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To the ancient world, man in his march across the deserts of Time had left felicity and the golden age far beyond him, and Rousseau's vision of Humanity as starting upon a wrong track, and drifting ever farther from the path of its peace, had charmed the melancholy or the despair of Virgil and his great master in verse and speculation, Titus Lucretius.
In Aristophanes, in Theocritus, in Lucretius, Virgil, Martial, and in the Anthology, we may gather up a host of poetical allusions to the natural history thus simply epitomized. In this fascinating pursuit Gilbert White excelled, and John Ray and many another the whole brotherhood of simple naturalists.
Once more and for the last time the poem of Lucretius is resonant with the whole poetic pride and the whole poetic earnestness of the sixth century, in which, amidst the images of the formidable Carthaginian and the glorious Scipiad, the imagination of the poet is more at home than in his own degenerate age.
Lucretius, for instance, did not deny the existence of the gods; he merely asserted that they no longer concerned themselves with human affairs, which he was heartily glad of, as they were mostly bad characters. He observed "the reign of law" as clearly as our modern scientists, and relegated the deities to their Olympian repose, so beautifully versed by Tennyson.
Every wise man will admit that the possibilities of nature are infinite, and include centaurs; but he will not the less feel it his duty to hold fast, for the present, by the dictum of Lucretius, "Nam certe ex vivo Centauri non fit imago," and to cast the entire burthen of proof, that centaurs exist, on the shoulders of those who ask him to believe the statement.
Cicero, Manilius, Lucretius, Seneca, Aristides, Appuleius, and the New Platonists of Alexandria and Athens. By CHARLES JOHN SHEBBEARE, B.A., Christ Church, Oxford. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. Crown 8vo. 6s. each. Vol I. The time seems to have arrived for a new edition of Gibbon's great work furnished with such notes and appendices as may bring it up to the standard of recent historical research.
Alsted's Encyclopædia is of course written in Latin, and he prefixes to it by way of motto the celebrated lines in which Lucretius declares that nothing is sweeter than to dwell apart in the serene temples of the wise.
The Roman poet Lucretius in an oft-quoted passage describes the satisfaction that naturally fills the mind when from some safe vantage-ground one looks forth on travellers tossed about on the stormy deep.
DR. JOHN MASON GOOD, "Life of Lucretius," prefixed to his poetical version of "The Nature of Things," I. XXXVIII.
"Ah," he answered, "you must not hate Lucretius. I have had more pleasant hours with him than with any living person." He rose and came forward to examine her copy of Andrea del Sarto's portrait. "Yours is better than mine," he said, critically; "in fact, mine is a failure. I think I shall only get a small price for mine; indeed, I doubt whether I shall get sufficient to pay for my funeral."
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