16 DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY 



add to this consideration, that of the acknowledged difference 

 in the organic structure of the two languages, notwithstand- 

 ing the affinity between the races. The language of ancient 

 Latium is regarded as possessing less flexibility, a more 

 limited adaptation of words, and " more of realistic tendency" 

 than of " ideal mobility." The predilection for the imita- 

 tion of foreign Greek models in the Augustan age, might, 

 moreover, have been unfavourable to the free outpourings of 

 the native mind and feelings in reference to nature ; but yet, 

 powerful minds, animated by love of country, have effectually 

 surmounted these varied obstacles, by creative individuality, 

 by elevation of ideas, and by tender grace in their presenta- 

 tion. The great poem which is the fruit of the rich genius 

 of Lucretius, embraces the whole Cosmos : it has much 

 affinity with the works of Empedocles and Parmenides ; and 

 the grave tone in which the subject is presented is enhanced 

 by its archaic diction. Poetry and philosophy are closely 

 interwoven in it ; without, however, falling into that coldness 

 of composition, which, as contrasted with Plato's views of 

 nature so rich in imagination, is severely blamed by the rhetor 

 Menander, in the sentence passed by him on the " hymns to 

 nature" ( 22 ). My brother has pointed out, with great in- 

 genuity, the striking analogies and diversities produced by 

 the interweaving of metaphysical abstraction with poetry in 

 the ancient Greek didactic poems, in that of Lucretius, and 

 in the Bhagavad-Gita episode of the Indian epic Mahab- 

 harata ( 23 ) . In the great physical picture of the universe 

 traced by the Roman poet, we find contrasted with his 

 chilling atomic doctrine, and his often extravagantly wild 

 geological fancies, the fresh and animated description of 

 mankind exchanging the thickets of the forest for the pur- 



