MR. TENNYSON'S Lucretius has probably had a great many readers who did not know much about Lucretius before, and who have never read a line of the De Rerum Natura; nor is it necessary to have done so in order to enjoy Mr. Tennyson's poem. But apart from its artistic qualities, the poem has another which, in a work of art, is accidental,its historical truth; that is, the Lucretius whom it describes has a true resemblance to the real Lucretius, as revealed in his own work; the picture is not merely a picture, but happens to be a portrait also. Perhaps it will not be without use in helping us to understand this portrait more thoroughly, if we can discover some of the leading characteristics, the main currents of thought and feeling, which the De Rerum Natura shews in the historical Lucretius; and which are so reproduced in Mr. Tennyson's poem as to give this impression of its being historically true. The character of Lucretius is not one which can be understood without some little trouble; his life was coloured by a creed which, as he held it, can never be popular; and because he lived this creed, and did not talk it merely, he has always been lonely; a stranger, almost, in the Roman. world into which he was born too late; and, for after times, one whose voice, No. 104.-VOL. XVIII.

when first heard, seems far off and strange; until, as the monotone grows upon the ear, it is no longer a dirge chanted to the winds, but the earnest pleading with human fears and hopes of a passionate human heart. It is difficult to follow the workings of a nature so much out of the range of common sympathy without some previous knowledge of its laws; without at least some general perception of the master-lines in which its forces move, some clue to the secret of the inner life from which they spring. In this large sense, the best commentary on Mr. Tennyson's Lucretius is the De Rerum Natura itself. There is, of course, a more special sense in which its aid might be used; the English poem abounds with phrases, imagery, allusions, which might be illustrated from the Latin; and, for any one who knows the Latin poem already, there is a certain interest in recognising them. For instance, when Lucretius is speaking of the hateful fancies that beset him, and asks,

How should the mind, except it loved them, clasp

These idols to herself? Or do they fly,
Now thinner and now thicker, like the flakes
In a fall of snow ...?

this means more, if it is remembered that such was in fact the regular

Н

Epicurean doctrine, which Lucretius illustrated with SO much poetical variety, that from all surfaces are for ever streaming images, 'idols,' thin as films, fine as the gossamer coats which the cicade puts off in summer,' or 'the vesture which the serpent slips among the thorns;' and that these 'idols' account for all that men see or fancy. Or when Empedocles is spoken of as 'the great Sicilian,' the designation gains in point if it serves to recall the famous lines 2 in the De Rerum Natura, where Lucretius is stirred to the praise of Sicily by the mention of her greatest son; and ends by saying that that fair island, 'rich in all good things, guarded by large force of men, yet seems to have held within it nothing more glorious than this man.' Again, where Lucretius is speaking of the dream in which his ruling thought took a terrible form,-in which he saw the atom-streams pouring along in tumultuous career, wrecking order, and re-ordering chaos,

That was mine, my dream, I knew it— Of and belonging to me, as the dog With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies His function of the woodland :

3

horror which is weighing upon him, and then asks,

But who was he, that in the garden snared
Picus and Faunus, rustic Gods?

the question is scarcely likely to be answered or understood by any one who does not know the story in Ovid's Fasti, how King Numa caught Picus and Faunus drowsy with wine in the Aventine grove, made them his prisoners, and drew from them the secret of averting Jove's angry lightnings. So that Lucretius appears to mean: 'I cannot throw off this horror; but perhaps Picus and Faunus-if I can only catch them, as Numà did-will teach me how to appease the gods.'

1

Such an allusion as this is a riddle which not many people will think of attempting to guess, and it is quite unnecessary that they should; it is enough to feel that, precisely because the allusion is obscure, it is natural in a soliloquy; for a man who is really talking to himself does not take pains to be invariably lucid for the benefit of possible listeners.

The De Rerum Natura leaves with any one who reads it attentively a distinct impression of the personality of Lucretius; for he has no conventional literary reserve, no hesitation about speaking of himself when it is natural to do so. He has the concentrated earnestness of a prophet, who feels only that he has a message, and must speak it; whose self-oblivion is above the fear of self-assertion. Now, Mr. Tennyson seems to us to have been very successful in reproducing that impression of Lucretius which is derived from the Latin poem, and to have effected this, not by direct imitation or allusion; not by the painting of particular striking traits; but by a force of imaginative sympathy which seizes and represents their result. Thus in Mr. Tennyson's poem, as in the De Rerum Natura, one feels intinctively that Lucretius is lonely; lonely not merely in the sense directly indicated,

Ovid, Fast. iii. 285-328.

a man of retired, studious habits; but one who stands apart from the life of his day, isolated in his attachment to old traditions; with too little flexibility or worldly wisdom to make his way in society, or to be in any sense popular. In the De Rerum Natura this solitariness makes itself felt, primarily and throughout, in a certain sustained intensity, suggestive of an effort carried through in unbroken seclusion; frequently in mannerisms or quaintnesses, such as grow upon a self-wrapt man, unused to adjust himself by external standards. Mr. Tennyson conveys to us this intensity of Lucretius, and performs the difficult task of translating it into a morbid phase; it is shewn labouring and throbbing under a dead weight of oppression; we feel that the agony described is not that of a cold mind stung, but of an eager mind baffled. The same tone of character,ardent, self-absorbed, out of relation with usage,—is further hinted by certain peculiarities of style and language; but these direct imitations are restrained, and in each case make some distinct addition to the total effect. For instance, when Lucretius states incidentally some doctrine which is not to be discussed at present, he sometimes gives the most obvious argument for it in a short parenthesis, muttered over to himself, as it were, to fortify his own conviction; and this sometimes suggests very picturesquely his habit of lonely self

converse.

This characteristic is given in Mr. Tennyson's poem, in the passage where Lucretius touches on the story of the Sun having been wroth for the slaughter of his sacred oxen, whose flesh moved and moaned on the spit as the comrades of Odysseus were preparing to eat them; the Sun, he says

never sware, Unless his wrath were wreak'd on wretched

Another Lucretian trait is the love for certain favourite words, phrases, epithets, which are repeated again and again. In this way his regular epithet for verse is 66 sweet," and this, with him, is by no means a platitude, but has a special meaning, which is explained by a passage in his poem.1 He says there that, as doctors tempt children to take a dose of wormwood by smearing the edge of the cup with honey, so he has resolved to set forth his unpalatable doctrine 'in sweet-toned Pierian verse, and o'erlay it, as it were, with the pleasant honey of the Muses.' When Mr. Tennyson makes Lucretius speak of

shutting reasons up in rhythm, Or Heliconian honey in living words, To make a truth less harsh,

-this is a true expression of that affectionate, simple-hearted purpose, which avows itself so often in the De Rerum Natura, and is so touching in its guileless pride of cunning,-the purpose to use his very choicest art in coaxing Memmius to take the physic of the soul.

Lucretius probably died in 54 B.C. The last years of his life, the years occupied with his unfinished poem, were virtually the last of the Roman republic. Several causes were hastening the disruption of the old framework, and leading up to the rule of one man under republican forms. Meanwhile there was a conservative party, republican in the old sense, with its strength in the Senate; and the so-called popular party, out of which the Dictator was soon to come. It is not doubtful with which side Lucretius sympathized, so far as he troubled himself with politics at all. All his instincts were those of the old Commonwealth, when men lived simply, and worked hard at things in which they believed. If general sensuality and insincerity are always signs of national decay, in the case of Rome they were especially ominous, since hardy simplicity and earnestness were the very groundwork of the normal Roman character. A man of the tem

1 Lucr. ii. 936 ff.

н 2