The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 45

Although few of his descriptions from Nature are capable of being transferred to canvas, yet he shows in his treatment of mythological subjects, and in his personification of great natural phenomena, that purely pictorial faculty, in virtue of which Catullus and Ovid have inspired the imagination and directed the hand of some of the great painters of modern times. Such, for instance, is the representation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, suggested indeed, in some of its features, by an earlier poet, but executed with original power. Such too are the pictures of Venus and Mars in the invocation to the poem, and that of Pan--

Pinea semiferi capitis velamina qua.s.sans[31].

By this power of vision he presents that superst.i.tion against which all the weight of his argument is directed, not as an abstraction, but as a real palpably existing Power of evil--

Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans[32].

So, too, in his vivid account of the orderly procession of the seasons, he invests the freshness and the beauty of spring with the charm of personal and human attributes in the lines--

It ver et Venus, et veris praenuntius ante Pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet[33].

But it is in describing actual scenes and actual aspects of human life that Lucretius chiefly employs his power of poetical conception and expression. He looks upon the world with an eye which discerns beneath the outward appearances of things the presence of Nature in her attributes both of majesty and of genial all-penetrating life,--as at once the 'Magna mater' and the 'alma mater' of all living things[34].

She appears to his imagination not as an abstraction, or a vast aggregate of forces and laws, but as a living Power, whose processes are on an infinitely grander scale, but are yet a.n.a.logous to the active and moral energies of man. He shows the same sympathy with this life of Nature, the same vivid sense of wonder and delight in her familiar aspects, the same imaginative perception of her secret agency, which led the early Greek mind to people the world with the living forms of the old mythology, and which have been felt anew by the great poets of the present century. All natural life is thus endowed with a poetical interest, as being a new manifestation of the creative energy, which is the fountain of all beauty and delight in the world.

The minutest phenomena and the most gigantic forces, the changes of decay and renovation in all outward things, the growth of plants and trees, the habits of beasts rioting in a wild liberty over the mountains,--

Quod in magnis bacchatur montibu' pa.s.sim[35],--

or tended by the care and ministering to the wants of man; the life and enjoyment of the birds that gladden the early morning with their song by woods and river-banks, or that seek their food and pastime among the sea-waves;--these, and numberless other phenomena, are all contemplated and described by an eye quickened by the poetical sense of manifold and inexhaustible energy in the world.

It is not so much the beauty of form and colour, as the appearance of force and life which he reproduces. He has not, like Catullus, the pure delight of an artist in painting outward scenes. He does not express, like Virgil, the charm of old a.s.sociations attaching to famous places. It is the a.s.sociation of great laws, not of great memories, which moves him in contemplating the outward world. Neither has he invested any particular place with the attraction which Horace has given to his Sabine home, and Catullus to Sirmio. But no ancient or modern poet has expressed more happily the natural enjoyment of beholding the changing life and familiar face of the world. No other writer makes us feel with more reality the quickening of the spirit, produced by the sunrise or the advent of spring, by living in fine weather or looking on fair and peaceful landscapes. The freshness of the feeling with which outward scenes inspire him is one of the great charms of the poem, especially as a relief to the pervading gravity of his thought. More than any poet, except Wordsworth, he seems to derive a pure and healthy joy from the common sights and sounds of animate and inanimate Nature. No distempered fancies or regrets, no vague longings for some unattainable rapture, coloured the natural aspect which the world presented to his eyes and mind.

In the descriptions of Lucretius, as in those of Homer, there is always some active movement and change represented as pa.s.sing before the eye. What power and energy there are, for instance, in that of a river-flood,--(like one of equal force and truth in Burns's 'Brigs of Ayr,')--

Nec validi possunt pontes venientis aquai Vim subitam tolerare: ita magno turbidus imbri Molibus incurrit validis c.u.m viribus amnis[36].

How naturally is the pure and sparkling life of brooks and springs brought before the mind in the pa.s.sage at v. 269[37], already quoted,--and again, in these lines--

Denique nota vagi silvestria templa tenebant Nympharum, quibus e scibant umori' fluenta Lubrica proluvie larga lavere umida saxa, Umida saxa, super viridi stillantia musco, Et partim plano scatere atque erumpere campo[38].

In this representation of the sea-sh.o.r.e--

Concharumque genus parili ratione videmus Pingere telluris gremium, qua mollibus undis Litoris incurvi bibulam pavit aequor harenam[39],--

there is the same suggestion of quiet ceaseless movement, as in a line of the Odyssey representing the same phase of Nature--

[Greek: langas poti cherson apoplynespe thala.s.sa.]

There is the same sense of active life in all his pictures of the early morning; as, for instance,--

Primum aurora novo c.u.m spargit lumine terras Et variae volucres nemora avia pervolitantes Aera per tenerum liquidis loca vocibus opplent, Quam subito soleat sol ortus tempore tali Convestire sua perfundens omnia luce, Omnibus in promptu manifestumque esse videmus[40].

And again,--

Aurea c.u.m primum gemmantis rore per herbas Matutina rubent radiati lumina solis Exhalantque lacus nebulam fluviique perennes, Ipsaque ut interdum tellus fumare videtur; Omnia quae sursum c.u.m conciliantur, in alto Corpore concreto subtexunt nubila caelum[41].

Two other pa.s.sages (at iv. 136 and vi. 190), in which the movements and shifting pageantry of the clouds are described, may be compared with a more elaborate pa.s.sage in the Excursion, in which Wordsworth has represented a similar spectacle[42] wrought by 'earthly Nature,'--

'Upon the dark materials of the storm.'

Nowhere does he present pictures of pure repose. The philosophical idea of ceaseless motion and change animates to his eye every aspect of the world. Every separate description in the poem possesses the charm of freshness and faithfulness, and of relevance to the great ideas of his philosophy. His living enjoyment in the outward world, and his sympathy with all existence, both fed and were fed by his trust in speculative ideas. The poetical descriptions which adorn and ill.u.s.trate his argument are like the sublime and beautiful scenes which refresh and reward the adventurous discoverer of distant lands.

Some pa.s.sages, ill.u.s.trative of philosophical principles, blend the movements of animal and human life with descriptions of natural scenery. The lines at ii. 352-366, describing the cow searching for her calf, which has been sacrificed at the altar, combine many characteristics of the poetical style of Lucretius. There is the literal--almost too minute faithfulness of reproduction--as in the line--

Noscit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis[43];--

the active life of the whole representation, too full of movement for a picture, yet flashing the objects on the inward eye with graphic pictorial power; the ever fresh charm of some familiar scene, called up by the lines already referred to,--

Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis;

the pathos and respect for every mode of natural feeling denoted in such expressions as 'desiderio perfixa iuvenci'; and, lastly, the power of investing the most common things with the majesty of the laws which they express and ill.u.s.trate. This pa.s.sage is adduced as a proof and ill.u.s.tration of the varieties in form of the primordial atoms. In a pa.s.sage, immediately preceding, the perpetual motion of the atoms, going on beneath an appearance of absolute rest, is ill.u.s.trated by two pictures, one taken from the jubilant life of the animal creation--

Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta[44], etc.;

the other taken from the pomp of human affairs, and the gay pageantry of armies--

Praeterea magnae legiones c.u.m loca cursu Camporum complent belli simulacra cientes, Fulgor ibi ad caelum se tollit totaque circ.u.m Aere renidescit tellus supterque virum vi Excitur pedibus sonitus clamoreque montes Icti reiectant voces ad sidera mundi Et circ.u.mvolitant equites mediosque repente Tramittunt valido quatientes impete campos[45].

The truth and fulness of life in this pa.s.sage are immediately perceived, but the element of sublimity is added by the thought in the two lines with which the pa.s.sage concludes, which reduces the whole of this moving and sounding pageant to stillness and silence--

Et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus unde Stare videntur et in campis consistere fulgor[46].

As Lucretius was the first poet who revealed the majesty and wonder of the Natural world, so he restored the sense of awe and mystery, felt by the earlier Greek poets, to the contemplation of human life. In dealing with the problem of human destiny, he has sounded deeper than any of the other ancient poets of Italy: but others have sympathised with a greater variety of the moods of life, and have allowed its lights and shadows to play more easily over their poetry. The thought both of the dignity and the littleness of our mortal state is ever present to the mind of Lucretius. His imagination is involuntarily moved by the pomp and grandeur of affairs, while his strong sense of reality keeps ever before him the conviction of the vanity of outward state, the weariness of luxurious living, and the miseries of ambition. Thus his imaginative recognition of the pomp and circ.u.mstance of war brings out by the force of contrast his deeper conviction of the littleness and impotence of man in the presence of the great forces of Nature--

Summa etiam c.u.m vis violenti per mare venti Induperatorem cla.s.sis super aequora verrit c.u.m validis pariter legionibus atque elephantis, Non divom pacem votis adit ac prece quaesit Ventorum pavidus paces animasque secundas, etc.[47]

If his reason acknowledges only inward strength as the attribute of human dignity, yet his imagination feels the outward spell that swayed the Roman genius, through the symbols of power and authority, through great spectacles, and in impressive ceremonials.

But it is with more heart-felt sympathy, and with not less imaginative emotion, that he recognises the deep wonder and the infinite pathos of human life. There is perhaps no pa.s.sage in any poet which reveals more truthfully that union of feelings in meditating on the strangeness and sadness of our mortal destiny than the well-known pa.s.sage describing the birth of every infant into the world--

Tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis Navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni Vitali auxilio, c.u.m primum in luminis oras Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit, Vagituque loc.u.m lugubri complet, ut aec.u.mst Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum[48].

With what truth and _naivete_ is the complaint of the husbandman over his ineffectual labour and scanty returns echoed!--

Iamque caput qua.s.sans grandis suspirat arator Crebrius inca.s.sum manuum cecidisse labores, Et c.u.m tempora temporibus praesentia confert Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis Et crepat, antic.u.m genus ut pietate repletum Perfacile angustis tolerarit finibus aevom, c.u.m minor esset agri multo modus ante viritim[49].

His feeling is profoundly solemn, as well as infinitely tender. Above all the tumult of life, he hears incessantly the funeral dirge over some one departed, and the infant wail of a newcomer into the troubles of the world,

mixtos vagitibus aegris Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri[50].

His tone can, indeed, be stern and indignant, as well as tender and melancholy: it is never morbid or effeminate. His tenderness is that of a thoroughly masculine nature. Some signs of the same mood may be discovered in the fragments of Ennius; but the feeling of Lucretius springs from a more sympathetic heart and a more contemplative imagination.

His imagination, which depicts so forcibly the intimations of experience, is able to hear him beyond the known and familiar regions of life. As it enables him to pa.s.s--

extra flammantia moenia mundi--

and to behold the dawn of creation, and even the blank desolation which will follow on the overthrow of our system, so it has enabled him to realise with vivid feeling the primeval condition of man upon the world. Yet even in these daring enterprises of his fancy he adheres strictly to the conclusions of his philosophical system, and shows that sincerity and truthful adherence to fact are as inseparable from the operations of his creative faculty as of his understanding and moral nature.

His excellences are so different from those of Virgil that the question need not be entertained, whether the rank of the greatest of Roman poets is or is not to be awarded to him. If each nation must be considered the best judge of its own poets, it will be admitted that Lucretius would have found few Roman voices to support his claim to the first or even the second place. The strongest support which he could have received would have been Virgil's willing acknowledgment of the powerful spell which the genius of his predecessor had exercised over him. Both the artistic defects and the profound feeling and imaginative originality of his work were calculated to alienate both popular favour and critical opinion in the Rome of the Empire. The poem has a much deeper significance for modern than it had for ancient times. Lucretius stands alone as the great contemplative poet of antiquity. He has proclaimed with more power than any other the majesty of Nature's laws, and has interpreted with a truer and deeper insight the meaning of her manifold life. Few, if any among his countrymen, felt so strongly the mystery of man's being, or have indicated so pa.s.sionate a sympathy with the real sorrows of life, and so ardent a desire to raise man to his proper dignity, and to support him in bearing his inevitable burden. If he has, in large measure, the antique simplicity and grandeur of character, he has much also in common with the spirit and genius of modern times. He contemplates human life with a profound feeling, like that of Pascal, and with a speculative elevation like that of Spinoza. The loftier tones of his poetry and the sustained effort of mind which bears him through his long argument remind us of Milton. His sympathy with Nature, at once fresh and large, is more in harmony with the feeling of the great poets of the present century than with the general sentiment of ancient poetry. In the union of poetical feeling with scientific pa.s.sion he has antic.i.p.ated the most elevated mode of the study of Nature, of which the world has as yet seen only a few great examples.