CHAPTER XIV.

The Literary Art and Genius of Lucretius.

It remains to consider the poem of Lucretius as a work of literary art and genius. Much indeed of what may be said on the subject of his genius has necessarily been anticipated in the chapters devoted to the consideration of his personal characteristics, his speculative philosophy, and his moral teaching. The 'multa lumina ingenii' are most conspicuous in those passages of his poem which best illustrate the range and distinctness of his observation, the grandeur and truth of his philosophical conceptions, the passionate sympathy with which he strove to elevate and purify human life. But, at the same time, the most manifest defects of the poem, considered as a work of art, spring from the same source as its greatness considered as a work of genius, viz. the diversity and conflicting aims of the faculties employed on its production. Although, perhaps, from a Roman point of view, the practical purpose which reduces the mass of miscellaneous details to unity, and the success with which he encounters the difficulties both of matter and language, might entitle the poem to be regarded as a work 'multae artis,' yet, when tested by the canons either of Greek or of modern taste, it fails in the most essential conditions of art,—the choice of subject and the form of construction. The title of the poem is indeed taken from a Greek model, the poem of Empedocles, 'περὶ φύσεως': and the form of a personal address to Memmius, in which Lucretius has embodied his teaching, was suggested by the personal address of the older poet to the 'son of Anchytus.' But although Aristotle acknowledges the poetical genius of Empedocles by applying to him the epithet Ὁμηρικός, he denies to his composition the title of a poem. The work of Empedocles and the kindred works of Xenophanes and Parmenides are inspired not by the passion of art but by the enthusiasm of discovery. They are to be regarded rather as philosophical rhapsodies than as purely didactic poems, like either the 'Works and Days' of Hesiod or the writings of the Alexandrine School. They were written in hexameter verse partly because that was the most familiar vehicle of expression in the first half of the fifth century b.c., and partly because it was the vehicle most suited to the imaginative conceptions of Nature which arose out of the old mythologies. But in the time of Lucretius a prose vehicle was more suited than any form of verse for the communication of knowledge in a systematic form. The conception of Nature was no longer mystical or purely imaginative as it had been in the age of Empedocles. Thus the task which Lucretius had to perform was both vaster and more complex than that of the early φυσιολόγοι. He had to combine in one whole the prosaic results of later scientific observation and analysis with the imaginative fancies of the dawn of ancient enquiry. He professes to make both conducive to the practical purpose of emancipating and elevating human life; but a great part of his argument is as remote from all human interest as it is from the ascertained truths of science.

All life and Nature were to his spirit full of imaginative wonder, but they were believed also to be susceptible of a rationalistic explanation. And the greater part of the work is devoted to give this explanation. This large infusion of a prosaic content necessarily detracts from the artistic excellence and the sustained interest of the poem. Lucretius speaks of the difficulty which he had to encounter in gaining the ear of his countrymen, in the lines,—

Quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur

Tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque

Volgus abhorret ab hac [¹].

And the unattractiveness of much of his theme is not diminished when the real discoveries of science have shown how illusory are his processes of investigation, and how false are many of his conclusions. He has made his poetry ancillary to his science, instead of compelling, as Virgil, Dante, and Milton have done, a subject, susceptible of purely artistic treatment, to assimilate the stores of his knowledge. His theme—'maiestas cognita rerum,'—is too vast and complex to be brought within the compass and proportions of a single work of art. The processes of minute observation and reasoning employed in establishing his conclusions are alien from the movement of the imagination. The connecting links of the argument are suggestive of the labour of the workman, not of the finished perfection of the work. And while some of the ideas of science may be so applied to the interpretation of the outward world, as to act on the imaginative emotions with greater power than any mere description of the forms and colours of external things, yet the pleasure with which processes of investigation are pursued is quite distinct from the pleasure derived from poetic intuition into the secret life of Nature and man. If it be the condition of a great poem to produce the purest and noblest pleasure by its whole conception and execution, the poem of Lucretius fails to satisfy this condition. It is in spite of its design and proportions,—in spite of the fact that long parts of the work neither interest the feelings nor satisfy the reason, that the poem still speaks with impressive power to the modern world.

And while the whole conception of the work, as regards both matter and method of treatment, necessarily involves a large interfusion of prosaic materials with the finer product of his genius, it must be added that there is considerable inequality of execution even in its more inspired passages. A few consecutive passages show indeed the finest sense of harmony, and are finished in a style not much inferior to that of Virgil. Such, for instance, are the opening lines:—

Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, etc.;—

and again the lines in the introduction to Book iii.:—

Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae, etc.

But long passages seem rather to revert to the roughness of Ennius than to approach the smooth and varied cadences of Virgil. Though the imaginative effect of single expressions is generally more forcible than in any Latin poet, yet the composition of long paragraphs is apt to overflow into prosaic detail, or to display the qualities of logical consecutiveness or close adherence to fact rather than those of skilled accomplishment and conformity with the principles of beauty. In common with the older race of Roman poets he exhibits that straining after verbal effects by means of alliteration, assonances, asyndeta, etc., which marks the ruder stages of literary development. The Latin language, although beginning to feel the quickening of a new life, had not yet been formed into its more exquisite modulations, nor learned the power of suggesting delicate shades of meaning and the new strength derivable from the reserved use of its resources. All these causes,—the vast and miscellaneous range, and the abstruse character of his subject, the dryness and futility of much of the argument, the frequent subordination of poetry to science, the inadequacy of the Latin language as a vehicle of thought and its imperfect development as an organ of poetry,—prevented the poem from ever obtaining great popularity in ancient times, and have denied to it in modern times anything like the large influence which has been enjoyed in different ages and countries by Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Even the more ardent admirers of the poem are tempted to pass from one to another of the higher ranges and more commanding summits, which swell gradually or rise abruptly out of the general level over which he leads them, rather than to follow him through all the windings of his argument.

Yet it is only after the poem has been mastered in its details that we realise its full effect on the imagination. It is only then that we understand the complete greatness of the man, as a thinker, a teacher, and a poet. The most familiar beauties reveal a deeper meaning when they are seen to be not mere resting places in the toilsome march of his argument, but rather commanding positions, successively reached, from which the widest contemplative views of the realms of Nature and human life are laid open to us. As we follow closely in his footsteps, through all his processes of observation, analysis, and reasoning, we feel, that he too, like the older Greeks, is borne along by a strong enthusiasm,—the philosophical ἔρως of Plato,—different from, but akin to, the impulses of poetry. That marvellous intensity of feeling in conjunction with the operations of the intellect, which the Greeks regarded as a kind of divine possession, and which Lucretius, by the use of such phrases as 'divinitus invenientes', ascribes to the earliest enquirers, animates all his interpretation of the facts and laws of Nature. The speculative passion imparts life to the argumentative processes which are addressed to the understanding, while it adds a fresher glory or more impressive solemnity to those aspects of the subject by which the imagination is most powerfully moved.

Again, although his rhythm, even at its best, falls far short of the intricate harmony and variety of Virgil, and, in its more level passages, scarcely aims at pleasing the ear at all, yet there is a kind of grandeur and dignity even in its monotony, varied, as that is, by deeper and more majestic tones whenever his spirit is stirred by impulses of awe, wonder, and delight. There is always a sense of life and onward movement in the flow of his verse. Often there is a kind of cumulative force revealing a more powerful emotion of heart and imagination as his thoughts and images press on one another in close and ordered sequence. Thus, for instance, the effect of the lines describing the religious impressions produced on the early inhabitants of the world by the grand and awful aspects of Nature, depends, not on any harmonious variation of sounds, but on the swelling and culminating power with which the whole passage breaks on the ear,—

In caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt,

Per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,

Luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa

Noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes,

Nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando

Et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum [²].

In many passages it may be noticed how much is added to the rhythmical effect by the force or weight of the concluding line, as at iii. 870-893, by the rugged grandeur of the line,—

Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae,—

at ii. 569-580, by the sad and solemn movement of the close,

Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri,—

and at i. 101, by the line of cardinal significance, which ends a passage of most finished power and beauty,—

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

The music of Lucretius is altogether his own. As he was the first among his countrymen who contemplated in a reverential spirit the majesty of Nature and the more solemn meaning of life, so he was the first to call out the full rhythmical majesty and deep organ-tones of the Latin language, to embody in sound the spiritual emotions stirred by that contemplation.

The poetical style of Lucretius is, like his rhythm, a true and powerful symbol of his genius. Though his diction is much less studied than that of Virgil, yet his large use of alliterations, assonances, asyndeta [³], etc., shows that he consciously aimed at producing certain effects by recognised rhetorical means. The attraction which the artifices of rhetoric had for his mind is as noticeable in his style as a similar attraction is in the speeches of Thucydides. But neither Lucretius nor Thucydides can be called the slave of rhetorical forms. In both writers recourse is had to them for the legitimate purpose of emphasising thought, not for that of disguising its insufficiency. The use of such phrases, for instance, as 'sed casta inceste,' 'immortalia mortali sermone notantes,' 'mors immortalis,' etc., is no mere play of words, but rather the tersest phrase in which an impressive antithesis of thought can be presented. The mannerisms of his style, if they show that he was not altogether emancipated from archaic rudeness, afford evidence also of the prolific fertility of his genius. The amplitude and unchecked volume of his diction flow out of the mental conditions, described in the lines,—

Usque adeo largos haustus e fontibu' magnis

Lingua meo suavis diti de pectore fundet.

And he had not only the 'suavis lingua diti de pectore'; he had also the 'daedala lingua,'—the formative energy which shapes words into new forms and combinations. The frequent ἅπαξ λεγόμενα in his poem and his abundant use of compound words, such as fluctifragus, montivagus, altitonans, etc., most of which fell into disuse in the Augustan age, were products of the same creative force which enabled Plautus and Ennius to add largely to the resources of the Latin tongue. In him, more than in any Latin poet before or after him, we meet with phrases too full of imaginative life to be in perfect keeping with the more sober tones and tamer spirit of the national literature. Thus his language never became trite and hackneyed, and, as we read him, no medium of after-associations is interposed between his mind and our own.

But it is not in individual phrases, however fresh and powerful, but in continuous passages, that the power of his style is best seen. The processes of his mind are characterised by continuity, consistency, and a kind of gathering intensity of movement. The periods of Virgil delight us by their intricate harmony; those of Lucretius impress us by their continuous and hurrying impetus. The long drawn out charm of the one is indicative of the deep love which induced him to linger over every detail of his subject: the force and grandeur of the other are the outward signs of the inward wonder and enthusiasm by which his spirit was borne rapidly along. Virgil's movement displays the majesty of grace and serenity; that of Lucretius the majesty of power, and largeness of mind.

Thus although the poetical style of Lucretius shows the traces of labour and premeditation, and of occasional imitation both of foreign and native models, it is more than that of any other Latin poet, the immediate creation of his own genius. The 'ingenuei fontis,' by which his imagination was so abundantly fed, found many spontaneous outlets, and were not checked in their speed or stained in their purity by the artificial channels in which he sometimes forced them to flow. If the loving labour, so prodigally bestowed upon the task of finding words and rhythm [⁴] adequate to his great theme, explains some peculiarities of his diction, the qualities which have made the work immortal are due to his noble singleness of heart and sincerity of nature, and to the openness and sensibility with which his imagination received impressions, the penetrative force with which it saw into the heart of things, and the creative energy with which it shaped what it received and discerned into vivid pictures and symbols.

He has, in the first place, the freshness of feeling, the living sense of the wonder of the world, which is a great charm in the older poets of all great literatures,—in Homer, Dante, Chaucer;—and this sense he communicates by words used in their simplest and directest meaning. The life which animates and gladdens the familiar face of earth, sea, and sky,—of river, wood, field, and hill-side,—is vividly and immediately reproduced in such lines as these:—

Caeli subter labentia signa

Quae mare navigerum quae terras frugiferentis

Concelebras [⁵].

Denique per maria ac montis fluviosque rapacis

Frondiferasque domos avium camposque virentis [⁶].

Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas [⁷].

Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta

Lanigerae reptant pecudes quo quamque vocantes

Invitant herbae gemmantes rore recenti [⁸].

Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentis

Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis [⁹].

So, too, he makes us realise, with a quickening and expanding emotion, which seems to bring us nearer to the core of Nature, the majesty of the sea breaking on a great expanse of shore,—the solemn stillness of midnight,—the invisible agency by which the clouds form the pageantry of the sky,—the active noiseless energy by which rivers wear away their banks,—by the use of words that seem exactly equivalent to the thing which they describe,—

Quam fluitans circum magnis anfractibus aequor

Ionium glaucis aspargit virus ab undis [¹⁰].

Severa silentia noctis

Undique cum constent [¹¹].

Ut nubes facile interdum concrescere in alto

Cernimus et mundi speciem violare serenam

Aera mulcentes motu [¹²].

Pars etiam glebarum ad diluviem revocatur

Imbribus et ripas radentia flumina rodunt [¹³].

The changing face of Nature is to his spirit so full of power and wonder, that it needs no poetical adornment, but is left to tell its own tale in the plainest language. If words are a true index of feeling, it would be difficult to name any poet by whom the living presence and full being of Nature were more immediately apprehended, nor has any one caught with more fidelity the intimations of her hidden life, as they betray themselves in her outward features and motions.

With similar fidelity and directness of language he communicates to his reader the spell of awe and wonder by which his own spirit is possessed in presence of the impressive facts of human life. No subtlety of reflexion nor grandeur of illustrative imagery could enhance the effect of the thought of the dead produced by the austere plainness of the words,—

Morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa,

and,

Ossa dedit terrae proinde ac famul infimus esset.

By no pomp of description could a deeper sense of religious solemnity be created than by the lines describing the silent influence of the procession of Cybele on the minds of her devotees,—

Ergo cum primum magnas invecta per urbis

Munificat tacita mortalis muta salute [¹⁴].

The undying pain of a great sorrow,—the paralysis of all human effort in the face of new and terrible agencies of death,—the blessedness and pathos of the purest human affections,—the ecstatic delight derived from the revelation of great truths—imprint themselves permanently on the imagination through the august simplicity of the phrases,

Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus [¹⁵],—

tacito mussabat medicina timore [¹⁶],—

tacita pectus dulcedine tangent [¹⁷]—

His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas

Percipit adque horror [¹⁸].—

His language has the further power of producing a vague sense of sublimity, where the cause of the feeling is too vast or undefined to be distinctly conceived or visibly presented to the mind. The very sound of his words seems sometimes to be a kind of echo of the voices by which Nature produces a strange awe upon the imagination. Such, for instance, are these lines and phrases—

Altitonans Volturnus et auster fulmine pollens [¹⁹].

Nec fulmina nec minitanti

Murmure compressit caelum [²⁰].

Murmura magna minarum [²¹], etc.

The sublimity of vagueness and vastness is present in the language of these lines—

Impendent atrae formidinis ora superne [²²].

Sustentata ruet moles et machina mundi [²³].

Aut cecidisse urbis magno vexamine mundi [²⁴].

Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo [²⁵].

While no other ancient poet brings before the mind more forcibly and immediately the living presence of the outward world and the solemn meaning of familiar things, there is none whose language seems to respond so sensitively to the vague suggestions of an invisible and awful Power omnipresent in the universe.

The creative power of imagination which gives new life to words and thoughts is also present in many vivid and picturesque expressions, either scattered through the main argument, or shining in brilliant combinations in the more elaborate parts of the work. By this more imaginative use of language, the poet can illustrate his ideas by subtle analogies, or embody them in visible symbols, or endow the objects he describes with the personal attributes of will and energy. Thus, for instance, the penetrating subtlety of the mind in exploring the secrets of Nature becomes a visible force in the curious felicity of the expression (i. 408), 'caecasque latebras insinuare omnis.' The freedom and boundless range of the imagination is suggested with picturesque effect in the familiar expression—

Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante

Trita solo [²⁶];

while the calm serenity of the contemplative mind is symbolised in such figurative expressions as 'sapientum templa serena'; 'humanum in pectus templaque mentis'; and the stormy tumult of the passions and the perilous errors of life become vividly present to the imagination by means of the analogies pictured in the lines—

Volvere curarum tristis in pectore fluctus [²⁷],

and

Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae [²⁸].

What life and energy again are imparted to external things and abstract conceptions by such expressions as these:—'flammai flore coorto'; 'avido complexu quem tenet aether'; 'caeli tegit impetus ingens'; 'circum tremere aethera signis'; 'semina quae magnum iaculando contulit omne'; 'vagos imbris tempestatesque volantes'; 'concussaeque cadunt urbes dubiaeque minantur'; 'simulacraque fessa fatisci'; 'sol lumine conserit arva'; 'lucida tela diei'; 'placidi pellacia ponti'; 'vivant labentes aetheris ignes'; 'leti sub dentibus ipsis'; 'leti praeclusa est ianua caelo,' etc.

A similar power of imagination is shown in his more elaborate use of analogies, in his symbolical representation of ideas, and in his power of painting scenes from Nature and from human life. Few great poets have been more sparing in the use of mere poetical ornament. The grandest imagery which he strikes out, and the finest pictures which he paints are immediately suggested by his subject. The earnestness of his speculative and practical purpose restrains all exuberance of fancy. Thus his imaginative analogies are more often latent in single expressions than drawn out at length. But the few which he has elaborated, 'stand out with the solidity of the finest sculpture [²⁹],' to embody some deep or powerful thought for all time. They are suggested not by outward resemblance, but by an identity which the imagination discerns in the innermost meaning of the objects compared with one another. The strong emotion attending on the presence of some great thought calls up before the inward eye some scene or action, which, if actually witnessed, would produce a similar effect upon the mind. Thus the thought of the chaotic confusion which the universe would present, on the supposition that the original atoms were limited in number, calls up the image of the most impressive and awful devastation, wrought by Nature upon the works of man.

Sed quasi naufragiis magnis multisque coortis

Disiectare solet magnum mare transtra guberna

Antemnas proram malos tonsasque natantis,

Per terrarum omnis oras fluitantia aplustra

Ut videantur et indicium mortalibus edant,

Infidi maris insidias virisque dolumque

Ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credant,

Subdola cum ridet placidi pellacia ponti,

Sic tibi si finita semel primordia quaedam

Constitues, aevom debebunt sparsa per omnem

Disiectare aestus diversi materiari,

Numquam in concilium ut possint compulsa coire

Nec remorari in concilio nec crescere adaucta [³⁰].

It is through the penetrating intuition of his imagination into the deepest meaning of the two phenomena, and his sensibility to the pathos and the strangeness involved in each of them, that he sees the birth of every child into the world under the well-known image of the shipwrecked sailor—'saevis proiectus ab undis.' Other analogies, suggested rather than elaborately drawn out, express an inward or spiritual, not an outward or bodily resemblance. Or rather the thing illustrated is a thought or a mental act, the illustration a scene or action, visible to the eye, suggestive of the same power in Nature, and calculated to rouse the same emotions in the mind. Thus he compares the life transmitted in succession through the nations of the world to the torch passed on by the runners in the torch-race; or he illustrates his calm contemplation of the struggles of life from the heights of his Epicurean philosophy, by the vision of the dangers of the sea, as seen from some commanding position on the land.

Although few of his descriptions from Nature are capable of being transferred to canvas, yet he shows in his treatment of mythological subjects, and in his personification of great natural phenomena, that purely pictorial faculty, in virtue of which Catullus and Ovid have inspired the imagination and directed the hand of some of the great painters of modern times. Such, for instance, is the representation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, suggested indeed, in some of its features, by an earlier poet, but executed with original power. Such too are the pictures of Venus and Mars in the invocation to the poem, and that of Pan—

Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans [³¹].

By this power of vision he presents that superstition against which all the weight of his argument is directed, not as an abstraction, but as a real palpably existing Power of evil—

Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat

Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans [³²].

So, too, in his vivid account of the orderly procession of the seasons, he invests the freshness and the beauty of spring with the charm of personal and human attributes in the lines—

It ver et Venus, et veris praenuntius ante

Pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter

Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai

Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet [³³].

But it is in describing actual scenes and actual aspects of human life that Lucretius chiefly employs his power of poetical conception and expression. He looks upon the world with an eye which discerns beneath the outward appearances of things the presence of Nature in her attributes both of majesty and of genial all-penetrating life,—as at once the 'Magna mater' and the 'alma mater' of all living things [³⁴]. She appears to his imagination not as an abstraction, or a vast aggregate of forces and laws, but as a living Power, whose processes are on an infinitely grander scale, but are yet analogous to the active and moral energies of man. He shows the same sympathy with this life of Nature, the same vivid sense of wonder and delight in her familiar aspects, the same imaginative perception of her secret agency, which led the early Greek mind to people the world with the living forms of the old mythology, and which have been felt anew by the great poets of the present century. All natural life is thus endowed with a poetical interest, as being a new manifestation of the creative energy, which is the fountain of all beauty and delight in the world.

The minutest phenomena and the most gigantic forces, the changes of decay and renovation in all outward things, the growth of plants and trees, the habits of beasts rioting in a wild liberty over the mountains,—

Quod in magnis bacchatur montibu' passim [³⁵],—

or tended by the care and ministering to the wants of man; the life and enjoyment of the birds that gladden the early morning with their song by woods and river-banks, or that seek their food and pastime among the sea-waves;—these, and numberless other phenomena, are all contemplated and described by an eye quickened by the poetical sense of manifold and inexhaustible energy in the world.

It is not so much the beauty of form and colour, as the appearance of force and life which he reproduces. He has not, like Catullus, the pure delight of an artist in painting outward scenes. He does not express, like Virgil, the charm of old associations attaching to famous places. It is the association of great laws, not of great memories, which moves him in contemplating the outward world. Neither has he invested any particular place with the attraction which Horace has given to his Sabine home, and Catullus to Sirmio. But no ancient or modern poet has expressed more happily the natural enjoyment of beholding the changing life and familiar face of the world. No other writer makes us feel with more reality the quickening of the spirit, produced by the sunrise or the advent of spring, by living in fine weather or looking on fair and peaceful landscapes. The freshness of the feeling with which outward scenes inspire him is one of the great charms of the poem, especially as a relief to the pervading gravity of his thought. More than any poet, except Wordsworth, he seems to derive a pure and healthy joy from the common sights and sounds of animate and inanimate Nature. No distempered fancies or regrets, no vague longings for some unattainable rapture, coloured the natural aspect which the world presented to his eyes and mind.

In the descriptions of Lucretius, as in those of Homer, there is always some active movement and change represented as passing before the eye. What power and energy there are, for instance, in that of a river-flood,—(like one of equal force and truth in Burns's 'Brigs of Ayr,')—

Nec validi possunt pontes venientis aquai

Vim subitam tolerare: ita magno turbidus imbri

Molibus incurrit validis cum viribus amnis [³⁶].

How naturally is the pure and sparkling life of brooks and springs brought before the mind in the passage at v. 269 [³⁷], already quoted,—and again, in these lines—

Denique nota vagi silvestria templa tenebant

Nympharum, quibus e scibant umori' fluenta

Lubrica proluvie larga lavere umida saxa,

Umida saxa, super viridi stillantia musco,

Et partim plano scatere atque erumpere campo [³⁸].

In this representation of the sea-shore—

Concharumque genus parili ratione videmus

Pingere telluris gremium, qua mollibus undis

Litoris incurvi bibulam pavit aequor harenam [³⁹],—

there is the same suggestion of quiet ceaseless movement, as in a line of the Odyssey representing the same phase of Nature—

λαΐγγας πότι χέρσον ἀποπλύνεσπε θάλασσα.

There is the same sense of active life in all his pictures of the early morning; as, for instance,—

Primum aurora novo cum spargit lumine terras

Et variae volucres nemora avia pervolitantes

Aera per tenerum liquidis loca vocibus opplent,

Quam subito soleat sol ortus tempore tali

Convestire sua perfundens omnia luce,

Omnibus in promptu manifestumque esse videmus [⁴⁰].

And again,—

Aurea cum primum gemmantis rore per herbas

Matutina rubent radiati lumina solis

Exhalantque lacus nebulam fluviique perennes,

Ipsaque ut interdum tellus fumare videtur;

Omnia quae sursum cum conciliantur, in alto

Corpore concreto subtexunt nubila caelum [⁴¹].

Two other passages (at iv. 136 and vi. 190), in which the movements and shifting pageantry of the clouds are described, may be compared with a more elaborate passage in the Excursion, in which Wordsworth has represented a similar spectacle [⁴²] wrought by 'earthly Nature,'—

'Upon the dark materials of the storm.'

Nowhere does he present pictures of pure repose. The philosophical idea of ceaseless motion and change animates to his eye every aspect of the world. Every separate description in the poem possesses the charm of freshness and faithfulness, and of relevance to the great ideas of his philosophy. His living enjoyment in the outward world, and his sympathy with all existence, both fed and were fed by his trust in speculative ideas. The poetical descriptions which adorn and illustrate his argument are like the sublime and beautiful scenes which refresh and reward the adventurous discoverer of distant lands.

Some passages, illustrative of philosophical principles, blend the movements of animal and human life with descriptions of natural scenery. The lines at ii. 352-366, describing the cow searching for her calf, which has been sacrificed at the altar, combine many characteristics of the poetical style of Lucretius. There is the literal—almost too minute faithfulness of reproduction—as in the line—

Noscit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis [⁴³];—

the active life of the whole representation, too full of movement for a picture, yet flashing the objects on the inward eye with graphic pictorial power; the ever fresh charm of some familiar scene, called up by the lines already referred to,—

Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes

Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis;

the pathos and respect for every mode of natural feeling denoted in such expressions as 'desiderio perfixa iuvenci'; and, lastly, the power of investing the most common things with the majesty of the laws which they express and illustrate. This passage is adduced as a proof and illustration of the varieties in form of the primordial atoms. In a passage, immediately preceding, the perpetual motion of the atoms, going on beneath an appearance of absolute rest, is illustrated by two pictures, one taken from the jubilant life of the animal creation—

Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta [⁴⁴], etc.;

the other taken from the pomp of human affairs, and the gay pageantry of armies—

Praeterea magnae legiones cum loca cursu

Camporum complent belli simulacra cientes,

Fulgor ibi ad caelum se tollit totaque circum

Aere renidescit tellus supterque virum vi

Excitur pedibus sonitus clamoreque montes

Icti reiectant voces ad sidera mundi

Et circumvolitant equites mediosque repente

Tramittunt valido quatientes impete campos [⁴⁵].

The truth and fulness of life in this passage are immediately perceived, but the element of sublimity is added by the thought in the two lines with which the passage concludes, which reduces the whole of this moving and sounding pageant to stillness and silence—

Et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus unde

Stare videntur et in campis consistere fulgor [⁴⁶].

As Lucretius was the first poet who revealed the majesty and wonder of the Natural world, so he restored the sense of awe and mystery, felt by the earlier Greek poets, to the contemplation of human life. In dealing with the problem of human destiny, he has sounded deeper than any of the other ancient poets of Italy: but others have sympathised with a greater variety of the moods of life, and have allowed its lights and shadows to play more easily over their poetry. The thought both of the dignity and the littleness of our mortal state is ever present to the mind of Lucretius. His imagination is involuntarily moved by the pomp and grandeur of affairs, while his strong sense of reality keeps ever before him the conviction of the vanity of outward state, the weariness of luxurious living, and the miseries of ambition. Thus his imaginative recognition of the pomp and circumstance of war brings out by the force of contrast his deeper conviction of the littleness and impotence of man in the presence of the great forces of Nature—

Summa etiam cum vis violenti per mare venti

Induperatorem classis super aequora verrit

Cum validis pariter legionibus atque elephantis,

Non divom pacem votis adit ac prece quaesit

Ventorum pavidus paces animasque secundas, etc.[⁴⁷]

If his reason acknowledges only inward strength as the attribute of human dignity, yet his imagination feels the outward spell that swayed the Roman genius, through the symbols of power and authority, through great spectacles, and in impressive ceremonials.

But it is with more heart-felt sympathy, and with not less imaginative emotion, that he recognises the deep wonder and the infinite pathos of human life. There is perhaps no passage in any poet which reveals more truthfully that union of feelings in meditating on the strangeness and sadness of our mortal destiny than the well-known passage describing the birth of every infant into the world—

Tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis

Navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni

Vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras

Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit,

Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aecumst

Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum [⁴⁸].

With what truth and naiveté is the complaint of the husbandman over his ineffectual labour and scanty returns echoed!—

Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator

Crebrius incassum manuum cecidisse labores,

Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert

Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis

Et crepat, anticum genus ut pietate repletum

Perfacile angustis tolerarit finibus aevom,

Cum minor esset agri multo modus ante viritim [⁴⁹].

His feeling is profoundly solemn, as well as infinitely tender. Above all the tumult of life, he hears incessantly the funeral dirge over some one departed, and the infant wail of a newcomer into the troubles of the world,

mixtos vagitibus aegris

Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri [⁵⁰].

His tone can, indeed, be stern and indignant, as well as tender and melancholy: it is never morbid or effeminate. His tenderness is that of a thoroughly masculine nature. Some signs of the same mood may be discovered in the fragments of Ennius; but the feeling of Lucretius springs from a more sympathetic heart and a more contemplative imagination.

His imagination, which depicts so forcibly the intimations of experience, is able to hear him beyond the known and familiar regions of life. As it enables him to pass—

extra flammantia moenia mundi—

and to behold the dawn of creation, and even the blank desolation which will follow on the overthrow of our system, so it has enabled him to realise with vivid feeling the primeval condition of man upon the world. Yet even in these daring enterprises of his fancy he adheres strictly to the conclusions of his philosophical system, and shows that sincerity and truthful adherence to fact are as inseparable from the operations of his creative faculty as of his understanding and moral nature.

His excellences are so different from those of Virgil that the question need not be entertained, whether the rank of the greatest of Roman poets is or is not to be awarded to him. If each nation must be considered the best judge of its own poets, it will be admitted that Lucretius would have found few Roman voices to support his claim to the first or even the second place. The strongest support which he could have received would have been Virgil's willing acknowledgment of the powerful spell which the genius of his predecessor had exercised over him. Both the artistic defects and the profound feeling and imaginative originality of his work were calculated to alienate both popular favour and critical opinion in the Rome of the Empire. The poem has a much deeper significance for modern than it had for ancient times. Lucretius stands alone as the great contemplative poet of antiquity. He has proclaimed with more power than any other the majesty of Nature's laws, and has interpreted with a truer and deeper insight the meaning of her manifold life. Few, if any among his countrymen, felt so strongly the mystery of man's being, or have indicated so passionate a sympathy with the real sorrows of life, and so ardent a desire to raise man to his proper dignity, and to support him in bearing his inevitable burden. If he has, in large measure, the antique simplicity and grandeur of character, he has much also in common with the spirit and genius of modern times. He contemplates human life with a profound feeling, like that of Pascal, and with a speculative elevation like that of Spinoza. The loftier tones of his poetry and the sustained effort of mind which bears him through his long argument remind us of Milton. His sympathy with Nature, at once fresh and large, is more in harmony with the feeling of the great poets of the present century than with the general sentiment of ancient poetry. In the union of poetical feeling with scientific passion he has anticipated the most elevated mode of the study of Nature, of which the world has as yet seen only a few great examples. His powers of observation, thought, feeling, and imagination, are characterised by a remarkable vitality and sincerity. His strong intellectual and poetical faculty is united with some of the rarest moral qualities,—fortitude, seriousness of spirit, love of truth, manly tenderness of heart. And if it seems that his great powers of heart, understanding, and genius led him to accept and to teach a philosophy, paralysing to the highest human hope and energy, it is to be remembered that he lived at a time when the truest minds may well have despaired of the Divine government of the world, and must have honestly felt that it was well to be rid, at any cost, of the burden of Pagan superstition.

[¹] i. 943-45.

[²] 'And they placed the dwelling-places and mansions of the gods in the heavens, because it is through the heavens that the night and the moon are seen to sweep—the moon, the day, and night, and the stern constellations of night, the torches of heaven wandering through the night, and flying meteors, the clouds, the sun, the rains, the snow, the winds, lightning, hail, the rapid rattle, the threatening peals and murmurs of the thunder.'—v. 1188-93.

[³] Cf. Munro, Introduction, ii. pp. 311, etc.

[⁴] Cf.

Quaerentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum

Clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti

Res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis.

i. 143-5.

[⁵] i. 2-4.

[⁶] i. 17-18.

[⁷] i. 256.

[⁸] ii. 317-19.

[⁹] ii. 362-63.

[¹⁰] i. 718-19.

[¹¹] iv. 460-61.

[¹²] iv. 136-38.

[¹³] v. 255-56.

[¹⁴] ii. 624-25.

[¹⁵] ii. 639.

[¹⁶] vi. 1179.

[¹⁷] iii. 896.

[¹⁸] iii. 28-30.

[¹⁹] v. 745.

[²⁰] i. 68-9.

[²¹] v. 1193.

[²²] vi. 254.

[²³] v. 96.

[²⁴] v. 340.

[²⁵] iii. 842.

[²⁶] i. 926-27.

[²⁷] vi. 34.

[²⁸] ii. 10.

[²⁹] Prévost Paradol, Nouveaux Essais de Politique et de Littérature.

[³⁰] 'But as when there have been at the same time many and mighty shipwrecks, the mighty sea is wont to drive in all directions the rowers' benches, rudders, sailyards, prows, masts, and floating oars, so that along all the coasts of land there may be seen the tossing flag-posts of ships, to warn mortals that they shun the wiles, and force, and craft of the faithless sea, nor ever trust the treacherous alluring smile of the calm ocean; so if once you will suppose any finite number of elements, you will find that the many surging forces of matter must disperse and drive them apart through all time, so that they never can meet and gather into union, nor stay in union and wax in increase.'—ii. 552-64.

[³¹] iv. 587.

[³²] i. 64-5.

[³³] 'Then comes forth the Spring and Venus, and the harbinger of Spring steps on before them, the winged Zephyr; and near their footsteps, Mother Flora, scattering her treasures before her, fills all the way with glorious colours and fragrance.'—v. 737-40.

[³⁴] Cp. 'Keats has, above all, a sense of what is pleasurable and open in the life of Nature; for him she is the Alma Parens: his expression has, therefore, more than Guérin's, something genial, outward, and sensuous. Guérin has above all a sense of what there is adorable and secret in the life of Nature; for him she is the Magna Parens; his expression has, therefore, more than Keats', something mystic, inward, and profound.' Essays in Criticism, by M. Arnold, p. 130. Third Edition.

[³⁵] v. 842.

[³⁶] 'Nor can the strong bridges endure the sudden force of the rushing water: in such wise, swollen by heavy rain, the stream with mighty force dashes upon the piers.'—i. 285-87.

[³⁷] 'Percolatur enim virus,' etc.

[³⁸] 'Finally, in their wandering they made their dwelling in the familiar woodland grottoes of the nymphs, from which they marked the rills of water laving the dripping rocks, made slippery with their abundant flow,—dripping rocks, with drops oozing out above the green moss,—and gushing forth and forcing their way over the level plain.'—v. 944-52.

[³⁹] 'And in like manner we see shells paint the lap of the earth, where with its soft waves the sea beats on the porous sand of the winding shore.'—ii. 374-76.

[⁴⁰] 'When the dawn first sheds its new light over the earth, and birds of every kind, flying over the pathless woods through the delicate air, fill all the land with their clear notes, the suddenness with which the risen sun then clothes and steeps the world in his light, is clear and evident to all men.'—ii. 144-49.

[⁴¹] 'Just as when first the morning beams of the bright sun glow all golden through the grass gemmed with dew, and a mist arises from meres and flowing streams; and as even the earth itself is sometimes seen to steam; then all these vapours gather together above, and taking shape, as clouds on high, weave a canopy beneath the sky.'—v. 460-66.

[⁴²] Excursion, Book ii:—

'The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,' etc.

[⁴³] ii. 356.

[⁴⁴] ii. 317.

[⁴⁵] 'Besides when mighty legions fill the plains with their rapid movement, raising the pageantry of warfare, the splendour rises up to heaven, and all the land around is bright with the glitter of brass, and beneath from the mighty host of men the sound of their tramp arises, and the mountains, struck by their shouting, re-echo their voices to the stars of heaven, and the horsemen hurry to and fro on either flank, and suddenly charge across the plains, shaking them with their impetuous onset.'—ii. 323-30.

[⁴⁶] 'And yet there is some place in the lofty mountains whence they appear to be all still, and to rest as a bright gleam upon the plains.'—ii. 331-32.

[⁴⁷] 'When, too, the utmost force of a violent gale is sweeping the admiral of some fleet over the seas, along with his mighty legions and elephants, does he not court the protection of the Gods with vows, and in his terror pray for a calm to the storm, and for favouring gales?'—v. 1226-30.

[⁴⁸] 'Moreover, the babe, like a sailor cast ashore by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless, in need of every aid to life, when first nature has cast him forth by great throes from his mother's womb; and he fills the air with his piteous wail, as befits one whose doom it is to pass through so much misery in life.'—v. 222-27.

[⁴⁹] 'And now, shaking his head, the aged peasant laments, with a sigh, that the toil of his hands has often come to naught; and, as he compares the present with the past time, he extols the fortune of his father, and harps on this theme, how the good old race, full of piety, bore the burden of their life very easily within narrow bounds, when the portion of land for each man was far less than now.'—ii. 1164-70.

[⁵⁰] ii. 569-70.