum recubantem, et amico nectare venas
Inflatum stupeat titubanti voce canentem;
Et juvenum cæcos ignes, et vulnera dicat,
Et vacuæ, pulsis terroribus, otia vitæ,
Fœcundosque greges, et amæni gaudia ruris:
Hæc et plura canens, avidè bibat ore diserto
Pegaseos latices; et nomen grande Poetæ,
Non Sapientis, amet. Lauro insignire poetam
Quis dubitet? Primus viridanteis ipse coronas
Imponam capiti, et meritas pro carmine laudes
Ante alios dicam.” ——[455]
Entertaining this just admiration of his opponent, the Cardinal has been studious, while refuting his principles, to imitate as closely as possible the poetic style of Lucretius; and, accordingly, we find many noble and beautiful passages interspersed amid the dry discussions of the Anti-Lucretius. In the first book, there is an elegant comparison, something like that by Wolsey in Henry VIII., of a man who had wantoned in the sunshine of prosperity, and was unprepared for the storms of adversity, to the tender buds of the fruit-tree blighted by the north-wind. The whole poem, indeed, is full of many beautiful and appropriate similes. I have not room to transcribe them, but may refer the reader to those in the first book, of a sick man turning to every side for rest, to a traveller following an ignis fatuus; in the second, motes dancing in the sun-beam to the atoms of Epicurus floating in the immensity of space; in the third, the whole philosophy of Epicurus to the infinite variety of splendid but fallacious appearances produced by the shifting of scenery in our theatres, (line 90,) and the identity of matter amid the various shapes it assumes, to the transformations of Proteus. The fourth book commences with a beautiful image of a traveller on a steep, looking back on his journey; immediately followed by a fine picture of the unhallowed triumph of Epicurus, and Religion weeping during the festival of youths to his honour. In the same book, there is a noble description of the river Anio, (line 1459,) and a comparison of the rising of sap in trees during spring to a fountain playing and falling back on itself (780–845). We have in the fifth book a beautiful argument, that the soul is not to be thought material, because affected by the body, illustrated by musical instruments (745). In the sixth book there occurs a charming description of the sensitive plant; and, finally, of a bird singing to his mate, to solace her while brooding over her young:—
“Haud secus in sylvis, ac frondes inter opacas,
Ingenitum carmen modulatur musicus ales,” &c.
Almost all modern didactic poems, whether treating of theology or physics, are composed in obvious imitation of the style and manner of Lucretius. The poem of Aonius Palearius, De Animi Immortalitate, though written in contradiction to the system of Lucretius, concerning the mortality of the soul, is almost a cento made up from lines or half lines of the Roman bard; and the same may be said of that extensive class of Latin poems, in which the French Jesuits of the seventeenth century have illustrated the various phænomena of nature[456].
Others have attempted to explain the philosophy of Newton in Latin verse; but the Newtonian system is better calculated to be demonstrated than sung—
“Ornari res ipsa negat—contenta doceri.”
It is a philosophy founded on the most sublime calculations; and it is in other lines and numbers than those of poetry, that the book of nature must now be written. If we attempt to express arithmetical or algebraical figures in verse, circumlocution is always required; more frequently they cannot be expressed at all; and if they could, the lines would have no advantage over prose: nay, would have considerable disadvantage, from obscurity and prolixity. All this is fully confirmed by an examination of the writings of those who have attempted to embellish the sublime system of Newton with the charms of poetry. If we look, for example, into the poem of Boscovich on Eclipses, or still more, into the work of Benedict Stay, we shall see, notwithstanding the advantage they possessed of writing in a language so flexible as the Latin, and so capable of inversion,
“The shifts and turns,
The expedients and inventions multiform,
To which the mind resorts in search of terms[457].”
The latter of these writers employs 36 lines in expressing the law of Kepler, “that the squares of the periodical times of the revolutions of the planets, are as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun.” These lines, too, which are considered by Stay himself, and by Boscovich, his annotator, as the triumph of the philosophic muse, are so obscure as to need a long commentary. Indeed, the poems of both these eminent men consist of a string of enigmas, whereas the principal and almost [pg 271]only ornament of philosophy is perspicuity. After all, only what are called the round numbers can be expressed in verse, and this is necessarily done in a manner so obscure and perplexed as ever to need a prose explanation.
With Lucretius and his subject it was totally the reverse. From the incorrectness of his philosophical views, or rather those of his age, much of his labour has been employed, so to speak, in embodying straws in amber. Yet, with all its defects, this ancient philosophy, if it deserve the name, had the advantage, that its indefinite nature rendered it highly susceptible of an embellishment, which can never be bestowed on a more precise and accurate system. Hence, perhaps, it may be safely foretold, that the philosophical poem of Lucretius will remain unrivalled; and also, that the prediction of Ovid concerning it will be verified—
“Carmina sublimis, tunc sunt peritura Lucretî
Exitio terras cum dabit una dies.”
The refutations and imitations of Lucretius, contained in modern didactic poems, have led me away from what may be considered as my proper subject, and I therefore return to those poets who were coeval with that author, with whose works we have been so long occupied. Of these the most distinguished was