382 COSMOS. 



That which we miss in the works of the Greeks, I will not say 

 from their want of susceptibility to the beauties of nature, but 

 from the direction assumed by their literature, is still more rarely 

 to be met with amongst the Romans. A nation which, in accord- 

 ance with the ancient Sicilian habits, evinced a decided predilec- 

 tion for agriculture and other rural pursuits, might have justified 

 other expectations ; but with all their disposition to practical 

 activity, the Romans, with the cold severity and practical 

 understanding of their national character, were less susceptible 

 of impressions of the senses than the Greeks, and were more 

 devoted to every-day reality than to the idealising poetic con- 

 templation of nature. These differences in the habits and 

 feelings of the Greeks and Romans, are reflected in their 

 literature, as is ever the case with the intellectual expression 

 of national character. Here, too, we must notice the acknow- 

 ledged difference that exists in the organic structure of their 

 respective languages, notwithstanding the affinity between the 

 races. The language of ancient Latium possesses less flexibi- 

 lity, a more limited adaptation of words, a stronger character 

 of "practical tendency," than of ideal mobility. Moreover, 

 the predilection evinced in the Augustan age for imitating 

 Greek images, must have been detrimental to the free out- 

 pouring of native feelings, and to the free expression of the 

 natural bent of the mind ; but still there were some powerful 

 minds which, inspired by love of country, were able by 

 creative individuality, by elevation of thought, and by the 

 gentle grace of their representations, to surmount all these 

 obstacles. The great poem of nature, which Lucretius has so 

 richly decked with the charms of his poetic genius, embraces 

 the whole Cosmos. It has much affinity with the writings of 

 Empedocles and Parmenides, the archaic diction of the 

 versification heightening the earnestness of the descriptions. 

 Poetry is here closely interwoven with philosophy, without, 

 however, falling into that frigidity of style which, in contrast 

 with Plato's richly fanciful mode of treating nature, was so 

 severely blamed by Menander the Rhetorician, in the sentence 

 he pronounced on the Hymns of Nature.* 4 My brother has 



* Menandri Ehetoris Comment, de Encomiis, ex rec. Heeren, 1785, 

 sect. i. cap. 5, pp. 38, 39. The severe critic terms the didactic poem 

 On nature, a frigid composition, (v//T/%po7-pov) in which the forces of 

 nature are brought forward divested of their personality Apollo as 



