y the particular than by the universal. He loved to dwell upon the
large and general aspects of things--on the procession of the
seasons, for example, rather than upon the landscape of the Campagna
in spring or autumn. Therefore it is only occasionally and by
accident that we find in his verse touches peculiarly characteristic
of the manners of his country. Therefore, again, it has happened
that modern critics have detected a lack of patriotic interest in
this most Roman of all Latin poets. Also may it here be remembered,
that the single line which sums up all the history of Rome in one
soul-shaking hexameter, is not Lucretian but Virgilian:--

Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.

The custode of the Baths of Titus, when he lifts his torch to
explore those ruined arches, throws the wan light upon one place
where a Roman hand has scratched that verse in gigantic letters on
the cement. The colossal genius of Rome seems speaking to us, an
oracle no lapse of time can render dumb.

But Lucretius is not only the poet _par excellence_ of Rome. He will
always rank also among the first philosophical poets of the world:
and here we find a second standpoint for inquiry. The question how
far it is practicable to express philosophy in verse, and to combine
the accuracy of scientific language with the charm of rhythm and the
ornaments of the fancy, is one which belongs rather to modern than
to ancient criticism. In the progress of culture there has been an
ever-growing separation between the several spheres of intellectual
activity. What Livy said about the Roman Empire is true now of
knowledge: _magnitudine laborat sua_; so that the labour of
specialising and distinguishing has for many centuries been
all-important. Not only do we disbelieve in the desirability of
smearing honey upon the lip of the medicine-glass through which the
draught of erudition has to be administered; but we know for certain
that it is only at the meeting-points between science and emotion
that the philosophic poet finds a proper sphere. Whatever
subject-matter can be permeated or penetrated with strong human
feeling is fit for verse. Then the rhythms and the forms of poetry
to which high passions naturally move, become spontaneous. The
emotion is paramount, and the knowledge conveyed is valuable as
supplying fuel to the fire of feeling. There are, were, and always
will be high imaginative points of vantage commanding the broad
fields of knowledge,