less the passion or the
action of humanity than the analysis of the same. The 'Faust' of
Goethe, the 'Prelude' and 'Excursion' of Wordsworth, Browning's
'Sordello' and Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' together with the
'Musings' of Coleridge and the 'In Memoriam' of Tennyson, may be
roughly reckoned in this class. It will be noticed that nothing has
been said about professedly religious poetry, much of which attaches
itself to mysticism, while some, like the 'Divine Comedy' of Dante,
is philosophic in the truest sense of the word.

Where, then, are we to place Lucretius? He was a Roman, imbued with
the didactic predilections of the Latin race; and the didactic
quality of the 'De Rerum Natura' is unmistakable. Yet it would be
uncritical to place this poem in the class which derives from
Hesiod. It belongs really to the succession of Xenophanes,
Parmenides, and Empedocles. As such it was an anachronism. The
specific moment in the development of thought at which the
Parmenidean Epic was natural has been already described. The Romans
of the age of Lucretius had advanced far beyond it. The idealistic
metaphysics of the Socratic school, the positive ethics of the
Stoics, and the profound materialism of Epicurus, had accustomed the
mind to habits of exact and subtle thinking, prolonged from
generation to generation upon the same lines of speculative inquiry.
Philosophy expressed in verse was out of date. Moreover, the very
myths had been rationalised. Euhemerus had even been translated into
Latin by Ennius, and his prosaic explanations of Greek legend had
found acceptance with the essentially positive Roman intellect.
Lucretius himself, it may be said in passing, thought it worth while
to offer a philosophical explanation of the Greek mythology. The
Cybele of the poets is shown in one of his sublimest passages (ii.
600-645) to be Earth. To call the sea Neptune, corn Ceres, and wine
Bacchus, seems to him a simple folly (ii. 652-657). We have already
seen how he reduces the fiends and spectres of the Greek Hades to
facts of moral subjectivity (iii. 978-1023). In another place he
attacks the worship of Phoebus and the stars (v. 110); in yet
another he upsets the belief in the Centaurs, Scylla, and Chimaera
(v. 877-924) with a gravity which is almost comic. Such arguments
formed a necessary element in his polemic against foul religion
(foeda religio--turpis religio); to deliver men from which (i.
62-112), by establishing firmly