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—