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