--into life th' insensate dung-hill rears

The race of worms:

Whether we believe they spring equivocally from organic molecules swarming throughout the putrid and fermenting substance of the dunghill; or that this latter affords nothing more than a proper nidus for the deposition of the fecundated eggs of flies and worms, which, in process of time, are hereby thrown into action, generate a new organization, and produce the new power of sensation. For no one, I apprehend, will contend that the eggs of the fly or worm, when first deposited, are possest of more sensation than the substance of the dung-hill itself; and thus, which theory soever we imbibe, the position of Lucretius follows equally as a truth,

That sentient things, things void of sense create,"

We now bid farewell to the second book, and direct the attention of the reader to the third, wherein Lucretius advances to a more detailed account of the result of atoms, under different states of combination and modification. We shall not follow Mr. Good through the philosophical theories of himself or his original; but refer to those passages which are more generally known, and more generally adinired. To any future translator of Lucretius, we would recommend a selection of such passages, which would please the most listless, and a publication of them separately from the mass of the works in rhyme.

This book opens with the well-known address to Epicurus:

O Tenebris tantis,' &c.

which is well rendered by the translator: but having no room at present for the quotation, we refer the reader to the work itself.

It would be difficult to devise that the following two lines,

And with mistrust, through every nerve alarm'd,
Joining the feast soine jovial kinsman forms,

were a translation of the bold verse,

Et consanguineâm mensas odere, timéntque."

L. iii. 73.

The following lines are worked up with much more spirit, if we exclude perhaps the last distich:

For as the boy, when midnight veils the skies,
Trembles and starte at all things-so, full oft,
E'en in the noon, men start at forms as void..
Of real danger as the phantoms false.

By darkness conjur'd, and the school-boy's dread.

A terror this the radiant darts of day

Can ne'er disperse. To truth's pure light alone,
And wisdom yielding, intellectual suns.'

Nam, velutei puerei trepidant, atque omnia cæcis
In tenebris metuunt; sic nos in luce timemus
Interdum, nihilo quæ sunt metuenda magis, quam
Quæ puerei in tenebris pavitant, finguntque futura.
Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque, necesse est,
Non radici solis, neque lucida tela diei,

Discutiant; sed Naturæ species, ratioque.

In the very marrow of a long quarto note upon oxygen, so "re-denominated,' Mr. Good' pretends not to affirm what was the immediate qurq understood by Lucretius as the fourth and most important substance in the composition of the animal spirit. To the oxygenous and the galvanic gas it has an equal and an astonishingly striking resemblance.' Then follows a table of the Epicurean and Lavoisierian analysis of respirable air. Although we trespass on the limits we have prescribe to ourselves, yet we think it fair to apothecaries and druggists, to let them also know where they may find information, for fear they should take the book altoge ther to be really a book of poetry.

276. B. iii. Atque anima est animæ proporro totius ipsa, rendered by Mr. Good:

And lives as soul of e'en the soul itself?

but much more poetically by Marchetti

-Sta uel corpo ascosa

Alma di tutta l'alma, e signioreggia
In tutto il corpo.

It has also been imitated, but very weakly, by Polignac, in his
Anti-Lucretius.

Mr. G. may call the following passage

Inversion;' we

confess we can neither elicit sense nor grammar from it:

"Thus varies man: though education trim
Add its bland polish, frequent still we trace
The first deep print of nature on the soul,
Nor aught can all-erase it: ever, whence,
This yields to sudden rage, to terror that,
While oft a third beyond all right betray's
A heart of mercy. Thus, in various modes,
The moral temper, and symphonious life

Must differ; thus from many a cause occult
The sage can ne'er resolve, nor human speech
Find phrase t' explain; so boundless, so complex,
The primal sources whence the variance flows !'

Our translator, apparently without any reason, thinks that Pope, in his Essay on Man, borrowed the four following lines,

from

The young disease, which must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength,
So cast, so mingled with his very frame

The mind's disease, its ruling passion came;"

utei cum corpore, et unâ

Cum membris, videatur in ipso sanguine crêsse."

Nothing could have been farther from Pope's mind than such prosaie stuff, which Mr. Good calls highly forcible and expressive."

724. Fly too, at death, the soul's pure seeds entire,

Or with the body are there still that rest?'

Wretched!

798. Trees not in ether, nor in ocean clouds, Nor in the fields can fishes e'er exist.'

Wretched!

We are inclined to pass a far different judgment on the following passage. The reader would certainly have been more soothed with rhyme; but the blank verse, although Occasionally cramped, is by no means deficient in merit:

“Nam jam non domus adcipiet te læta, neque uxor

"Optuma, nec dulces obcurrent oscula natei

Præripere, et tacità pectus dulcedine tangent.
"Non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque
"Præsidium; misero misere," aiunt, "omnia ademit
"Una dies infesta tibi tot præmia vitæ.”

Illud in his rebus non addunt; "Nec tibi earum
Jam desiderium rerum insidet insuper unâ."
Quod bene si videant animo, dictisque sequantur,
Dissolvant animi magno se angore, metuque.
Tu quidem, ut es, lecto sopitus, siç eris, ævi
Quod super est, cunctis privatus doloribus ægris?
At nos horrifico cinefactum de prope busto-
Insatiabiliter deflebimus; æternumque

Nulla dies nobis mærorem e pectore demèt.
Illud ab hoc igitur quærundum est, quid sit amarl
Tanto opere, ad somnum si res redit, atque quietem,
Quur quisquam æterno possit tabescere luctu?'

But thy dear home shall never greet thee more!
"No more the best of wives!-thy babes beloved
"Whose haste half-met thee, emulous to snatch
"The dulcet kiss that rous'd thy secret soul,,
"Again shall never hasten!-nor thine arm,

With deed heroic, guard thy country's weal!-
"O mournful, mournful fate!" thy friends exclaim,
"One envious hour of these invalued joys
"Robs thee for ever!"-But they add not here,
"It robs thee, too, of all desire of joy:"

A truth, once utter'd, that the mind would free
From every dread and trouble. "Thou art safe!
"The sleep of death protects thee! and secures
"From all th' unnumber'd woes of mortal life!
"While we, alas! the sacred urn around
"That holds thine ashes, shall insatiate weep,
"Nor time destroy th' eternal grief we feel !”
What then has death, if death be mere repose,
And quiet only in a peaceful grave,

What has it thus to mar this life of man?'

The notes on this passage are, as usual, ponderous; but by no means inelegant or uninstructive. However scrupulous we may be in allowing Mr. Good's attainments in the general knowledge he displays of various languages, ancient and modern, (and we are compelled to this state of scepticism by the plain circumstance of his not understanding his own,) yet we cannot deny that he has benefited by every good index to every good book; and produced sundry beautiful passages, as parallel, the reading of which amply compen sates for the labour of plodding through the text. However, in the passage above, we are open to the conviction that he can occasionally soar above mediocrity: and we were presently, in the notes, agreeably surprised by an old favourite passage from Beattie;

"Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more;
I mourn-but, ye woodlands! I mourn not for you ;
For morn is approaching your charms to restore,
Perfum'd with fresh fragrance, and glitt'ring with dew,
Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn,
Kind Nature the embryo blossom will save:
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn!
O when shail it dawn'ou the night of the grave!

This certainly is preferable to the verses of Lucretus:

'Nec minus ille diu jam non erit, ex hodierno Lumine vitai qui finem fecit, et ille,

Mensibus atque annis qui multis obcidit ante" and still more certainly to Mr. Good's translation;

We have now conducted our readers to the conclusion of the first volume: we have generally stated the principles on which we reviewed this work: we have impartially examined the beauties and defects, not merely of Mr. Good's transla tion, but of his theories, his taste, and his acquisitions. In the remaining three books we purpose to be very concise; since from the production of a thousand passages, we do not think we can rest on a firmer foundation, the telegraph which we have established to convey to any distance, opinions naturely formed by an unprejudiced pen; opinions, corroborated by re-tracing each line, and weighing every sentiment. A few more words on the fourth, fifib, and sixth books will close our critique.

The second volume opens with a most naughty engraying of young ladies half naked, of sundry leering satyrs, a great goat in the foreground, and a most umbrageous recess in the perspective. We humbly suppose that the picture alludes to the end of the fourth book, wherein Mr. Good has nearly rivalled Dryden and Creech in obscenity. We will quote only a short passage from an immense note, which contains Mr. G's apology for defiling his page with impuri ties, at which Tate would have blushed. After professing that we dare not insert any quotation from this most labour ed ribaldry, we leave to those who understand Lucretius, the pretext of the translator: nor do we doubt whether the judgment will finally condemn or acquit him.

Our poet is now proceeding to a task which requires no small degree of delicacy and dexterity in the management of it. He is about to develope, with all the ornaments of verse, the mischievous effects of illicit love, and the entire doctrine of animal generation, It is difficult to enter upon these subjects with so much medical and anatomical science as he has exhibited, without rendering the description of either, and particularly of the latter, improper for ge neral perusal. In plain and cautious prose, they are topics which ought not to be indiscriminately submitted to the eye of every one; put when delivered with the necessary decorations, and in the glow