Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/31

21 II. On Lucretius. It would hardly perhaps do violence to the taste of the present age to call Lucretius the greatest of extant Latin poets. Like the rest of his countrymen, he is not a great creative genius; we find in him many echoes even of the scanty frag- ments which we yet possess of the old tragic and epic poets Attius, Pacuvius and, above all, Ennius. He owes still more to the Greeks, especially Empedocles, so far as regards the form of his poem. Many instances have been pointed out in which Lucretius has translated or imitated this philosopher ; and doubt- less these would be found to be many times more numerous, if the entire works of Empedocles had survived. For among the few new fragments contained in the recently published treatise of Hippolytus there is one (p. 254 ed. Ox.) which has clearly served as the model to a passage in Lucretius. Though it is corrupt, we see from it that Empedocles invokes the muse (Greek characters), and uses these words, (Greek characters). This passage must have occurred in the latter part of his poem on Nature, where he treated of the gods ; and Lucretius in a cor- responding portion of his work (vi. 92), before discoursing of heavenly objects, employs a similar metaphor and form of ad- dress : Tu mihi supremae praescripta ad Candida calcis Currenti spatium praemonstra, callida musa, Calliope, &c. From the splendid eulogies, which in his first book he passes on Ennius and Empedocles, we may feel sure that he did not wish to con- ceal his obligations, but, like other Latin poets, thought he had a right to make what use he pleased of his Greek and Roman predecessors. And he has merits of his own unsurpassed in the whole compass of Latin poetry. It has often struck me that his genius is akin to that of Milton. He displays a wonderful depth and fervour of thought, expressed in language of singular force and beauty; an admirable faculty of clear and vigorous and well-sustained philosophical reasoning ; and a style equal in its purity and correctness to that of Terence, Caesar or Cicero, and superior to that of any writer of the* Augustan age. Al-