With well-known voice she moans, and oft re-seeks,
Urg'd by a mother's love, th' accustom'd stall.
Nor shade for her, nor dew-distended grass,
Nor stream soft-gliding down its banks abrupt,
Yield aught of solace, or the carking care
Avert that preys within: nor the gay young
Of others soothe her o'er the joyous green.
So deep she longs, so lingers for her own.

Descriptions of this kind impress us with a very favourable idea of the tenderness and humanity of the poet. What can more deliciously paint the ardours of domestic affection. than the ensuing lines?

At jam non domus accipiet te læta ; neque uxor Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Præripere, et tacita pectus duicedine tangent.

Lib. iii. 907.

They have not escaped the pathetic Virgil:

Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati.

Geo. ii. 523.

and the elegiac Muse of Gray has imbibed the very spirit of the Roman:

Ι

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care :
No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Thomson has thus depicted circumstances of a congenial nature:

In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing and the vestment warm:
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!

Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home.

VOL. I.

D

Winter, 311.

NUMBER II.

Lucretius

Doctrina solers idem, clarusque Poeta,

Antiqui vatis reparat solennia jura.

Huic, simul ac rerum Primordia pandere tentat,
Naturamque Deûm, flammantia moenia mundi
Extra et procedit, Musarum captus amore,
Ipsa Venus, votis blanda, arridere videtur,
Nympharumque Chorus; tantus lepor insinuat se
Verbis, tanta viri est celebris vis insita menti.

DYER.

As a considerable portion of the poem De Rerum Natura is occupied in the detail of argument, and the display of various and contending doctrines, it may be deemed necessary to adduce a specimen or two of the pure didactic style and manner of Lucretius, and of the success which has attended his Translator in this, perhaps his most difficult and laborious

department.* Independent of perspicuity of arrangement and harmony of verse, Lucretius has rendered the most abstruse passages in his work pleasing, from the peculiar propriety of his expression, and the beauty of his metaphors; these excellencies have, in my opinion, been transferred with singular felicity to the english version, and the extracts I have now to bring forward, will probably induce the reader to concur in the encomium.

Some philosophers of the present day have, with no little extravagance, inferred the perfectibility of human nature; they have even gone so far as to assert that the physical consequences of our existence, sleep and death, are no necessary result, but the effects of our own ignorance, and of acquired imbecility; that as reason and knowledge advance, the agency of volition will be unlimited, and that ultimately the corporeal functions will be rendered completely subservient to the powers of intellect.

*The Monthly Reviewer, to whom I am indebted for an elaborate and candid critique on the first edition of the Literary Hours, being of opinion that a specimen of the translation should have been drawn from the more abstruse parts of Lucretius, I have in this paper carried his suggestion into exęcution.