aimed at by every scholar around him. To some harmless byestanders he threw down the gauntlet of defiance; to others he addressed himself in the most peevish tone of irrascibility, because they neither noticed his positions nor adopted his conclusions. It is not merely from a perusal of his notes to Lucretius, that this opinion is formed, but from a reference to his works collectively: and it is much to be lamented, that he w in the common intercourse of life was confessedly amiable, should in that alone, which lives after him, have given such room to the accusation of spleen and illiberality.

From the critics, the transition is natural to the translators, and of these Lucretius boasts a more abundant crop than any of the authors before enumerated.

The best translation of Lucretius which has yet been made, is that of Marchetti. He was professor of mathematics in the university of Pisa, and died 1744. A German translation was given by Mayr, in 1784-5. De Wit transferred him in prose and in Dutch to the fens of Holland. Marolles frenchified him in three succeeding editions, as did Molière, Des Coutures, and Guillet. In our own language Evelyn led the way in 1656, but he proceeded no farther than the first book. In 1743, Guernier gave a prose translation. Dryden had given partial versions of some of the most beautiful portions, and Creech of the whole, long before this attempt.

A few years since a duodecimo peeped forth, which bore no name on the title-page, but which report gave to Dr. Nott. It contained only the first book, but threatened the remainder in due time. Time however passed, and the appetite of the public never called for the promised food. To this succeeded two portly quartos, from Mr. Good, who decked them with parallel passages from Hebrew, Arabic, Persic, Greek, Latin, and all the modern languages. In this Babel of book-making, Job brings his mite to bear on the doctrine of Atoms, II. 196. Hafiz illustrates the Anaphora, II. 5. The Arabian bard Zohair personifies death like Lucretius, II. 102; and Klopstock and Gessner plainly shew how the German and Roman taste quadrate.

verge

Facit indignatio versum, says Juvenal-and there can be little doubt that this feeling inspirited Dr. Busby, who has followed his predecessor, whom he never names or even hints at, with two quartos of still larger dimensions, of ample and room enough,' in three sizes, atlas, imperial, and common. Nay he does not, like Cluvienus, confine himself to versification, but he breaks the very subsellia with recitation. His son performs the office of declaimer

**We have not entered into the virtues of translators, or we should have been disposed to applaud the unassuming modesty with which some of them have made an ancient author our own. Dr. Busby probably does not agree in the necessity of so strict a selfdenial; and be will therefore be generally found to use the first person, or to imply it, in the designation of his labours, where it might perhaps have been spared without much loss to the reader.

The representative of a great original,' says the Doctor, is compelled to rise above mediocrity.' There is an old and vulgar proverb, that one man may drag a cow to the water, but not an hundred can make her drink.' Of this nature seems the " 'compul sion' to which the Doctor alludes: Lucretius draws him to Helicon, but the representative of a great original,' except in a very few instances, is dreadfully subject to hydrophobia.

When I strictly adhere to the limits of the couplet, it is for the purpose of condensing the sense of my author:

e. g. Did ball of lead, and ball of wool agree

Again,

In density, equal their weights would be.'-B. I. 414.

The stag's rank hoof the hound resistless draws,

And snowy geese obey the olfactory laws.'-B. IV. 812.

'If I have frequently disregarded its termination, and abruptly broken into the succeeding line, I hope it has not always been without adding surprise to strength :

e. g. How mixed the seeds, and how subsist I long

To teach my Memmius--but the Roman tongue

Too indigent my noble theme to grace,

In simple brevity my thoughts I trace.'-B. III. 175.

And that in the occasional adoption of the triplet, I have not wholly failed of imitating that grandeur and elevation by which the verse of Lucretius is so eminently distinguished.'

One proof shall suffice,

B. I. 185.

From her this first, this sovereign rule I bring, All nature's substances from substance spring, The Gods from nothing ne'er made any-thing.' How would Martinus Scriblerus have danced at this addition to the treasures of his bathos!

In the preface there is a considerable degree of anticipation of what the Doctor's muse will effect.

The spirit of Lucretius appears to me, no less than that of Homer himself, incapable of transfusion, but by a muse emulative of the simplest attire and easiest gesture, combined with a confident and noble air; a muse whose numbers are at once smooth and strong; whose diction is as bold as obvious, and whose style is alternately sweet, rich, and lofty.

In saying that I have aspired to such complicated excellence, I may subject myself to the charge of too much self-confidence; and yet it must be conceded, that, in undertaking this author, I made it my duty to keep his beauties constantly in view; to look up to my archetype with the same fond and ardent spirit with which he regards his own great master, when he says

Thee I pursue, to thy great theme aspire:

7

But with a lover's not a rival's fire.-B. III. 5.

I was not to suffer myself to be deterred by the toil necessary to the accomplishment of my task, nor to be checked by the reflexion, that the most powerful wing can rise only by continued exertion; that even the bird of Jove must labour up the air, before he can reach his elevation, and sail along the skies.

So strongly indeed have I felt this truth, that the exalted merit of my original has been the maximum, the pinnacle of excellence, at which I have constantly and undauntedly aimed. Lucretius himself has been my inspiring Apollo, and should I happily be thought to have sometimes approached his bright orb, I shall be indebted for the honour, to the force of his own attraction.'

To this bill of fare succeeds a more detailed account of the virtues, and dead and live stock of some of the subscriberssome of these are what Heyne used to call his Subsidia: the remainder consists of very flattering, and, we have no doubt, very well deserved compliments, or indications of the Subscriber from his work, if he ever soiled paper.

It seems that 'Lord Thurlow's HERMILDA IN PALESTINE has afforded much pleasure to the lovers of fine poetry,' and that the Doctor was gratified by his warm eulogium of the circulated specimen of his translation.' Lord Byron, who must

-wonder how the devil he got there,' by his name, is said to demonstrate the candid expectations entertained respecting this translation; and the Earl of Buchan received a sample of this work with a refined frankness.'

Then follow the Misters. Major James, of known poetical talents,' and seven other gentlemen, designated by their works, diffuse a lustre particularly auspicious to a work of this description. Sir James Bland Burgess, author of Richard the First," Thomas Hope, Esq. of the Costume of the Ancients,' and Messrs. Jodrell, Knight, and Dr. Burney, it seems, contributed emphatic approbation.'

6

In the Life of Lucretius, there is an evident aspiration after Johnsonian cadence and verbosity. Thus we are informed, that incongruous testimonies weaken each other, offer little encou ragement to the interested inquirer; and rather invite conjecture, than add proof to probability. Like the faint and dubious rays

of crepuscular light, &c. From sundry hints in this Life,' we are inclined to believe that Lucretius was a professed Jacobin: he seems also to have had a pretty smattering of topography; for we read that he repaired to Athens, and there he found the grove of the mysterious Plato, the lyceum of the acute Aristotle, and the gardens of the profound Epicurus.' In the present scanty state of our knowledge respecting Lucretius, we are thankful, even for this trifling addition to the stock.-The passage which immediately follows it, is of so dazzling a nature, that we are half inclined to excuse the Doctor for not adverting to the wild and incoherent dance of his metaphors.

Though Cicero, at his return to Rome, apostatized from the principles of Epicurus (imbibed in his youth) in favour of the sublime, however visionary, Plato; yet it no where appears that the example of even so distinguished a luminary was sufficiently attractive to draw after it any of the minor lights of the school, much less the splendid orb, whose rays have clothed in such prismatic lustre the profound system of the GARDEN.' The persevering traveller has now arrived at the third grand division of the prolegomena, namely, a dissertation on the genius of Lucretius, and the philosophy and morals of his poems.' Here we are confounded by new beauties. The Doctor speaks to the DUVETOS both in his philosophy and poetry; they both savour of transcendentalism. If the following short account of atoms be not perfectly intelligible, it is at least conveyed in novel language.

These atoms moving from all eternity through immeasurable space; meeting, concussing, rebounding, combining, amassing, according to their smooth, round, angular and jagged figures have produced all the compound bodies of the universe animate and inanimate. The more closely and compactly they lie, the more the body they form approximates fo perfect solidity; as their coalition is less intimate, it will be more vacuous and rare.'- Thus all things and all creatures are formed from accruing particles.'-And as the existence of these invisible essences, like the grosser frame, depend, &c.

Dr. Busby is of opinion, that if Lucretius could rise now from the grave with a purged mind,' he would be very well prepared to receive the light of the christian religion. This paradox is doubtless most credible, inasmuch as it is well known that those who deny a first Great Cause, are peculiarly prone to admit the truths of Revelation.

All must admire the judicious method and lucid order withwhich this first book of the Nature of Things is conducted," says the Doctor, and he adds that the attentive reader, if blest with poetical taste, has been charmed with the fine and forcible painting.' Now in painting there is a certain excellence, called the

chiaroscuro, which, by darkening a considerable part of the picture, throws out figures and other objects with greater clearness greatre Doctor's and precision. In the poem before us, to keep up the Doctor's metaphor, no less than to coincide with the maxim of Horace, that poetry is as a picture,' there is an infinity of dark colouring; flatness is perhaps the appropriate word for this species of obscurity-from a multitude of examples we select a few as decided specimens.-Lib. I.

Of Venus, whom Dryden has so beautifully addressed, the Doctor says,

Thee I invoke: possess me while I sing;

To Memmius' ear eternal truth I bring.—1. 33.

There are many reasons why the word religio should not be translated religion. In the passage of Lucretius, which condemns the sacrifice of Iphigenia, in consequence of religio, it is peculiarly unfortunate. Good's prosaic translation is correct.

Such are the crimes that superstition prompts.'-l. 110.

The Doctor amplifies the passage thus:

Hence stern religion, our dismay before,

By him subjected, and our plague no more,
Humbled in turn, beneath our feet is driven,

And his brave victory equals us to heaven.'-1 88.

Dr. Nott falls into the same error; Evelyn, who is seldom commendable, bears off the palm.

To so much ill could foolish zeal persuade !'

It is a curious fact, that Cardinal Polignac, the pious and philosophical author of Anti-Lucretius, who must be admitted to have understood Latin well, although he had no idea of the majesty or smoothness of verse, should have committed the same mistake. He impugns the word religio as if it were used in a modern sense. 'Effera tantum igitur potuit suadere malorum Impietas non religio,' &c.

The washiness of the following line is only surpassed by that of the two which succeed it.

As sung our Ennius, darling of the nine.'-l. 144.
Wild Acheron in never-dying lays,

And the Acherusian temples he displays.'-l. 150.

We shall have occasion hereafter to shew the obligation under which we lie to the Doctor for the coinage of sundry new words; our debt is s not much less to him for the conscription of ancient and vulgar terms to the service of poetry. Among many others, the word 'megrims,' is ennobled.

A thousand megrims in the minds revolved.'-1. 166.