he was not without the vicissitudes of political life. Falling into
disgrace at court, he was banished to the abbacy of Bonport. There the
scholarly ecclesiastic occupied himself with a refutation of Lucretius,
in Latin verse.

The origin of the poem is not without interest. Meeting Bayle in
Holland, the ecclesiastic found the indefatigable skeptic most
persistently citing Lucretius, in whose elaborate verse the atheistic
materialism of Epicurus is developed and exalted. Others had already
answered the philosopher directly; but the indignant Christian was moved
to answer the poet through whom the dangerous system was proclaimed. His
poem was, therefore, a vindication of God and religion, in direct
response to a master-poem of antiquity, in which these are assailed. The
attempt was lofty, especially when the champion adopted the language of
Lucretius. Perhaps, since Sannazaro, no modern production in Latin verse
has found equal success. Even before its publication, in 1747, it was
read at court, and was admired in the princely circle of Sceaux. It
appeared in elegant, editions, was translated into French prose by
Bougainville, and into French verse by Jeanty-Laurans, also most
successfully into Italian verse by Ricci. At the latter part of the last
century, when Franklin reached Paris, it was hardly less known in
literary circles than a volume of Grote's History in our own day.
Voltaire, the arbiter of literary fame at that time, regarding the
author only on the side of literature, said of him, in his "Temple du
Gout,"--

"Le Cardinal, oracle de la France,
Reunissaut Virgile avec Platon,
_Vengeur du ciel et vainqueur de Lucrece_."

The last line of this remarkable eulogy has a movement and balance not
unlike the Latin verse of Turgot, or that which suggested it in the poem
of Polignac; but the praise which it so pointedly offers attests the
fame of the author; nor was this praise confined to the "fine frenzy" of
verse. The "Anti-Lucretius" was gravely pronounced the "rival of the
poem which it answered,"--"with verses as flowing as Ovid, sometimes
approaching the elegant simplicity of Horace and sometimes the nobleness
of Virgil,"--and then again, with a philosophy and a poetry combined
"which would not be disavowed either by Descartes or by Virgil."[48]

Turning now to the poem itself, we shall see how completely the verse of
Turgot finds its prototype there. Epicurus is indignantly described as
denying