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It seems clearly to be true that on the appearance in literature of the obscene, I use the word in a colourless and technical sense to indicate the usually unseen or obverse side of life, the side behind the scenes, the postscenia vitae of Lucretius, and not implying anything necessarily objectionable, it at once for most readers covers the whole field of vision.

Lucretius pictured a solid substance as a vast number of atoms squeezed closely together, a liquid as composed of not so many atoms less tightly packed, and a gas as a comparatively small number of atoms with considerable freedom of motion. Essentially the same picture is presented by the molecular theory of to-day.

What appeared of importance in philosophy such as Lucretius' representation of the Epicurean system in the poetical child-dress of the pre-Socratic philosophy, and the better writings of Cicero produced its effect and found its audience not through its philosophic contents, but in spite of such contents solely through its aesthetic form; the numerous translations of Epicurean writings and the Pythagorean works, such as Varro's great treatise on the Elements of Numbers and the still more copious one of Figulus concerning the Gods, had beyond doubt neither scientific nor formal value.

But, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always thought that, in poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the rest; and signally, Virgil in his Georgics, which I look upon as the most accomplished piece in poetry; and in comparison of which a man may easily discern that there are some places in his AEneids, to which the author would have given a little more of the file, had he had leisure: and the fifth book of his AEneids seems to me the most perfect.

If we cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely terrible, was he not his nephew, his cousin? These are questions which I do not pretend to answer. For the sake of human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the poet's fancy: like the Quintus of Anti Lucretius, "quo nomine," says Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige."

Take a taste of cordial," and Brotteaux drew from the pocket of his plum-coloured coat a flask of brandy, which lay there alongside his Lucretius. "Drink. And I will help you to get back to your house." The Père Longuemare pushed away the flask with his hand and tried to rise, but only to fall back again in his seat.

"You're the very man I want!" and without more ado they discovered the lines which he had been seeking all day; only they come not in Virgil, but in Lucretius. "Yes; that should make him sit up," said Bonamy, as Jacob stopped reading. Jacob was excited. It was the first time he had read his essay aloud. "Damned swine!" he said, rather too extravagantly; but the praise had gone to his head.

'With every language you learn, he had said, 'you will gain a nation. But there were many peoples in her father's kingdom, and when she was Queen they must all love her. True, she began with the tongue of the conquerors, not the conquered. So it happened that we first learned Lucretius, who reproduces in verse the doctrines of Epicurus.

It is true the Romans had no Aeschylus nor Sophocles, and but a secondhand Homer, though this last was not only the most finished but even the most original of imitators. But where was the Greek model of the noble poem of Lucretius? What, except the mere idea, did the Georgics borrow from Hesiod? and whoever thinks of comparing the two poems?

Although Lucretius may not have been assured of the moral value, he was so convinced of the seductive powers of poetry that he deliberately utilized them to make palatable the forbidding thoughts of his essay On the Nature of Things.