But Wakefield, instead of tecta, reads templa, and justifies his reading, not on the authority of any ancient MSS., but by showing that templa is used for tecta by some authors, and applied to private dwellings! The third book commences very spiritedly with an eulogy of Epicurus:
“E tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen
Qui primus potuisti, illustrans commoda vitæ,
Te sequor, O Graiæ gentis decus!”
This sudden and beautiful apostrophe is weakened and destroyed by a change to
“O tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen.”
The lines are rendered worse by the interjection being thus twice repeated in the course of three verses. In the fourth book, Lucretius, alluding to the merits of his own work, says,
“Deinde, quod obscurâ de re tam lucida pango
Carmina, Musæo contingens cuncta lepore.”
Here the word pango presents us with the image of the poet at his lyre, pouring forth his mellifluous verses, and it has besides, in its sound, something of the twang of a musical instrument. Wakefield, however, has changed the word into pando, which reminds us only of transcription and publication. Lucretius, in book fifth, assigns as the reason why mankind supposed that the abode of the gods was in heaven,