the other taken from the pomp of human affairs, and the gay pageantry of armies—
The truth and fulness of life in this passage are immediately perceived, but the element of sublimity is added by the thought in the two lines with which the passage concludes, which reduces the whole of this moving and sounding pageant to stillness and silence—
As Lucretius was the first poet who revealed the majesty and wonder of the Natural world, so he restored the sense of awe and mystery, felt by the earlier Greek poets, to the contemplation of human life. In dealing with the problem of human destiny, he has sounded deeper than any of the other ancient poets of Italy: but others have sympathised with a greater variety of the moods of life, and have allowed its lights and shadows to play more easily over their poetry. The thought both of the dignity and the littleness of our mortal state is ever present to the mind of Lucretius. His imagination is involuntarily moved by the pomp and grandeur of affairs, while his strong sense of reality keeps ever before him the conviction of the vanity of outward state, the weariness of luxurious living, and the miseries of ambition. Thus his imaginative recognition of the pomp and circumstance of war brings out by the force of contrast his deeper conviction of the littleness and impotence of man in the presence of the great forces of Nature—
If his reason acknowledges only inward strength as the attribute of human dignity, yet his imagination feels the outward spell that swayed the Roman genius, through the symbols of power and authority, through great spectacles, and in impressive ceremonials.
But it is with more heart-felt sympathy, and with not less imaginative emotion, that he recognises the deep wonder and the infinite pathos of human life. There is perhaps no passage in any poet which reveals more truthfully that union of feelings in meditating on the strangeness and sadness of our mortal destiny than the well-known passage describing the birth of every infant into the world—
With what truth and naiveté is the complaint of the husbandman over his ineffectual labour and scanty returns echoed!—
His feeling is profoundly solemn, as well as infinitely tender. Above all the tumult of life, he hears incessantly the funeral dirge over some one departed, and the infant wail of a new-comer into the troubles of the world,
His tone can, indeed, be stern and indignant, as well as tender and melancholy: it is never morbid or effeminate. His tenderness is that of a thoroughly masculine nature. Some signs of the same mood may be discovered in the fragments of Ennius; but the feeling of Lucretius springs from a more sympathetic heart and a more contemplative imagination.
His imagination, which depicts so forcibly the intimations of experience, is able to bear him beyond the known and familiar regions of life. As it enables him to pass—
and to behold the dawn of creation, and even the blank desolation which will follow on the overthrow of our system, so it has enabled him to realise with vivid feeling the primeval condition of man upon the world. Yet even in these daring enterprises of his fancy he adheres strictly to the conclusions of his philosophical system, and shows that sincerity and truthful adherence to fact are as inseparable from the operations of his creative faculty as of his understanding and moral nature.
His excellencies are so different from those of Virgil that the question need not be entertained, whether the rank of the greatest of Roman poets is or is not to be awarded to him. If each nation must be considered the best judge of its own poets, it will be admitted that Lucretius would have found few Roman voices to support his claim to the first or even the second place. The strongest support which he could have received would have been Virgil's willing acknowledgment of the powerful spell which the genius of his predecessor had exercised over him. Both the artistic defects and the profound feeling and imaginative originality of his work were calculated to alienate both popular favour and critical opinion in the Rome of the Empire. The poem has a much deeper significance for modern than it had for ancient times. Lucretius stands alone as the great contemplative poet of antiquity. He has proclaimed with more power than any other the majesty of Nature's laws, and has interpreted with a truer and deeper insight the meaning of her manifold life. Few, if any among his countrymen, felt so strongly the mystery of man's being, or have indicated so passionate a sympathy with the real sorrows of life, and so ardent a desire to raise man to his proper dignity, and to support him in bearing his inevitable burden. If he has, in large measure, the antique simplicity and grandeur of character, he has much also in common with the spirit and genius of modern times. He contemplates human life with a profound feeling, like that of Pascal, and with a speculative elevation like that of Spinoza. The loftier tones of his poetry and the sustained effort of mind which bears him through his long argument remind us of Milton. His sympathy with Nature, at once fresh and large, is more in harmony with the feeling of the great poets of the present century than with the general sentiment of ancient poetry. In the union of poetical feeling with scientific passion he has anticipated the most elevated mode of the study of Nature, of which the world has as yet seen only a few great examples. His powers of observation, thought, feeling, and imagination, are characterised by a remarkable vitality and sincerity. His strong intellectual and poetical faculty is united with some of the rarest moral qualities,—fortitude, seriousness of spirit, love of truth, manly tenderness of heart. And if it seems that his great powers of heart, understanding, and genius led him to accept and to teach a philosophy, paralysing to the highest human hope and energy, it is to be remembered that he lived at a time when the truest minds may well have despaired of the Divine government of the world, and must have honestly felt that it was well to be rid, at any cost, of the burden of Pagan superstition.
[497] i. 943-45.
[498] 'And they placed the dwelling-places and mansions of the gods in the heavens, because it is through the heavens that the night and the moon are seen to sweep—the moon, the day, and night, and the stern constellations of night, the torches of heaven wandering through the night, and flying meteors, the clouds, the sun, the rains, the snow, the winds, lightning, hail, the rapid rattle, the threatening peals and murmurs of the thunder.'—v. 1188-93.
[499] Cf. Munro, Introduction, ii. pp. 311, etc.
[500] Cf.
[501] i. 2-4.
[502] i. 17-18.
[503] i. 256.
[504] ii. 317-19.
[505] ii. 362-63.
[506] i. 718-19.
[507] iv. 460-61.
[508] iv. 136-38.
[509] v. 255-56.
[510] ii. 624-25.
[511] ii. 639.
[512] vi. 1179.
[513] iii. 896.
[514] iii. 28-30.
[515] v. 745.
[516] i. 68-9.
[517] v. 1193.
[518] vi. 254.
[519] v. 96.
[520] v. 340.
[521] iii. 842.
[522] i. 926-27.
[523] vi. 34.
[524] ii. 10.
[525] Prevost Paradol, Nouveaux Essais de Politique et de Littérature.
[526] 'But as when there have been at the same time many and mighty shipwrecks, the mighty sea is wont to drive in all directions the rowers' benches, rudders, sailyards, prows, masts, and floating oars, so that along all the coasts of land there may be seen the tossing flag-posts of ships, to warn mortals that they shun the wiles, and force, and craft of the faithless sea, nor ever trust the treacherous alluring smile of the calm ocean; so if once you will suppose any finite number of elements, you will find that the many surging forces of matter must disperse and drive them apart through all time, so that they never can meet and gather into union, nor stay in union and wax in increase.'—ii. 552-64.
[527] iv. 587.
[528] i. 64-5.
[529] 'Spring advances and Venus, and before them goes the harbinger of Spring, the winged Zephyr; and near their path, Mother Flora, scattering her treasures before her, fills all the way with glorious colours and fragrance.'—v. 737-40.
[530] Cp. 'Keats has, above all, a sense of what is pleasurable and open in the life of Nature; for him she is the Alma Parens: his expression has, therefore, more than Guérin's, something genial, outward, and sensuous. Guérin has above all a sense of what there is adorable and secret in the life of Nature; for him she is the Magna Parens; his expression has, therefore, more than Keats', something mystic, inward, and profound.' Essays in Criticism, by M. Arnold, p. 130. Third Edition.
[531] v. 824.
[532] 'Nor can the strong bridges endure the sudden force of the rushing water: in such wise, swollen by heavy rain, the stream with mighty force dashes upon the piers.'—i. 285-87.
[533] 'Percolatur enim virus,' etc.
[534] 'Finally, in their wandering they made their dwelling in the familiar woodland grottoes of the nymphs, from which they marked the rills of water laving the dripping rocks, made slippery with their abundant flow,—dripping rocks, with drops oozing out above the green moss,—and gushing forth and forcing their way over the level plain.'—v. 944-52.
[535] 'And in like manner we see shells paint the lap of the earth, where with its soft waves the sea beats on the porous sand of the winding shore.'—ii. 374-76.
[536] 'When the dawn first sheds its new light over the earth, and birds of every kind, flying over the pathless woods through the delicate air, fill all the land with their clear notes, the suddenness with which the risen sun then clothes and steeps the world in his light, is clear and evident to all men.'—ii. 144-49.
[537] 'Just as when first the morning beams of the bright sun glow all golden through the grass gemmed with dew, and a mist arises from meres and flowing streams; and as even the earth itself is sometimes seen to steam; then all these vapours gather together above, and taking shape, as clouds on high, weave a canopy beneath the sky.'—v. 460-66.
[538] Excursion, Book ii:—
[539] ii. 356.
[540] ii. 317.
[541] 'Besides when mighty legions fill the plains with their rapid movement, raising the pageantry of warfare, the splendour rises up to heaven, and all the land around is bright with the glitter of brass, and beneath from the mighty host of men the sound of their tramp arises, and the mountains, struck by their shouting, re-echo their voices to the stars of heaven, and the horsemen hurry to and fro on either flank, and suddenly charge across the plains, shaking them with their impetuous onset.'—ii. 323-30.
[542] 'And yet there is some place in the lofty mountains whence they appear to be all still, and to rest as a bright gleam upon the plains.'—ii. 331-32.
[543] 'When, too, the utmost force of a violent gale is sweeping the admiral of some fleet over the seas, along with his mighty legions and elephants, does he not court the protection of the Gods with vows, and in his terror pray for a calm to the storm, and for favouring gales?'—v. 1226-30.
[544] 'Moreover, the babe, like a sailor cast ashore by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless, in need of every aid to life, when first nature has cast him forth by great throes from his mother's womb; and he fills the air with his piteous wail, as befits one whose doom it is to pass through so much misery in life.'—v. 222-27.
[545] 'And now, shaking his head, the aged peasant laments, with a sigh, that the toil of his hands has often come to naught; and, as he compares the present with the past time, he extols the fortune of his father, and harps on this theme, how the good old race, full of piety, bore the burden of their life very easily within narrow bounds, when the portion of land for each man was far less than now.'—ii. 1164-70.
[546] ii. 569-70.