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convey a fertility, accuracy and amenity in description, a sublimity of imagination and sentiment, which no criticism can do justice to, which elicit the involuntary exclamations' of rapture, and which can only be enjoyed by the enthusiasm of genius.

It must, however, be confessed, that the numerous pages devoted to the analysis of doctrines varied and profound in the extreme, will, in a poetic view, often press heavy on the patience of the reader; but, perhaps, these very passages, pure in their diction, and correctly expressed, though rigidly chastised in style, and free from all intrusive ornament, add, by the charm of contrast and variety, new graces to those parts on which embellishment has been bestowed with a more liberal hand. After luxuriously enjoying scenes lighted up by all the blaze and splendour of exalted fancy, the plain but not inelegant detail of philosophic disquisition, gives a necessary relief, and prepares the mind for the keener relish of succeeding beauties. When emerging from the intricate and eccentric mazes of elaborate disputation, what a pleasing horror thrills through the veins on the magnificent prosopo

péia of Nature, who, with a majesty which arrests the deepest attention, chides her ungrateful children, and upbraids their impious discontent; and with what exquisite delight we listen to the commencement and progress of the Arts, during which so many delicious scenes are unfolded, so many striking and impressive descriptions occur,

After this encomium on the poetry of Lucretius, it will probably be demanded, why his writings have not been more popular? why, to the generality of classical scholars, he is nearly unknown? why, whilst Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus, are perused with avidity, the animated effusions of this sublimest of roman bards, should lie neglected on the shelf? It may be answered, I think, that a fate so undeserved, has been occasioned by a misrepresentation of his morals, and by a puerile and injudicious dread of his philosophical tenets, The morality of Epicurus, so far from favouring the indulgence of sensuality, holds out every incentive to temperance. It is true,

* See the conclusion of the third book.
Book the fifth, towards the end,

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that he maintained all happiness to consist in pleasure, but, at the same time, taught, that genuine and durable pleasure could only arise from the cultivation of the mental powers, and the strictest attention to every social and domestic virtue. Diogenes and Galen represent this much-injured Philosopher as a person of consummate virtue, who despised the sordid cares and luxuries of life, and contemned every excess in eating, drinking, and apparel. Unfortunately for the pure fame of Epicurus, Horace, adopting the accusation which envy and calumny had conspired to broach, the very name of him who taught the purest morals, the most rigid chastity and sobriety, has - become an epithet to convey the idea of every sensual and voluptuous enjoyment.

Lucretius, in conformity to the moral precepts of his Master, uses every dissuasive against vice, every incentive towards virtue. Profusion, avarice, and ambition, cruelty, injustice, and revenge, the disordered passions of the mind, the pampered pleasures of the body, alike require and meet his severest reprobation. The sweetest passages in his poem are employed in the delineation of rural simplicity, and

domestic happiness, of innocent and contented poverty; and, in short, the moral purport of his system may be comprized in the two following lines of one of our most pathetic pocts:

Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.*

and which are, indeed, but a compressed translation of four beautiful ones in Lucretius:

Corpoream ad naturam pauca videmus Esse opus omninò, quæ demant quemque dolorem, Delicias quoque uti multas substernere possint, Gratius interdum neque Natura ipsa requirit.+

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That the philosophical and religious principles of our Epicurean Bard are not so defensible as his moral, will be readily admitted. In these days, when contrasted with sound philosophy and pure religion, many of his doctrines appear baseless and absurd, but assuredly not more so than the gross mythology of Homer, Virgil and Ovid, and why we still peruse these authors with rapture, careless of their impious opinions, yet refuse to taste the

*Goldsmith's Edwin and Angelina.

₫ Lib. ii. 1. 20.

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exquisite poetry of Lucretius because occasionally tinged with metaphysic error, is an inconsistency not easily accounted for. The idea of Epicurus, that it is the nature of the Gods, to enjoy an immortality in the bosom of perpetual peace, infinitely remote from all relation to this globe, free from care, from sorrow, and from pain, supremely happy in themselves, and neither rejoicing in the pleasures, nor concerned for the evils of humanity, though perfectly void of any rational foundation, yet possesses much moral charm, when compared with the popular religions of Greece and Rome; the felicity of their deities consisted in the vilest debauchery, nor was there a crime, however deep its dye, that had not been committed, and gloried in, by some one of their numerous objects of worship. The Immortals of Epicurus, on the other hand, are virtuous and innocent, but he has, unfortunately, exempted them from the toil of creation, and snatched the universe from their grasp. To these tenets of the Grecian, Lucretius has added the Infinite of Anaximander, and the Atomic theory of Democritus: doctrines such as these, which lead to the fortuitous formation of the world, are perfectly incapable of making

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