And many feeming barren wives have been, Ver. 1266. In these two verses he tells us, that what we eat and drink is of great moment, either to promote or hinder barrennefs: because fome forts of food produce feed, while others diminish and waste it. And to this opinion of the poet our phyficians fubfcribe. Ver. 1268. The caufe of fterility, alleged in these seventeen verfes, from the wanton motions of females in the a&t of generation, can neither be accused of abfurdity, nor of chastity. Whoever would fee this paffage of our poet explained at large, may confult Donatus, ad Eunuchum Terentii, A&t v. Sc. 1. Martial. lib. 1. Epig. 68. et Schioppius ad Priapeia, Ep. 18. Ver. 1285. Lastly; fince love is caufed by images; and fince the images, that flow from beautiful perfons, chiefly excite that passion, how comes it to pass that fome men doat on dowdies and deformity? Take care how you say that this comes from above; for the proverb lies: No marriages are made in heaven, nor do the gods any more concern theinfelves about them, than R men who have been long fince dead. No, but it is good nature, eafinefs of temper, modesty, and cleanliness, that renders homely women charming; and fometimes too a long acquaintance and familiarity beget love. Epicurus to Herodotus: ἡ συνησία ὤνης μὲν ἐδέποτε, ἀγαπητὸν δὲ, ε τὸ μὴ έβλαψε. Cupid, the god of love, fo called à cupiendo. Some feign two of them; one honeft, the other bafe. The honeft was born of Jupiter and Venus; but fome affign Mercury for his father; the base was the fon of Erebus and Nox. Cupid is painted blind, and armed with two darts or arrows, one tipped with gold, the other with lead: that taufes love, and this drives it away. Ovid Metam. i. ver. 568. Fque fagittiferâ promfit duo tela pharetrâ Diverforum operum: fugat hoc, facit illud amo[cutâ; rem: Quod facit, auratum eft, et cufpide fulget aQuod fugat, obtufum eft, et habet fub arundine plumbum. Dryden, from the Knight's Tale of Chaucer, defcribing the Temple of Venus, fays of Cupid, Hard by his mother flood an infant love; With wings difplay'd; his eyes were banded o'er; His hands a bow, his back a quiver bore, Supply'd with arrows bright and keen, a deadly store. gine; but rather, because I take the fubject itself to be of fuch a nature, that scarce the dulleft capacity needs an interpreter to understand it. ANIMADVERSION, BY WAY OF RECAPITULATION, ON THE FOURTH BOOK OF LUCRETIUS. In this book are contained but very few affertions that a philofopher will approve of: For within the whole extent of philofophy, there is not a weaker, or more trifling opinion than that of Epicurus concerning images: For let it be granted, That fuch fubtle exuvie, or minute membranes are continually getting loofe, and flying off from the furface of things, yet, when they fly to and fro on all fides, they must of neceffity mutually break and tear one another, till at length they will be fo mixed and blended together, that we should not be able to fee or imagine any thing, but Centaurs, Scyllas, and fuch like monsters. Nevertheless we must confefs, that Lucretius has to ver. 480. difputed of these spectres and images with great sharpness of wit, and elegancy of style, and that he has adorned the fable with all the embellishments of art. From thence to ver. 556. the poet treats the fceptics with the scorn, feverity, and indignation, which they justly merit: for those animals ought to be contemned and fuppreffed: Nor would I blame his great indulgence for the fenfes, had he not allotted them a more extensive authority than they are well able to execute: I acknowledge the fenfes not to be fallacious; but am I therefore to meafure and determine the magnitude of the fun, moon, and ftars, by my eyes? This opinion, to fay no worfe of it, favours too much of rufticity. What Lucretius urges to ver. 2. that found, favour, and odour are corporeal, and that all fenfation is made and performed by bodies, none will offer to deny, except fuch only as are seduced into error by the qualities and other unwarrantable opinions of brain sick Aristotle. In the next place, as to what he afferts to ver. 832. concerning imagination, why need we give our opinion, fince there are no fuch things as images? And his foolish affertion to ver. 859. which teaches, That our feveral members, which are fo artfully, and with fo great wisdom compofed, and compacted together, were not made to the end we might ufe them; but that when they were already made, they laid hold of that office and function, which first offered and prefented itself to each of them, deserves no other anfwer, than a most profound laughter and derifion. Ver. 1293. See the note on book i. ver. 363. And thus Lucretius concludes his difcourfe con- We may bear with what he advances to ver cerning the nature of love; fome whole paffages 877. concerning hunger and thirst: but from of which I have purpofely avoided to explain: thence to ver 905. in which is contained the Enot for the reafon which fome perhaps may ima-picurean doctrine of the motion of animals, we difcover nothing but what is weak and foolish. | tal, wake eternally? All that he fays of dreams to ver. 1036. is downright trifling. We have given our thoughts of the reft of this book in the note on v. 1063. And fince fleep, according to Lucretius, is occafioned by a difperfion of the foul, why do not we, who are endowed with a foul that is immor PREFACE TO THE HAVING in the preface to the first volume given the public fo full and ample an account of my defign in publishing thefe notes and animadverfions on this English tranflation of Lucretius, as likewife of the helps I made ufe of, and of the method I have obferved in this undertaking, which I take to be the chief business of a Prefacer, I fhall not long detain my reader by way of introduction to this fecond volume, that contains only the two last books of my author; who, hay. ing in these two books treated of a great variety of noble subjects, has afforded me a just occasion | of fwelling this volume to almost an equal number of sheets with the former, though computing the number of verfes, it contains but little more than one third of the whole poem of Lucretius: The length, however, if I may judge of the readers fatisfaction in the perufal, by my own in the compiling, will not, I hope, feem tedious to him; and I flatter myfelf, that I shall not weary and grow irksome to those whom it has been my principal study and defign at once to inftruct and divert. When the fubject of which my author was treating was naturally crabbed and abftrufe, as in the two first books, in which he difputes chiefly of the nature and properties of his atoms; I thought it not convenient to dwell too long upon it; but endeavoured only to render it plain and intelligible with as much brevity as the province of an interpreter, which I had undertaken, would allow But when he came to treat of things, which I judged would be more entertaining, as of the origin of the world; of the motion of the heavens; of the fun, moon, and stårs; of the firft men, and of their manners and way of life; of the first inftitution of kings, magiftrates and Jaws; of the first invention of arts and fciences; of the things we call meteors, as thunder, lightning, whirlwinds, earthquakes, &c. Of the caufes of rain, wind, hail, fnow, and froft; of the flames that are ejected from the bowels of Mount Etna; of the annual increase of the river Nile; of the Averni; of certain miraculous fountains; of the loadftone; and of the cause and origin of plagues and difeafes; of all which, as well as of many other fubjects of the like nature, Lucretius has difputed in these two last books; when he came, I fay, to treat of thefe matters, he afforded me a wider field to enlarge and expatiate upon; and I have laid hold of the opportunity he gave me, to illuftrate all thofe feveral SECOND VOLUME. fubjects, with the opinions of all the most cele, brated, as well ancient, as modern philosophers, concerning them: In which I prefume I fhall not be deemed to have tranfgreffed the bounds, which were formerly prefcribed to an interpreter, who, as Ammonius allows, "Neque benevolentia ductus conari debet, quæ perperam dicuntur confentanea facere, eaque veluti a tripode excipere, nej que rectê prodita pravo fenfu per odium carpore fed eorum effe incorruptus judex, atque auctores fenfum aperire imprimis, illiufque placita interpretari; tum quod alii, et ipfe fentiat afferre." Befides, I cannot apprehend, but that it will be acceptable to the public to fee at one view the different opinions of the learned men in all ages, on the above fubjects; and this is what I have endeavoured to oblige my readers with in the following fheets. I will conclude this preface with a few lines in my own vindication, and then take my leave. I foresee that I have rendered myself liable to be carped at, and that I shall be cenfured by fome critics, on account of fome particular words, and certain ways of expreffion, which I have constantly obferved and made ufe of through the whol course of this work; contrary to the generally received cuftom and practice of many, nay, perhaps of most of our prefent writers. I need not be told, that, in matter of fpeech, when cuftom has once prevailed, we are abfolute ly obliged to fubmit to whatever it has impofed upon us; and that it is not lawful, on any pretence whatsoever, to refift the laws of that fovereign, I had almost said tyrant of languages. Cui penes arbitrium est et jus norma loquendi. Horat. But on the other hand, in language, as in most things elfe, there is a good cuftom and a bad; the good ought to be the standard of propriety and correctness of fpeech; and the bad ought care. fully to be avoided, as the corrupter of it: fo that the main difficulty lies in difcerning rightly be tween them: But how this may be done is not our prefent business to inquire, Dr. Swift, in his letter to the Lord High Treasurer, with good reason complains, that our language is extremely imperfect, that its daily improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily corruptions, and that the pretenders to polish and refine it have chiefly multiplied abufes and abfurdities; and fo far he is certainly in the right: but I cannot agree with him when he, goes on, and says, That in many instances it offends against every part of grammar. He seems to impute to the language itself the faults of our uncorrect writers. All languages, but more efpecially the modern, and ours amongst the reft, have certain idioms and properties of fpeech peculiar to each of them, in which nevertheless they offend against the general rules of grammar. Of this fo many inftances might be given, that it is needlefs to give any. Modern and living languages are not to be fixed by the standard, nor afcertained by the maxims and rules of the ancient and the dead; and their chief beauties confift in frequent eman. cipations from the fervile laws of ancient grammar. A man may write ungrammatically, and yet write very good English; according to this excellent faying of Quintillian, " Aliud eft grammaticè, aliud Latinè loqui." I now return to what gave occafion to these reflections, and, among feveral other inftances that my readers may obferve, will mention only one or two, in which I have varied from fome other writers of these days. Phenomenon is a word that has been introduced into our language: Neceflity brought it in to avoid a circumlocution: For it is originally Greek, and fignifies an appearance in the heaven, or in the air. Now, fome inftead of phenomenon, leaving out the two final letters, make it phenomen, and fay in the plural, phenomens; both which I take to be altogether abfurd: Others who write phenomenon in the fingular number, when they have occafion to use it in the plural, fay phenomena, which, in my opinion, is contrary to the analogy of our language; and others again, in the fame number, phenomena's, which I almoft dare pronounce to be a mosfter in fpeech: For my own part, whenever I have been obliged to use it in the plural, I have not ftuck to fay, phenomenons, rather than the phenomena, as it is the original; and this I am fure is more conformable to the analogy of our language, in which the difference between the fingular and the plural number, even in the words borrowed from the learned languages, confifts not in any variation of the final fyllable, but in the addition of the letters to the fingular number. Thus, in the following words, idea, anathema, chimera, compendium, epithalamium, which, together with many other, we have taken from the learned languages, and naturalized in our own, we fay not in the plural, ideæ, auathe. mata, chimeræ, compendia, epithalamia, even though we have retained their original terminations in the fingular, but ideas, anathemas, chimeras, compendiums, epithalamiums. Besides, since there is no method yet proposed, nor any rules yet agreed upon, and fettled among us, for thế afcertaining and fixing our language for ever, why has not every man an equal fhare of liberty, not only to introduce and fet up a new word, if there be occafion for it, but even to use one that is already introduced, in a different manner from the rest of his contemporary writers, especially fince they themselves use it differently from one another?" Licuit, femperque licebit." This, I hope, is fufficient to excufe, if not to justify, my having used the word phenomenons in the plural number; at leaft it will make it appear to be an error, not of ignorance, but of judgment, and which I declare myself always ready to recant and rectify, whenever I can be better informed, and convinced by good reasons that I am in the wrong. Again nothing is more frequent with our prefent writers than the following way of expression: They greedily embrace that doctrine, be it never fo erroneous. This example is taken from one of our most celebrated authors for correctnefs of ftyle: nevertheless I take the word never in that place to be a barbariím in speech: It ought to be ever; be it ever so erroneous: This way of expreffion is an idiom of our language; partly elliptic, partly a tranfpofition of the words; which, when placed in due order, and without any word understood, will run as follows: How erroneous foever it be. I have not room in this place to undertake the difquifition of this doubt, nor to give my reafons at large, why, whenever I have had occafion to make ufe of the like expreffion, I have diffented from most of our other writers, and employed the word ever, rather than never: But this, together with fome hundreds of obfervations, relating to our native language, and which I have been many years digefting in my thoughts, I intend to publish in a fhort time, as an effay towards the correcting, improving, and afcertaining of it, under this title, Remarks upon the English Tongue. BOOK V. ΤΗΣ ARGUMENT. THE beginning of this book, to ver. 60. contains, I. The praise of Epicurus, who, because he was the first that inftructed mortal men in the art of true wifdom, the poet fays, ough: defervedly to be reckoned among the number of the gods, rather than either Ceres, or Bacchus, or Hercule whose inventions were lefs beneficial to human life, than that true and wife philofophy, which Epicurus taught. II. From ver. 59. to ver. Ico. he propofes the argument of this book, and fhows the connection between these subjects he is now going to handle, and those of which he has already difputed in the four preceding books; and being now about to treat of the firft rife, and future diffolution of the world, he teaches, III. That the earth, the fea, the heavens, the stars, the fun and the moon, are mortal; and that they are not animated, nor endowed with a divine body, nor are parts of God himself, as the Stoic philofophers believed them to be: then he afferts, that neither the heavens, as the general opinion is, nor indeed any part or parts of the world, are the mansions or abodes of the gods. IV. From ver. 99. to ver. 266. That none may believe that the world was made by the gods, and is therefore immortal; he heaps up feveral reasons, drawn as well from the nature of the gods, as from the defectiveness and ill contrivance of this vaft frame of the universe, by which he endeavours to prove, that it was not the workmanship of a Deity. V. From ver. 265. to ver. 461. he argues, that the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, of which the world confifts, are, nevertheless, generated and mortal; and, confequently, that the world itself once had a beginning, and will have an end. And he confirms and proves, by feveral other arguments, that this univerfal frame has not exifted from all eternity, nor will be immortal, and remain undissolved to all futurity. VI. From ver. 460. to ver. 551. he treats of the first beginning of the world, and of each of the different parts that compofe the whole, and affigns them their proper and respective seats and places, according as they are more or lefs heavy or light. VII. From ver. 550. to ver. 655. he propofes many difficulties concerning the motions of the heavens and of the planets; but determines nothing for certain then he teaches, why the whole frame of the earth, which is a heavy body, hangs in the air, without being fupported by any foundation: And, at length, takes the dimensions of the fun, the moon, and the ftars, and pronounces them neither bigger nor less than they feem to us to be. VIII. From ver. 654. to ver. 824. he gives several reafons of the fummer and winter folftices: tells what causes night: why Aurora, or the morning, precedes the fun: why the nights and days mutually overcome and chafe away each other by turns: why the moon changes her face and fi gure; and why the fun and moon are fometimes eclipfed. IX. From ver. 823. to ver. 894. he defcends from the heavens, and defcribes the first rife of herbs, trees, birds, beafts, and man; and tells the order in which each kind of things was produced out of the earth, one after another: to wit, first the grafs, then the trees, next the birds, then beafts, and last of all man. X. From ver. 89c. to ver. 979. he grants, That monsters, certain maimed and imperfect animals, were born in the be ginning of the world; but afferts, that nature gave them not the power to propagate their kinds: Hence he takes occafion to deride and explode all Chimeras, Centaurs, Scyllas, and the other fabulous and monstrous productions, which the poets feign that nature brings forth; and afferts, that there never were, nor could be any fuch prodigies of nature, neither at the beginning of the world, nor at any time fince to this day; and also, that no fuch things can be produced hereafter. XI. From ver. 978. to ver. 1156. the poet defcribes the ftrength of the first men, their robust conftitution of body, their poornefs of living, their food, wit, manners, houses, and marriages. XII. From ver. 1155. to 1223. he teaches, That, after fire was thrown down upon earth by lightning, men began to be more civilized; and, having invented how to drefs meat, fared more deliciously than before. That they then first established societies, entered into leagues and alliances, fhared the land among them. felves, and chose kings to govern them, who were either the most strong, the most beautiful, or the moft witty among them; and were elected for one or more of thefe three reafons: but that at length, gold being found out, the richer commanded the poorer; and, envy fpringing up among them, a fedition arofe, the kings were depofed, republics inftituted, and law, established, to fecure every one in his property. XIII. From ver. 1232. to ver. 1326. he treats of the fear of the gods, and of the first rife of religion; which he afcribes merely to ignorance of the Divine Nature, and of natural causes. XIV. From ver. 1325. to the end of the book, he teaches how the feveral metals, gold, filver, brass, iron, and lead, came first to be discovered; mentions the first arts of war, and the weapons then used; and concludes with the invention and progress of spinning, weaving, agri. culture, failing, music, poetry, and other arts. WHAT verfe can foar on fo fublime a wing, For, if we view the mighty things he fhow'd, ΙΟ Yet men might ftill have liv'd without these two, His useful benefits are rais'd above Thrace? For now, ev'n now, vaft troops of monsters fill 61 His fteps I trace; and prove, as things begun, And how the year his crooked walk attends : If they admire, and view the world above, 9c( They are entrapp'd, they bind their flavish chain, ΙΟΙ } (Strong harden'd prejudice will scarce remove) And fo are all things new and unconfin'd To fenfe, nor which through that can reach the mind, 110 Whofe notice, eye, nor hand, thofe only ways, But now before I teach these truths, more fure To prove the world is mortal, and may die, 132 |