a celebrated Roman poet and philosopher. Of the life of Titus Lucretius Carus (as his full name is written) very little is known. As he styles the Latin language his mother tongue, we infer that he was a Roman, or at least an Italian. According to the Eusebian chronicle (almost the sole authority on the subject), he was born in 95 B.C., and died by his own hand in 52 B.C.; and his poem De Rerum Natura, which had been written during the intervals of a frenzy caused by a love-potion, was afterwards edited by Cicero. The account of his madness is rendered doubtful by the internal evidence of his work. In no poem do we see more distinct traces of the various human faculties acting harmoniously under the sovereignty of reason. There is no distinct evidence of Cicero's having edited the poem of Lucretius. The story about his suicide is much more probable. His opinions touching the mortality of the soul, his fearless Roman spirit, and his stern decision of character, might possibly enough urge him to adopt this mode of ridding himself of any dire calamity.

His poem De Rerum Natura consists of six books, and is dedicated to his friend, C. Memmius Gemellus, who was praetor in 58 B.C. Lucretius evidently received the first obscure hints of his system from Empedocles; but raised it into symmetry and consistence by aid of the atomic philosophy of Epicurus. Starting from the axiom that nothing can be produced from nothing, and holding that the laws of nature, and not the gods, are the creative principles of the universe, he attempts to prove that all things are formed by the combinations of indivisible and eternal atoms. After describing the different spontaneous motions by which these primary particles come to be combined into sensible qualities, Lucretius passes on in the third book to trace the soul of man to the same origin. From this conclusion, he advances easily to the doctrine that the soul is material, and must therefore perish when life, the band that unites it with the body, is snapt asunder. In the fourth book he expounds his theory of the senses, of sleep, and of dreams. The fifth book is occupied with disquisitions on the origin of the world, on the movements of the stars, on the laws that regulate the seasons, and the interchange of day and night, and on the gradual development of civilization. In the sixth book he endeavours to account for physical phenomena, such as thunder, rain, earthquakes, volcanoes, and pestilences. The abruptness of the conclusion, a feature not seen in the rest of the work, renders it very probable that Lucretius left his poem unfinished.

As the body of the system is Epicurean, so also is the Lucullus, spirit which animates it. A philosophy that recognises natural laws as the source of creation, is of necessity pervaded by a deep reverence for nature. Standing, therefore, in the same relations to Lucretius as the muse and the gods did to Homer and the other ancient poets, nature is invoked at the very commencement of the poem, and the manifold manifestations of her power furnish the themes of the poet's noblest strains. Her ever-varying moods, too mysterious to require poetical idealizing, are depicted with minute faithfulness, and are lingered over with devotion. The poet beholds her sunshine, beauty, and beneficence, with gladness; her tempests, famines, earthquakes, and pestilences, with sublime wonder. Mankind, as the noblest part of nature, attract the special interest of Lucretius. Their joys and sorrows are the themes of some of the most exquisite episodes in his poem; and the professed object of his philosophy is to release them from superstitious fears. Accordingly, he tells them that there is no after-time of retribution; and that the gods, whose anger they fear, dwell too far above this sphere, and are too listlessly harsh to regard the sins and exact the services of the human race. He recommends, as the aim of life, that quiet of the soul which is attained by the suppression of all fears and vicious passions. This lesson is enforced by the very shortness of the time in which the end must be gained.

In Lucretius we see the harmonious working of the two great powers of imagination and reason—the former describing conclusions while yet at a distance, and the latter searching for a path by which they may safely be reached. Often misled by the careless induction peculiar to antiquity, his reasonings are nevertheless founded on a minute and extensive observation. The most striking feature, however, in the entire poem, is the vigour with which the closest arguments and the subtlest abstractions find poetical expression in a language formerly rude and undeveloped. Scarcely less wonderful is the full melody of his hexameters. The fervid genius of Lucretius acted with a reining vehemence upon the rugged ore of his native tongue, purged it of its dross, and fused it into the golden speech of poetry. Many of his epithets are terse and felicitous, and his images possess that suggestive power which it is the sole prerogative of poetie genius to originate. He possesses, also, the happy art of relieving the sterner and darker pictures of his poem by sweet glimpses of sea-shore and rural solitude.

The best editions of Lucretius are those of Lambinus, Paris, 1564-70; Creech, Oxford, 1695; Wakefield, London, 1796-97; Eichstedt, Leipzig, 1801; and Forbiger, Leipzig, 1828. The latest English translation is that of the Rev. John Selby Watson, published along with a metrical version by Mason Good, London, 1852. See "Lucretius and the Poetic Characteristics of his Age," by W. Y. Sellar, in Oxford Essays, London, 1855.