The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 43

[Footnote 32: 'Since they take their wisdom from the lips of others, and pursue their object in accordance rather with what they hear than with what they really feel.'--v. 1133-4.]

[Footnote 33: ii. 33.]

[Footnote 34: v. 1117-19.]

[Footnote 35: ii. 638.]

[Footnote 36: iii. 468-9.]

[Footnote 37: A pa.s.sage in the Captivi of Plautus (995-7), shows that these terrors did appeal to the imagination in ancient times, and thus might powerfully affect the happiness of persons of specially impressible natures, although they do not seem to have often interfered with the actual enjoyment of life,--

Vidi ego multa saepe picta quae Acherunti fierent Cruciamenta: verum enimvero nulla adaequest Acheruns Atque ubi ego fui in lapicidinis.

Professor Wallace in his 'Epicureanism' (p. 109) writes, 'Whatever may have been the case in earlier ages of Greece, there is no doubt that in the age of Epicurus, the doctrine of a judgment to come, and of a h.e.l.l where sinners were punished for their crimes, made a large part of the vulgar creed....

Orphic and other religious sects had enhanced the terrors of the world below,' etc. Cicero, however, is a better witness than Lucretius of the actual state of opinion among his educated contemporaries. The exaggerated sense entertained by Lucretius of the influence of such terrors among the cla.s.s for whom his poem was written is a confirmation of his having acted on the maxim [Greek: lathe biosas].']

[Footnote 38: Tusc. Disp. i. 21.]

[Footnote 39: iii. 59, etc.]

[Footnote 40: 'Either when his mind is stung with the consciousness that he is wasting his life in sloth, and ruining himself in wantonness; or because from the shafts of her wit she has left in him some word of double meaning, which seizes on his pa.s.sionate heart and burns there like a fire; or because he fancies that she casts about her eyes too much or gazes at another, and marks the traces of a smile on her countenance.'--iv. 1135-40.]

[Footnote 41: 'Oft-times, weary of home, the lord of some s.p.a.cious mansion issues forth abroad, and suddenly returns, feeling that it is no better with him abroad. Driving his horses, he speeds in hot haste to his country house, as if his house were on fire and he was hurrying to bring a.s.sistance.

Straightway he begins to yawn, so soon as he has reached his threshold, or sinks heavily into sleep and seeks forgetfulness, or even with all haste returns to the city.'--iii. 1060-67.]

[Footnote 42: E.g. v. 1430-34:--

Ergo hominum genus inca.s.sum frustraque laborat Semper et in curis consumit inanibus aevom, Nimirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi Finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas.]

[Footnote 43: i. 101.]

[Footnote 44: iii. 938.]

[Footnote 45: iii. 971.]

[Footnote 46: iv. 1134.]

[Footnote 47: iii. 57-8.]

[Footnote 48: v. 1116.]

[Footnote 49: vi. 396-7.]

[Footnote 50: iii. 944-5.]

CHAPTER XIV.

THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS.

It remains to consider the poem of Lucretius as a work of literary art and genius. Much indeed of what may be said on the subject of his genius has necessarily been antic.i.p.ated in the chapters devoted to the consideration of his personal characteristics, his speculative philosophy, and his moral teaching. The 'multa lumina ingenii' are most conspicuous in those pa.s.sages of his poem which best ill.u.s.trate the range and distinctness of his observation, the grandeur and truth of his philosophical conceptions, the pa.s.sionate sympathy with which he strove to elevate and purify human life. But, at the same time, the most manifest defects of the poem, considered as a work of art, spring from the same source as its greatness considered as a work of genius, viz. the diversity and conflicting aims of the faculties employed on its production. Although, perhaps, from a Roman point of view, the practical purpose which reduces the ma.s.s of miscellaneous details to unity, and the success with which he encounters the difficulties both of matter and language, might ent.i.tle the poem to be regarded as a work 'multae artis,' yet, when tested by the canons either of Greek or of modern taste, it fails in the most essential conditions of art,--the choice of subject and the form of construction. The t.i.tle of the poem is indeed taken from a Greek model, the poem of Empedocles, '[Greek: peri physeos]': and the form of a personal address to Memmius, in which Lucretius has embodied his teaching, was suggested by the personal address of the older poet to the 'son of Anchytus.'

But although Aristotle acknowledges the poetical genius of Empedocles by applying to him the epithet [Greek: Homerikos], he denies to his composition the t.i.tle of a poem. The work of Empedocles and the kindred works of Xenophanes and Parmenides are inspired not by the pa.s.sion of art but by the enthusiasm of discovery. They are to be regarded rather as philosophical rhapsodies than as purely didactic poems, like either the 'Works and Days' of Hesiod or the writings of the Alexandrine School. They were written in hexameter verse partly because that was the most familiar vehicle of expression in the first half of the fifth century B.C., and partly because it was the vehicle most suited to the imaginative conceptions of Nature which arose out of the old mythologies. But in the time of Lucretius a prose vehicle was more suited than any form of verse for the communication of knowledge in a systematic form. The conception of Nature was no longer mystical or purely imaginative as it had been in the age of Empedocles. Thus the task which Lucretius had to perform was both vaster and more complex than that of the early [Greek: physiologoi].

He had to combine in one whole the prosaic results of later scientific observation and a.n.a.lysis with the imaginative fancies of the dawn of ancient enquiry. He professes to make both conducive to the practical purpose of emanc.i.p.ating and elevating human life; but a great part of his argument is as remote from all human interest as it is from the ascertained truths of science.

All life and Nature were to his spirit full of imaginative wonder, but they were believed also to be susceptible of a rationalistic explanation. And the greater part of the work is devoted to give this explanation. This large infusion of a prosaic content necessarily detracts from the artistic excellence and the sustained interest of the poem. Lucretius speaks of the difficulty which he had to encounter in gaining the ear of his countrymen, in the lines,--

Quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur Tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque Volgus abhorret ab hac[1].

And the unattractiveness of much of his theme is not diminished when the real discoveries of science have shown how illusory are his processes of investigation, and how false are many of his conclusions.

He has made his poetry ancillary to his science, instead of compelling, as Virgil, Dante, and Milton have done, a subject, susceptible of purely artistic treatment, to a.s.similate the stores of his knowledge. His theme--'maiestas cognita rerum,'--is too vast and complex to be brought within the compa.s.s and proportions of a single work of art. The processes of minute observation and reasoning employed in establishing his conclusions are alien from the movement of the imagination. The connecting links of the argument are suggestive of the labour of the workman, not of the finished perfection of the work. And while some of the ideas of science may be so applied to the interpretation of the outward world, as to act on the imaginative emotions with greater power than any mere description of the forms and colours of external things, yet the pleasure with which processes of investigation are pursued is quite distinct from the pleasure derived from poetic intuition into the secret life of Nature and man. If it be the condition of a great poem to produce the purest and n.o.blest pleasure by its whole conception and execution, the poem of Lucretius fails to satisfy this condition. It is in spite of its design and proportions,--in spite of the fact that long parts of the work neither interest the feelings nor satisfy the reason, that the poem still speaks with impressive power to the modern world.

And while the whole conception of the work, as regards both matter and method of treatment, necessarily involves a large interfusion of prosaic materials with the finer product of his genius, it must be added that there is considerable inequality of execution even in its more inspired pa.s.sages. A few consecutive pa.s.sages show indeed the finest sense of harmony, and are finished in a style not much inferior to that of Virgil. Such, for instance, are the opening lines:--

Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, etc.;--

and again the lines in the introduction to Book iii.:--

Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae, etc.

But long pa.s.sages seem rather to revert to the roughness of Ennius than to approach the smooth and varied cadences of Virgil. Though the imaginative effect of single expressions is generally more forcible than in any Latin poet, yet the composition of long paragraphs is apt to overflow into prosaic detail, or to display the qualities of logical consecutiveness or close adherence to fact rather than those of skilled accomplishment and conformity with the principles of beauty. In common with the older race of Roman poets he exhibits that straining after verbal effects by means of alliteration, a.s.sonances, asyndeta, etc., which marks the ruder stages of literary development.

The Latin language, although beginning to feel the quickening of a new life, had not yet been formed into its more exquisite modulations, nor learned the power of suggesting delicate shades of meaning and the new strength derivable from the reserved use of its resources. All these causes,--the vast and miscellaneous range, and the abstruse character of his subject, the dryness and futility of much of the argument, the frequent subordination of poetry to science, the inadequacy of the Latin language as a vehicle of thought and its imperfect development as an organ of poetry,--prevented the poem from ever obtaining great popularity in ancient times, and have denied to it in modern times anything like the large influence which has been enjoyed in different ages and countries by Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Even the more ardent admirers of the poem are tempted to pa.s.s from one to another of the higher ranges and more commanding summits, which swell gradually or rise abruptly out of the general level over which he leads them, rather than to follow him through all the windings of his argument.

Yet it is only after the poem has been mastered in its details that we realise its full effect on the imagination. It is only then that we understand the complete greatness of the man, as a thinker, a teacher, and a poet. The most familiar beauties reveal a deeper meaning when they are seen to be not mere resting places in the toilsome march of his argument, but rather commanding positions, successively reached, from which the widest contemplative views of the realms of Nature and human life are laid open to us. As we follow closely in his footsteps, through all his processes of observation, a.n.a.lysis, and reasoning, we feel, that he too, like the older Greeks, is borne along by a strong enthusiasm,--the philosophical [Greek: eros] of Plato,--different from, but akin to, the impulses of poetry. That marvellous intensity of feeling in conjunction with the operations of the intellect, which the Greeks regarded as a kind of divine possession, and which Lucretius, by the use of such phrases as 'divinitus invenientes', ascribes to the earliest enquirers, animates all his interpretation of the facts and laws of Nature. The speculative pa.s.sion imparts life to the argumentative processes which are addressed to the understanding, while it adds a fresher glory or more impressive solemnity to those aspects of the subject by which the imagination is most powerfully moved.

Again, although his rhythm, even at its best, falls far short of the intricate harmony and variety of Virgil, and, in its more level pa.s.sages, scarcely aims at pleasing the ear at all, yet there is a kind of grandeur and dignity even in its monotony, varied, as that is, by deeper and more majestic tones whenever his spirit is stirred by impulses of awe, wonder, and delight. There is always a sense of life and onward movement in the flow of his verse. Often there is a kind of c.u.mulative force revealing a more powerful emotion of heart and imagination as his thoughts and images press on one another in close and ordered sequence. Thus, for instance, the effect of the lines describing the religious impressions produced on the early inhabitants of the world by the grand and awful aspects of Nature, depends, not on any harmonious variation of sounds, but on the swelling and culminating power with which the whole pa.s.sage breaks on the ear,--

In caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt, Per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur, Luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa Noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes, Nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando Et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum[2].

In many pa.s.sages it may be noticed how much is added to the rhythmical effect by the force or weight of the concluding line, as at iii.

870-893, by the rugged grandeur of the line,--

Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae,--

at ii. 569-580, by the sad and solemn movement of the close,

Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri,--

and at i. 101, by the line of cardinal significance, which ends a pa.s.sage of most finished power and beauty,--

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

The music of Lucretius is altogether his own. As he was the first among his countrymen who contemplated in a reverential spirit the majesty of Nature and the more solemn meaning of life, so he was the first to call out the full rhythmical majesty and deep organ-tones of the Latin language, to embody in sound the spiritual emotions stirred by that contemplation.

The poetical style of Lucretius is, like his rhythm, a true and powerful symbol of his genius. Though his diction is much less studied than that of Virgil, yet his large use of alliterations, a.s.sonances, asyndeta[3], etc., shows that he consciously aimed at producing certain effects by recognised rhetorical means. The attraction which the artifices of rhetoric had for his mind is as noticeable in his style as a similar attraction is in the speeches of Thucydides. But neither Lucretius nor Thucydides can be called the slave of rhetorical forms. In both writers recourse is had to them for the legitimate purpose of emphasising thought, not for that of disguising its insufficiency. The use of such phrases, for instance, as 'sed casta inceste,' 'immortalia mortali sermone notantes,' 'mors immortalis,'

etc., is no mere play of words, but rather the tersest phrase in which an impressive ant.i.thesis of thought can be presented. The mannerisms of his style, if they show that he was not altogether emanc.i.p.ated from archaic rudeness, afford evidence also of the prolific fertility of his genius. The amplitude and unchecked volume of his diction flow out of the mental conditions, described in the lines,--