“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