Which Virgil would be fure not to omit in his neis; but thought it worthy of the mouth even of Juno herself:

-Num fiegeis occumbere campis, Num capti potuere capi? Num incenfa cremavit Troja viros? Eneid. 7. v. 294.

Of this nature too is the 'Exgv doga daga, in the Ajax of Sophocles: and if a man would, he might foon collect a pedantic heap of them from the ancient as well as modern poets.

Ver. 26. To this purpose Waller fays finely,
Well-founding verfes are the charms we ufe,
Heroic thoughts, and virtue to infufe:
Things of deep fenfe we may in profe unfold;
But they move more, in lofty numbers told.

Ver. 30. In the fix firft of thefe feventeen verfes, the poet briefly recites the fubjects of his difputations in the preceding books: In the first and fecond, he has treated of the nature of atoms, of their properties, motions, and coalitions: in the third, of the principles of the foul; and has confidered the foul itfelf, as well when united to the body, as when feparated from it; and then in the following eleven verfes, he includes the argument of this book, and fays that he will now treat of the images, which, like films and membranes of bodies, are perpetually flowing from the furface of things, and prefenting their fpecies and figures to us: If they come whole, and without mixture, we then perceive things that truly have a being: if they come maimed, inverted, or joined to one another, from thence proceed the phantafms of Centaurs and the like monfters; and fometimes, too, the spectres of the dead: for the foul, we know, dies with the body. And thus the poet performs the promife he made us, Book I. v. 163. where fpeaking of the foul, he faid he would fing,

What frights her waking thoughts, what cheats

her eyes,

When fleeping or difeas'd, fhe thinks she spies Thin ghofts in various fhapes about the bed, And feems to hear the voices of the dead? Moreover, the four first of these verfes, in the original, are repeated verbatim, from Book III. v. 31. though our interpreter, in this place, has varied in his tranflation of them.

Ver. 37. He means the fpecies, or forms of things, that are commonly called intentional. Democritus, and after him Épicurus, called them židwλæ, ritus, and iμivas, idols, images, and membranes: Cicero, imagines: Quintillian, figuras Catius, fpera: Lucretius, effigies, imagines, fpecies, formas, exuvies, fpolia: and, quafi membranas, or Cortices, &c. Quorum incurlu," fays Cicero, non modo videmus, fed etiam cogitamus:" By whofe incurfion, that is, by whofe prefenting or fhowing of themselves to the mind, or to the fenfe, we not only fee, but think likewife.

Ver. 41, 42. Lucretius, after having copioufly dakourfed of the nature of the foul, and endeayoured to prove it mortal, goes on here, and pre

tends to folve one argument, which fill feemed to prefs his opinion, and that is drawn from the various apparitions that fometimes prefent the images of our deceafed friends, and make fo lively and vigorous an impreffion on the fancy, that we cannot but think them real, and fomething be. fide naked imagination: but because he inter mixes this with his difcourfe of the fenfes, and

makes it depend on the Epicurean explication of vifion, I fhall be obliged briefly to confider his doctrine, and that being overthrown, discourse of the ftrength of the argument. Well then, not to trouble him about his other fenfes, concerning vi fion, he delivers this: Thin fubtle images conftantly rife from the furfaces of all bodies, which make an impreffion on our organs, and then the notice is communicated to the foul. To confute this, we need look no farther than his own prisciples, and confider that he has made weight a property of matter, and an endeavour downward a neceffary adjunct: And, therefore, all motion upward is violent, and proceeds from external preffure or impulfe.

:

Now any man knows, that the fpecies are pro pagated any way with equal eafe, and we fee as well when the object is placed below our eye, is when above it: But there is no force to make thefe images rife, and therefore it is impoffible they fhould. Their own nature opposes the air (as all muft grant) that lies behind the object, is unfit to give the impulfe to the folid parts of the upper furface, that on the fide, to drive it upward and I believe none will think the images are raised by the air that is perpendicular to the fuperficies; and this argument more strongly concludes, if we confider his explication of du tance, for there he requires, that thefe images fhould drive on all the air between the object and the eye, though it often refifts and beats furiouly against them, which cannot be done but by a co fiderable force, and a greater ftrength than can be allowed thefe fubtle forms, though rifing from any body, in the moft convenient pofition, and when their weight can affitt their motion: But more; if fuch images arofe, it must be granted, that the object must seem changed every minute, and it would be impoffible to look upon a cherry for the space of an hour, and ftill perceive it blush with the fame colour; becaufe every image that moves our eye, cannot be above one hundred times thinner than the skin of that fruit; for believe any man will freely grant, that this skin fo divided, will be too tranfparent to be perceived; or if it may fill be feen, let the divifion proceed, and at last the abfurdity will prefs, and follow too fatt and too clofely to be avoided: 1 fhal not mention, that contrary winds must disturb thefe images, break their loofe order, and hinder their paffage; but only take notice, that it is im poffible fuch images fhould enter at the eye, and reprefent an object as great as we perceive it: thefe images rifing from the furface, muft proceed by parallel lines; and their parts maintain as great a diftance as the parts of the body whence they fprung; because they come from every part

for

fince they they caft off forms that are more folid and condensed, especially fince there are minute corpufcles placed in the furface, or outmost front of things, that can eafily difengage themselves and fly away. Epicurus, in Laertius, fays, thefe images come, ἀπὸ τῆς σωμάτων ἐπιπολής, from the furface of bodies. And again: xai pìr naì rúra óμowcxáμονες τοῖς στερεμνίοις εἰσι λεπ]ότησεν ἀπέχοντες μακρὰν τῶν φαινομένων, τέλος δὲ τάς τύπος εἴδωλα προσαγορές | Hiv, Laert. lib. x.

Ver. 57. The words in the original are,

Et vituli cum membranas de corpore fummo - Nafcentes mittunt.

The new-born calves drop the pellicules in which they are wrapped up. How well our tranflator has here followed the sense of his author, the reader is left to judge.

Ver. 58. See the note on ver. 590 Book III. Ver. 60. This and the following verse are not fo much as hinted at in Lucretius.

Ver. 67. This is the image of their form; for form according to Epicurus, is that which continually remains in the furface of the body, while the image, as a fpoil, is continually flying away. For this we have the teftimony of Empiricus, who fays, Epicurus taught that fome colour, for example, always inheres in a folid body, but that fomething gets loofe from it, and this is its image.

Ver. 71. In thefe nineteen verfes, he confirms what he affumed in the preceding argument, and proves it by an example, which demonftrates, that colours get loose, and are reflected from the furfaces of things, in fuch a manner as argues likewife the direption and getting off of images. For the curtains, fays he, that are hung up in a theatre, reflect their colours on all the decorations of the ftage, and on the fpectators,

Ver. 75. That tapestry hangings were hung up over the Roman theatres to fhade the fpectators from the rays of the fun, we learn from many of the ancients. Virgil, Georg. III. v. 24. Vel fcena ut verfis difcedat frontibus, utque Purpurea intexti tollunt aulæa Britanni.

Now thefe hangings were called "Aulæa, ab auJa Attali," from the court or palace of Attalus, the wealthy king of Pergamus, who, having no children, made the commonwealth of Rome his heir. He first found out the art of inweaving and embroidering with gold; and to this invention, the Babylonians added feveral colours, as we learn from Pliny, lib. viii. cap. 58. Hence The Attalic and Babylonian garments and hangings were in great esteem among the ancients, Sil. Ital, lib. 14.

Læta Tyrus, quæque Attalicis variata per artem
Aulæis fcribuntur acu-

They were likewife called " peripet afmata," from #igitalev, "ab extendendo," by reafon of the largeness of them. Lucretius, in this place, calls them, "vel magnis intenta theatris," and

Crura diftincto religavit auro,

Luteo plantas cohibente focco.

The colour they called rufus was a deep red, or flesh colour. Catull. in Egnat. Quod quifque minxit, hoc fibi folet mane Dentes atque ruffam provocare gingivam. The colour ferruginus, of which our tranflator make no mention, is not the colour of rufty iron, as font will have it to be, but of smooth and polishe iron, after it has been heated in the fire, and a grown cold again, as the buckles we wear mourning. This is not what we call the brigh brown, as the London edition of the Dauphin' Virgil, on the eighteenth verfe of the fecond logue erroneously interprets it, but rather colour, and feems to be a mixture of red, blak, and cerulean, whence it is frequently ufed for tho three colours. For red, En. xi. v. 772.

-Ferrugine clarus et oftro. For black, Æn. vi. v. 303, fpeaking of Charon. Et ferrugineâ fubvectat corpora cymbȧ. And Georg i. ver. 467, of an eclipfe of the fun, Cum caput obfcurâ nitidum ferrugine tinxit. For cerulean in Plautus. Mil. Glor. 4. 43. Facito ut venias huc ornatu naucleriaco; caufa Habeas ferrugineam, culturam ad oculos linea Palliolum habeas ferrugineum : nam is color the lafficus.

That is to fay, cerulean, or the colour of the w ter of the fea.

t

Ver. 81. He means the images of the gods that were in the theatres; for games and plays was a part of the Pagan religion.

Ver. 82. What Lucretius here fays, and his tranflator means, is this, the more the walls of the theatre are darkened, fo that no place be open

the fides to let in the light, the more, &c. The words in the original are,

Et quanto circùm magè funt inclufa theatri,
Mania, tam magis hæc intús perfufa lepore
Omnia conrident conrepta luce diei.

hefe images

-Still preserve their frame,

came.

nd now, in thefe eight verfes, he fhows that he id not teach that without caufe; for the reafon hy they retain the fame form is, because they away from the surfaces of bodies, from which ery individual part of the images gets away with ual facility, and thofe parts are not conveyed m thence through any mazes or involutions, as our, fmoke, vapour, and other things of the like ture are, because they flow from the interior rts of bodies; and for that reafon fly away coned and difperfed.

Ver. 101. Laftly, he proves, in these fourteen fes, that there are fuch things as thefe images, ich get loofe, and fly away from the surfaces bodies; and that the images that we fee in rrors, in water, or in any smooth and polished dy, are exactly like the things whofe images ey are; therefore thofe forms must neceffarily compofed of the images that flow from the tances of the things themfelves; for no other fon of that fo exact fimilitude can be given, that the very utmost film, which before ad ed to the whole thing, is feparated from it, t were a membrane, and ftrikes into the glafs water. And you ought to take notice, that image of each thing that is feen in the glafs, in water, is not fingle and one only, but many; dich, nevertheless, by being reflected to the eyes a continual and never-ceafing reverbation, not to be many, but only one image. Exience indeed fhows that the images are tranftted into the glass from the very bodies whofe ges they are; fince when thofe bodies are prethe images ftrike into the glafs; but if any g interpole, their progrefs into the glass is inapted: befides, if the bodies move, they move ke manner; if the bodies are inverted, they are inverted: if the bodies depart, the images away; and when the bodies are abfent, there ain no images at all.

Ver 115, 116. Having hitherto proved the tence of these images, and being now going explain their properties, he firit teaches, in fe twelve verfes, that the most extreme tenuity, en fuch as can fcarce be conceived, must be alwed them. To comprehend this aright, imagine, the images are nothing elfe but the most tle contextures of atoms in the nature of pels. And how prodigious is the fubtlenefs of , fince innumerable myriads of them are

moft atoms, that are continually flowing from bodies into the ambient fpace; in which Epicurus follows the opinion chiefly of Plato and Enpedocles, who held images to be certain, material, or fubftantial effluviums. But Ariftotle taught that they are mere accidents, that have no fubftance whatever; bnt that, nevertheless, they are produced from vifible bodies, and that, paffing through the air, they affect the fense of fight, and are reflected from mirrors, and other things of like nature. But others of the learned are of opinion, that images are nothing but light, either directed from lucid bodies, or reflected from others, and ftriking upon the eye. But as to the opinion of Epicurus and Lucretius, there is this difficulty: How it is poffible, fince fo any particles are continually flowing from the furface of things, that every vifible body fhould not be at length quite wafted and confumed away? St. Auguftin, in Epift. Ivi. to Diofc. ftarts the fame queftion. To which this answer may be given, that thofe vifible things may be repaired by other corpufcles that are continually flowing to them, fo that as much as they lofe of their fubftance by the particles that flow from them to other things, fo much may, on the other hand, come to them from elsewhere, and repair that lofs. Nor is it to be feared, what fome allege, that the thing it-felf would in this cafe change its figure, fince the particles that come to it are of the fame figure with thofe that go from it. It may farther be anfwered, that images are fo very fubtle that nothing perceptible can appear to be wanting on the furface of things, though these images do flow from them. And this Lucretius himself explains in the following argument.

Ver. 116. In thefe two verfes, our interpreter but obfcurely, if at all, expreffes the fenfe of his author, who inftances, in the principles of which all things are made, and by way of fimilitude, endeavours to prove, that these images are of a moft tenuious nature. For, fays he, they confift of atoms which are invisible to our fight and more minute than all those things that the eyes can scarce, nay, not at all perceive: it is therefore no wonder that our fenfes cannot perceive the images of things, while flowing from the bodies they glide through the air, unless they are reflected from the fmoothness of mirrers, or of any other smooth and polished bodies, fince they cannot perceive even the atoms of which they are