[368] 'But nought greater than this man does it seem to have possessed, nor aught more holy, more wonderful, or more dear. Yea, too, strains of divine genius proclaim aloud and make known his great discoveries, so that he seems scarcely to be of mortal race.'—i. 729-33.
[369] 'When they have gazed for a few years of a life that is indeed no life speedily fulfilling their doom, they vanish away like a smoke, convinced of that only which each hath met in his own experience, as they were buffeted about to and fro. Vainly doth each boast to have discovered the whole. The eye cannot behold it, nor the ear hear it, nor the mind of man comprehend it.'
[370] 'With death there is ever blending the wail of infants newly born into the light. And no night hath ever followed day, no morning dawned on night, but hath heard the mingled sounds of feeble infant wailings and of lamentations that follow the dead and the black funeral train.'—ii. 576-80.
[371] i. 943-50.
[372] iii. 1036-38.
[373] Cf. notes ii. of Mr. Munro's edition.
[374] i. 117, etc.
[375] Mr. Froude, in his 'Julius Cæsar,' says, 'The age was saturated with cant.' Perhaps, to that condition of his age we, in part, owe one of the sincerest protests against cant, and unreality of every kind, ever written. Both speculatively and practically Cicero appears at a great disadvantage when compared with Lucretius in these respects.