where the Brescian edition reads pollicere, instead of pellicere, which seems to be wrong. At length Baptista Pius, by aid of some emendations of his preceptor, Philippus Beroaldus, to which he had access, and by a laborious collation of MSS., succeeded in a great measure in restoring the depraved text of his author to its original purity. His edition, printed at Bologna in 1511, and the two Aldine editions, published in 1515, under the superintendence of Nevagero, who was a much better editor than Avancius, continued to be regarded as those of highest authority till 1563, when Lambinus printed at Paris an edition, prepared from the collation of five original MSS., and all the previous editions of any note, except the first and second, which seem to have been unknown to him. The text, as he boasts in the preface, was corrected in 800 different places, and was accompanied by a very ample commentary. Lambinus was succeeded by Gifanius, who was more a grammarian than an acute or tasteful critic. He amassed together, without discrimination, the notes and conjectures on Lucretius, of all the scholars of his own and the preceding age. Douza, in a sot of satirical verses, accused him of having appropriated and published in his edition, without acknowledgment, some writings of L. Fruterius, which had been committed to him on death-bed, in order to be printed. His chief merit lies in what relates to grammatical interpretation, and the explanation of ancient customs, and in a more ample collection of parallel passages than had hitherto been made. The editions of D. Pareus, (Frankfort, 1631,) and of Nardius, (Florence, 1647,) were not better than that of Gifanius; and the Delphin edition of Lucretius, by M. Le Fay, has long been known as the very worst of the class to which it belongs. “Notæ ejus,” says Fabricius, “plenæ sunt pudendis hallucinationibus.” Indeed, so much ashamed of it were his colleagues, and those who directed this great undertaking of the Delphin classics, that they attempted, though unsuccessfully, to suppress it.
Nearly a century and a half had elapsed, from the first publication of the edition of Lambinus, without a tolerable new impression of Lucretius being offered to the public, when Creech, better known as the translator of Lucretius, printed, in 1695, a Latin edition of the poet, to whose elucidation he had devoted his life. His study of the Epicurean system, and intimate acquaintance with the works of Gassendi, [pg A-34]fully qualified him for the philosophic illustration of his favourite author. On the whole, however, Havercamp’s edition, Leyden, 1725, is the best which has yet appeared of Lucretius. It was prepared from the collation of twenty-five MSS., as well as of the most ancient editions, and contained not only the whole annotations of Creech and Lambinus, but also some notes of Isaac Vossius, which had not previously been printed. The prefaces of the most important editions are prefixed; and the only fault which has been found with it is, that in his new readings the editor has sometimes injured the harmony of the versification. Lucretius certainly can not be considered as one of the classics who have been most fortunate in their editors and commentators. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he failed to obtain the care of the most pre-eminent critics of the age, and was thus left to the conjectures of second-rate scholars. It was his lot to be assigned to the most ignorant and barbarous of the Delphin editors; and his catastrophe has been completed by falling into the hands of Wakefield, whose edition is one of the most injudicious and tasteless that ever issued from the press. In preparing this work, which is dedicated to Mr Fox, the editor had the use of several MSS. in the University of Cambridge and the British Museum; and also some MS. notes of Bentley, found in a copy of a printed edition, which originally belonged to Dr Mead. In his preface, he expresses himself with much asperity against Mr Cumberland, for withholding from him some other MS. notes of Bentley, which were in his possession. It would have been fortunate for him if he had never seen any of Bentley’s annotations, since many of his worst readings are derived from that source. By an assiduous perusal of MSS. and the old editions, he has restored as much of the ancient Latin orthography, as renders the perusal of the poet irksome, though, by his own confession, he has not in this been uniform and consistent; and he has most laboriously amassed, particularly from Virgil, a multitude of supposed parallel passages, many of which have little resemblance to the lines with which they are compared. The long Latin poem, addressed to Fox, lamenting the horrors of war, does not compensate for the very brief and unsatisfactory notices, as to every thing that regards the life and writings of the poet, and the previous editions of his works. The commentary is dull, beyond the proverbial dulness of commentaries; and wherever there was a disputed or doubtful reading, that one is generally selected, which is most tame and unmeaning—most grating to the ear, and most foreign, both to the spirit of the poet, and of poetry in general. I shall just select one instance from each book, as an example of the manner in which the finest lines have been utterly destroyed by the alteration of a single word, or even letter, and I shall choose such passages as are familiar to every one. In his magnificent eulogy of Epicurus, in the first book, Lucretius, in admiration of the enlightened boldness of that philosopher, described him as one—
“Quem neque fama Deûm, nec fulmina, nec minitanti
Murmure compressit cœlum.”
The expression Fama Deûm implies, that Epicurus could not be restrained by that imposing character, with which deep-rooted prejudice, and the authority of fable, had invested the gods of Olympus—a thought highly poetical, and at the same time panegyrical of the mighty mind which had disregarded all this superstitious renown. But Wakefield, by the alteration of a single letter, strips the passage both of its sense and poetry—he reads,
“Quem neque fana Deûm, nec fulmina, nec minitanti,”
which imports that the determined mind of Epicurus could not be controlled by the temples of the gods, which, if it has any meaning at all, is one most frigid and puerile. This innovation, which the editor calls, in the note, egregiam emendationem, is not supported, as far as he informs us, by the authority of any ancient MS. or edition whatever, but it was so written on the margin of the copy of Lucretius, which had belonged to Bentley, where it was placed, as Wakefield admits, nude ascripta et indefensa. In the second book, Lucretius maintaining that absence of splendour is no diminution of happiness, says,
“Si non aurea sunt juvenum simulacra per ædes, &c.
* * * * *
Nec citharæ reboant laqueata aurataque tecta.”