have a clear ring of the older poet. The few allusions to Roman history in the poem, as, for instance, the line—
Scipiadas, belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror,—
the specification at iii. 833 of the second Punic War as a momentous crisis in human affairs,—the description at v. 1226 of a great naval disaster, such as happened in the first Punic War,—the introduction there of elephants into the picture of the pomp and circumstance of war,—suggest the inference that, just as events and personages of the earlier history of England live in the imaginations of many English readers from their representation in the historical plays of Shakspeare, so the past history of his country lived for Lucretius in the representation of Ennius. But of the national pride by which the older poet was animated, the work of Lucretius bears only scanty traces. The feeling which moved him to identify the puissant energy pervading the universe with 'the mother of the Aeneadae,' and the motive of his prayer for peace addressed to that Power,—
Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo,—
seem indeed to spring from sources of patriotic affection, perhaps all the deeper because not too loudly proclaimed. But in the body of the poem his illustrations are taken as frequently from Greek as from Roman story, from the strangeness of foreign lands as from the beauty of Italian scenes. The Georgics of Virgil, in the whole conception of Nature as a living power, and in many special features, owe much to the imaginative thought of Lucretius; but nothing can be more unlike the spirit of the older poet than the episodes in which Virgil pours forth all his Roman feeling and his love of Italy. The height from which Lucretius contemplates all human history, as 'a procession of the nations handing on the torch of life from one to another,' is wide apart from that from which Virgil beholds all the nations of the world doing homage to the majesty of Rome. The poem of Lucretius breathes the spirit of a man, apparently indifferent to the ordinary sources of pleasure and of pride among his countrymen. Living in an era, the most momentous in its action on the future history of the world, he was only repelled by its turbulent activity. The contemplation of the infinite and eternal mass and order of Nature made the issues of that age and the imperial greatness of his country appear to him as transient as the events of the old Trojan and Theban wars. To him, as to the modern poet, whose imagination most nearly resembles his, the thought of more enduring things had
'Power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence.'
But while by his silence on the subject of national glory and his ardent speculative enthusiasm Lucretius seems to be more of a Greek than of a Roman, yet no Roman writer possessed in larger measure the moral temper of the great Republic. He is a truer type of the strong character and commanding genius of his country than even Virgil or Horace. He has the Roman conquering energy, the Roman reverence for the majesty of law, the Roman gift for introducing order into a confused world, the Roman power of impressing his authority on the minds of men. In his fortitude, his superiority to human weakness, his seriousness of spirit, his dignity of bearing, he seems to embody the great Roman qualities 'constantia' and 'gravitas.' If in the force and sincerity of his own nature he reminds us of the earliest Roman writer of genius, in these last qualities, the acquired and inherited virtues of his race, he reminds us of the last representative writer, whose tone is worthy of the 'Senatus populusque Romanus.' But Lucretius is much more than a type of the strong Roman qualities. He combines a poetic freshness of feeling, a love of simple living, an independence of the world, with a tenderness and breadth of sympathy, and a power of sounding into the depths of human sorrow, such as only a very few among the ancients—Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,—and not many among the poets or thinkers of the modern world have displayed. In no quality does he rise further above the standard of his age than in his absolute sincerity and his unswerving devotion to truth[375]. He combines in himself some of the rarest elements in the Greek and the Roman temperament,—the Greek ardour of speculation, the Roman's firm hold of reality. A poet of the age of Julius Cæsar, he is animated by the spirit of an early Greek enquirer. He unites the speculative passion of the dawn of ancient science with the minute observation of its meridian; and he applies the imaginative conceptions formed in the first application of abstract thought to the universe to interpret the living beauty of the world.
[341] Mr. Wallace in his very interesting account of 'Epicureanism,' just published, writes, in reference to the way in which Epicurus himself was regarded in a later age, 'And the maladies of Epicurus are treated as an anticipatory judgment of Heaven upon him for his alleged impieties.'—Epicureanism, p. 46.