DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE ROMANS. 383 



shown with much ingenuity the striking analogies and differ- 

 ences which have arisen from the amalgamation of metaphysi- 

 cal abstractions with poetry in the ancient Greek didactic 

 poems, as in the works of Lucretius, and in the episode 

 Bhagavad of the Indian Epic Mahabharata* The great 

 physical picture of the universe by the Roman poet, contrasts 

 in its cold doctrine of atoms, and in its frequently visionary 

 geognostic hypotheses, with his vivid and animated delinea- 

 tion of the advance of mankind from the recesses of the forest 

 to the pursuit of agriculture, to the control of natural foices, 

 the more elevated cultivation of mind and languages, and 

 through the latter to social civilisation, f When in the midst 

 of the active and busy life of the statesman, and in a mind 

 excited by political passion, a keen susceptibility for the beauties 

 of nature and an animated love of rural solitude still subsists, 

 its source must be derived from the depths of a great and 

 noble character. Cicero's writings testify to the truth of this 

 assertion. As is gene/ally known, many points in his book 

 De Legibus, and in that De Oratore, are copied from Plato's 

 Pheedrus ; J yet his delineations of Italian nature do not on 



light, Hera as the concentration of all the phenomena of the atmos- 

 phere, and Jupiter as heat. Plutarch also ridicules the so-called poema 

 of nature, which Lave only the form of poetry (de and. poet., p. 27, 

 Steph.) According to the Stagirite (de Poet., c. i.), Empedocles was 

 more a physiologist than a poet, and has nothing in common with 

 Homer, but the rhythmical measure used by both. 



* "It may appear singular, but yet it is not the less correct, to 

 attempt to connect poetry, which rejoices everywhere in variety of form, 

 colour, and character, with the simplest and most abstract ideas. 

 Poetry, science, philosophy, and history are not necessarily and essen- 

 tially divided ; they are united wherever man is still in unison with the 

 particular stage of his development, or whenever, from a truly poetic 

 mood of mind, he can in imagination bring himself back to it." 

 Wilhem von Humboldt, Gesammelte Werke, bd. i. s. 98-102. (Com- 

 pare also Bernhardy, Rom. Litteratur, s. 215-218, and Fried. Schlegtl, 

 Sammtliche Werke, bd. i. s. 108-110.) Cicero (Ad Quint, fratrem, 

 ii. 11.) ascribes, if not pettishly, at any rate very severely, more tact 

 than creative talent (ingenium) to Lucretius, who has been so highly 

 praised by Virgil, Ovid, and Quintilian. 



f Lucret., lib. v. v. 930-1455. 



* Plato, Phcedr., p. 230; Cicero, de Leg., i. 5, 15; ii. 2, 1-3; ii 5, 6. 

 (Compare Wagner, Comment, perp. in Cic. de Leg., 1814, p. 6); Ok, 

 de Oratore, i. 7, 28, (p 15, Ellendt.) 



