ile Lucretius was engaged in this work, he fell into a state of
insanity, occasioned, as is supposed, by a philtre, or love-potion, given
him by his wife Lucilia. The complaint, however, having lucid intervals,
he employed them in the execution of his plan, and, soon after it was
finished, laid violent hands upon himself, in the forty-third year of his
age. This fatal termination of his life, which perhaps proceeded from
insanity, was ascribed by his friends and admirers to his concern for the
banishment of one Memmius, with whom he was intimately connected, and for
the distracted state of the republic. It was, however, a catastrophe
which the principles of Epicurus, equally erroneous and irreconcilable to
resignation and fortitude, authorized in particular circumstances. Even
Atticus, the celebrated correspondent of Cicero, a few years after this
period, had recourse to the same desperate expedient, by refusing all
sustenance, while he laboured under a lingering disease.

It is said that Cicero revised the poem of Lucretius after the death of
the author, and this circumstance is urged by the abettors of atheism, as
a proof that the principles contained in the work had the sanction of his
authority. But no inference in favour of Lucretius's doctrine can justly
be drawn from this circumstance. (70) Cicero, though already
sufficiently acquainted with the principles of the Epicurean sect, might
not be averse to the perusal of a production, which collected and
enforced them in a nervous strain of poetry; especially as the work was
likely to prove interesting to his friend Atticus, and would perhaps
afford subject for some letters or conversation between them. It can
have been only with reference to composition that the poem was submitted
to Cicero's revisal: for had he been required to exercise his judgment
upon its principles, he must undoubtedly have so much mutilated the work,
as to destroy the coherency of the system. He might be gratified with
the shew of elaborate research, and confident declamation, which it
exhibited, but he must have utterly disapproved of the conclusions which
the author endeavoured to establish. According to the best information,
Lucretius died in the year from the building of Rome 701, when Pompey was
the third time consul. Cicero lived several years beyond this period,
and in the two last years of his life, he composed those valuable works
which contain sentiments diametrically repugnan