Cedet musa rudis ferocis Ennî,

Et docti furor arduus Lucretî.

And here, says our critic, he draws, perhaps, a fair comparison between Ennius and our own poet.' Now if Mr. G. had taken the trouble to read three of four more verses in Statius, he would have found that the comparison was between all these bards conjointly, and Lucan.

In p. xlii.Mr. Good takes the liberty of translating a long passage from Horace.' We consider it altogether as irrelevant to his subject, and a severe trial of the reader's patience. Part of it is by no means ill done. There are, however, faults' in the inbarmoniousness of style, which we rarely detect in the translation of Lucretius.

Græco fonte cadant, parcè detorta

'Or the fresh stores the Grecian fount supplies,
Bent but a little, frequent may suffice.'

It would be natural to suppose, from the following passage, that Horace had read the Loves of the Plants."

Ut sylvæ foliis pronos mutantur in annos;

Prima cadunt.'

As falls the foliage with the falling year,

Yet with the spring new foliage pants t' appear.'

This is at least translated, as Mr. G. would call it, with unsuccess; nor is he felicitous in the conveyance of ideas." We are told in page xlvii. that no scholar was ever better acquainted with Lucretius than Dr. Warton;' on which we shall make no comment: and that Lucretius" misjudging coevals refused a garland of unfading flowers to his labours, on their first appearance. After a slight mention of the Church' of Nuina, we cannot refrain from observing a curious note.

The destruction which has thus attended the works of Epicurus, compel us, in quoting from him, to have recourse to subsequent au→ thors, who, like Diocles and Diogenes Laertius, have preserved cer tain parts of his writings in their own compositions. These, indeed, are but few, yet sufficiently numerous to prove to us, that Lucretius has been a most faithful expositor of his entire system. It is said, that a complete and original treatise of Epicurus upon his own phi losophy has been lately discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum, and that we may soon expect a printed edition of it. This, as a curiosity, will be truly valuable, and I am sorry to say that I cannot avail myself of it at present. Yet after the very ample manner in which every part of it has been unfolded by Lucretius, it is rather to be welcomed as a curiosity alone, than as containing any new matter of essential importance.'

We have heard, and we believe, that Mr. Hayter, assist ed by some Neapolitan scholars, has decyphered at least a portion of the treatise of Epicurus Epl Qures, recovered at Pompeii, which formed the ground-work of the poem of Lucretius--but we can by no means agree with Mr. Good that this discovery will be a curiosity alone. On the contrary, with most classical readers it will supersede the perusal of Lucretius. For if we are inclined to investigate the barren wilderness of exploded philosophy, we we surely should prefer the primary deductibns of the founder of a sect, to the garbled translation of a disciple in a different age, and a different language; and that translation couched in poetry. This we conceive incontrovertible; and shall maintain it, while we continue to admire each beautiful Oasis, scattered in the interminable desert of the poet.

The following pages lead us into a disquisition on the doctrines of Epicurus. Mr. G. has evidently ransacked every index to every book which could throw light-(we beg pardon)— which could add weight to his own. If any reader can form a perspicacious idea of the Epicurean soul from the descrip tion of it in p. lxxxix. we wish him joy., Let it at present suffice to observe, that the mind was supposed to be the result of a combination of the most volatile and ethereal auras or gasses, diffused over the whole body, though traced in a more concentrate form in some organs than in others' it may moreover be questioned whether a frame so attenuate be capable either of organization or permanent endurance. The reasoning which follows is too abstruse (let us call it by no other word) for quotation; and we confess our spleen rises a little when we read, that the power that is capable of giving personality and consciousness to matter in its grosser and more palpable form, must unquestionably possess a similar power of bestowing the same qualities on Imatter in its most attenuate and evanescent. This opinion, however, I offer as a speculation to be pursued, rather than as a doctrine to be precipitately accredited!!!

Every praise of industry, we wish we could add of discrimination, is due to Mr. Good; but his hard words aré unable to stun our senses. In the ninety-eighth page, we thank our stars, that Lucretius thought proper to hang himself, for in that memorable leaf we find, that the warm and sym pathetic soul of Lucretius was unable to sustain so unexpect ed a shock,' fi. e. the exile of Memmius] and the endearing attentions of his Lucilia were lavished upon him in vain. It threw him into a fever, affected his intellects, and, in a paroxysm of delirium, hé destroyed himself!' and then, in an enormous note, he lived many years afterwards, and, like Torquato

Tasso, or our own lamented Cowper, evinced regular alternations of reason and derangement.' In regard to Cowper we are obliged to Mr. Good alone for the notice that he had regular alternations.' Mr. G. takes Donatus, whom Heyne has properly dubbed Pseudo-Donatus, in earnest. These are indisputably the

Trita solo.

Joca nullius ante

Has any gentleman, or any lady, heard what Scaliger said of Lucretius? It matters not what he said, but Mr. G. assures us it was denominated with a felicitous brevity of cha racter.' Has any gentleman or any lady heard, that the ' espousers of the doctrine, that the form, though not the matter, of the visible world has had a beginning, divaricate into a variety of ramifications, of which the chief are the Pythagoric, the Platonic or Academic, and the Atomic?' It is still but justice to observe, that, however quaintly, and even tastelessly, some of these sentences may be composed, yet the Epicurean philosophy has never perhaps experienced a more thorough investigation and explanation than it has from the pen of Mr. Good. Even his failings lean to virtue's side.' When we shape to ourselves a favourite hypothesis, we are unwittingly led to maintain it by arguments which may eventually be weak supporters of the cause, or may eventually make against the cause itself. Thus it is with the main argument in favour of the Epicureans :--the lives of their founder and his immediate disciples were avowedly lives of purity and abstinence, nay a supererogation of abstinence contradicted the exoteric tenets of their sect. We are willing then to allow that our vulgar conceptions of the debauchery of Epicurus, and his strict followers in spirit, are unfounded in fact--but we cannot deny that the dogmas of the sect tended to the direct and immediate encouragement of vice. These founders of an abominable doctrine forcibly put us in mind of the ungenerous equivoques of certain Latin poets; of the

-castum esse decet pium Poetam Ipsum: versiculos parum necesse est

of Catullus; of the

Laseiva est nobis pagina, vita proba est,

and the more impudent assumption of Ausonius in the Cento nuptialè.

Lucretius has made it his object to proclaim, loudly to

proclaim, that he believed neither in religion nor a futuré state į and, as if to prove this reliance on the non-existence of an hereafter by tying the noose to his neck, he has left little doubt to the examiner of his morals, and an example to Mr. Creech his translator, who also, to use a vulgar phrase, died in his shoes. We know the doctrines of the virtuous heathens ou the subject of suicide; the piis omnibus retinendus est animus in custodia corporis; nec injussu ejus a quo ille est vobis datus, et hominum vitâ migrandum est, ne munus humanum assignatum a Deo defugisse videamini, of Cicero, is deeply engraven on our memory. But we should not have taken. pains to prove Lucretins guilty of impiety (which we had heretofore thought was his principal boast) had it not been necessary to repel the vain deductions of his supporter. We shall hereafter have cause to shew that a passage or two in the translation has been garbled to assist this antenable.. hypothesis.

The notes,which constitute by far the greater part of these volumes, some of which are trivial, some containing valuable materials, but all of them unconscionably tedious, are chiefly directed to the illustration of historical, philosophi cal, and critical subjects. In the province of history we shall be compelled to notice some mistakes, where we are willing to allow that

opere in longo fas est obrepere somrum."

The philosophical language is turgid throughout, and abounds with new and wild theories, and the promise of future discoveries, Notwithstanding this parade, we have gleaned much valuable information from ges whose subject and appearance were at first unpromising. Mr. Good has evidently given a great deal of attention to chemical and metaphysical studies; and if he is not entirely right or consistent in every allusion he makes to the principles and deductions of Newton, Berkeley, and Reid, yet upon the whole we congratulate him upon the acquisitions of his labour; and shall be still more willing to congratulate him, when a few years have taught him to discard certain theoretical reveries, and condense and elucidate the deep reading which has evidently occupied a considerable portion of his time. If we feel inclined to pass a severe sentence, it must be on those parts of his work which relate to taste; for we have been generally disappointed in the critical notes, and the pretended similarities of thought produced between Lucretius and all other authors, ancient and modern. But even in this department Mr. Good has our thanks for his

ccasional happy illustrations, and our admiration for his knowledge of so many languages. For although, we are by no means inclined to consider every quotation as a proof that the quoter understands the language, yet we should be not only sorry to insinuate such an idea in regard to Mr. G. but to withhold our voice in the known applause which his rich and varied acquisitions have already meritoriously acquired for him.

Having, in due fairness, said thus much, we cannot but object to several quarto pages of notes on the word 'Venus;' and sundry quotations from Camoens, the Henriade, &c. to prove what?-Nothing. It is an old dispute among the commentators, how Lucretius, an Epicurean, could, in conscience, address a Deity? This we leave them to fight out among themselves. But we are surprised that Mr. Good should not have read or considered the opinions of one Nardius, a Florentine annotator, who in this passage, after summing up very impartially all that had been said on every side; gravely tells us that Venus is here put for 'potherbs.' We find in this comprehensive note, that Gesner invokes an impersonification of enthusiasm.' In the second note appear quotations from Spenser, Sir W. Jones, Metastasio, and Orpheus. In the latter quotation we are somewhat surprized that he has not remedied the evident gloss of εν ποντῳ τε βαθῳ τε.

But it is high time to enter on the poetry; and that Mr. Good may have the 'vantage ground, as the beginning of a work of this nature is generally more laboured than the conclusion, we will first present a passage in Latin and English, and our readers will allow that the translation gives a fair reflection to the original.

• Quæ quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas,
Nec sine te quidquam dias în luminis oras

Exoritur, neque sit lætum neque amabile quidquam ;-
Te sociam studeo scribundis versibus esse,

Quos ego de rerum natura pangere conor

Memmiadæ nostro; quem tu Dea, tempore in omni
Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus:

Quo magis æternum da dictis, Diva, leporem.
Ecfice, ut interea fera mœnera militiaï,
Per maria ac terras omneis, sopita, quiescant.
Nam tu sola potes tranquillâ pace juvare
Mortaleis: quoniam belli fera menera Mavors
Armipotens regit, in gremium qui sæpetuum se
Rejicit, æterno devictus voluere amoris:
Atque ita, suspiciens tereti cervice repostâ,
Pascit amor avidos, inhians in te, Dea, visus:

CRIT. REV. Vol. 7. February, 1906.

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