Materials, daily losses to repair?

Since compounds ne'er those properties can share :
As union, motion, concord, forces, weight

And all those powers by which things generate.'-1. 633.
'Chief among these stood great Empedocles

Of Agrigentum, born among the seas,

In Sicily's fair isle-three stretching sides

Their lengths exhibit to the azure tides.'-l. 785.

Whose sides, in the name of grammar? but truths are occasionally more plainly spoken;

All things to others change, and all things come and go.'-1. 871. We should have considered 'globules' as a trisyllable an άα Xeyoμevo, had not two similar curiosities claimed our notice, 'pustules' in three, and pellicules' in four syllables. The beauty loses by repetition; but as the old iambographer says,

'Etiam capillus unus habet umbram suam.'

'Blood springs from globules in union rolled.'-1. 910.
'The body glows with reddened pustules.'

'And new-dropt calves their thin pellicules.'

In v. 948, the subtlety, but real weakness of the arguments of Anaxagoras, are strongly brought before us, thus:

'Here Anaxagoras appears to shake,

With subtle argument, the side we take.'

The Doctor had said before of him that he was a very sorry

reasoner.

It has been affirmed that truth lies at the bottom of a well,* and it appears from an account given by Dr. Busby, which he has been kind enough to appropriate gratuitously to Lucretius, that some people, though possibly but few, dive into the well, or to use the Doctor's more correct language, dive the well, for it. To those who are not divers, he promises to disclose his rigid principles in verse that flows with Hyblæan sweetness.'

hæc ratio plerumque videtur

Tristior esse, quibus non est tractata

this system seems uncouth

To those who seldom dive the well of truth.'

The Mighty Mother,' whom Pope sings, must surely have inspired these lines.

Great mother of the Gods this earth's proclaimed ;

Of man and brute the common parent framed;
Her the learned Grecian poets sung of old,

Her car through lofty heaven two lions rolled;

By this they (i. e. the lions) taught that mid th' æthereal plains
Hangs the vast globe, whose weight no base sustains.'~1. 661.

Book III. Grisly Potentate,' and Mortal Monarch,' as personifications of death, are not very classical.

Since then the nature of the mind and soul

Forms but a part of man, let those who stole

From Heliconia (where is that?) HARMONY's proud name
(To grace their system of the human frame,

And give the soul a name it never knew)

Retake it-Memmius list-I sing to you.'-1. 144.

We are informed, in line 278, that the subtle seeds of four natures rove so confusedly, and move so intermixed,'

That those from these no interval divides;

Each with the others constantly resides.'-1. 281.

Vapour is cold, the trembler Fear awakes,

Horror excites, and every member shakes.'-1. 313.

Their genial powers so mutually employ,
Divide them, you vitality destroy.'-l. 372.

The following is a fair specimen of didascalic familiarity:
When o'er the body death assumes his reign,

Do, or do not, some seeds of soul remain?

If in the affirmative you once reply,

You fairly grant me her mortality.'-1.800.

Of maggots, the Doctor, as if irritated, speaks in high-sounding language.

Whence all the boneless, bloodless, tribes that swarm

The bloated limbs and take the flesh by storm ? —I. 810.

Of the fourth book it is our decided opinion that no translation should be given. Dryden adds even the embellishment of luscious verse to those portions of it which are simply philosophical. We are ready to admit that the present translation of these verses affords the most favourable instances of poetry in the two volumes; but the well-known apology of Ausonius, if it ever occurred to Dr. Busby, should have been considered by him as indefensible. Creech had the delicacy to omit the more flagrant passages, which his kind editor has supplied from Dryden. Marchetti is gross-Good, disgusting.

Doctor Busby is extremely fond of addressing the Muse, when Lucretius is not thinking about her. Teach me, oh Muse' is the general translation of expediam. Occasionally she is invoked as a goddess, which, were it not for the opening address to Venus, would be direct heresy. That invocation has raised much dispute among the commentators; and all being jealous lest their author's irreligion should not be consistent, attempt to explain it away. Nardius. the Florentine editor, gravely informs us, that

R30611

Venus, in the passages to which we allude, means nothing but pot-herbs.

Lucretius is, in parts, so difficult, that we can sympathize with a translator who has many leagues of desert to pass through before he reaches an oasis. But our sympathy is much diminished when he strides on at the same careless pace, through hard and rare.' 'Contrary parts the altered figure wears

6

The dexter side the sinister appears:
Thus if a mask of humid clay should fall
On the hard stones, or dash against a wall,
Though beaten back, yet still the face remains,
And undisturbed its character retains ;
Starts out posterior-all the hollow fills,

And, by inversion, still the face reveals.'-1. $52.
The dexter side shall now the left become,

And now the sinister the right resume;

Through constant change the shade its course pursues,
Its primal shape alternately renews.-I. 373.

The Doctor mentions a property of shadows, which we do not before remember to have seen.

These [i. e. light shadows] as they ambulating visions bring,
Give the obedient mind a kindred spring-

Inspire a will-—'—I. 1036.

From books V. and VI. we had selected a more than usual quantity of gems; but we must be brief.

We are informed that

-the vast universe, the All of All,

Stedfast shall stand, nor to destruction fall.'-1. 465.

and immediately after, that

-the dismal portal gapes for all,

And sure destruction on the world will fall.'

On the origin of language, we are thus questioned:
'Could one alone by name each creature call,
And no one else by names distinguish all ?'
And is it wonderful that men, supplied
With vocal organs, and in whom reside

The powers of intellect, should names devisé

For objects constantly before their eyes?'-1. 1320.
-I feel

Sublimer energies, and warmer zeal.'

Under this inspiration the Doctor proceeds:
'▬▬▬▬▬hence reel our lofty palaces, while less
Our humbler tenements the shocks distress,
And least of all the lowest roofs impress

Again!

'Craters the Greeks pronounce them; but our laws

Of language claim we term them mouths and jaws.’ Innovations in grammar would occupy more room than we can allot. In quantity we have the following novelties. Posthumous, contrary, Gergon, Ismāra, Stymphalus, bitumen, caloric and caloric, and Melita. Many of the rhymes are ill-sorted, as, ' racks and beaks,' 'moon and sun,' 'possess and increase,' 'teems and limbs,' fill and steal,' admit and flight,' &c.

If Horace gave it as his opinion, that, under certain regulations his poetical predecessors had deserved well of the literary commonwealth, for coining new words, and naturalizing others from the Greek language, what must be our gratitude to Doctor Busby, who has enriched his patrius sermo with many pleasant verbs and nouns: some parce detorta from the Latin; others wholly Latin; others from the mint of his own imagination? Hence we read, Rarity' (for rarification), ' luminate,finity,' re-image,'' retrogradely,' undeadened, to serene,' 'vitalize,' 'tenuous seeds,' ' villous tongues,' 'flavorous seeds,' and 'saporous war.' Then we have sundry hospital terms, served up in their original language, such as 'fæculæ,' 'viscera,' 'pallor,' 'virus,' 'cruor,' 'scank saliva,' and 'the nasal flood,' and

-Oft the passing voice the glottis wears,

The trachea roughens, and the bronchia tears.'-IV. 630.

It is, however, but fair to Dr. Busby, to allow him the meed Occasionally of easy versification; a versification exactly fashioned in the Darwinian school, and tuned, from the nature of his subject, to the same topics. We are inclined to think that he sometimes surpasses Darwin in his best style; and the only draw back to the pleasure we feel in reading his better verses, arises from their thorough want of resemblance to the original.

With wonders first she teemed, things formless bred,

Her surface with gigantic monsters spread;
Some that to neither sex their title proved,
And yet from neither sex were far removed;
Some, short of feet, some, wanting hands, arise,
Some without mouths, and some devoid of eyes.
Here to lax limbs distorted limbs adhered,
There, disproportioned, all the frame appeared;
Cramped was each member, limb with limb at strife,
And each refused the offices of life;

To walk, to act, their nerveless powers deny,
To seek subsistence, or from danger fly;
And many a hideous creature stalked the plain,
At first triumphant rose, but rose in vain:

For nature, shocked to view her own disgrace,
Forbade the fruitful joys of love's embrace;
Withheld the blessing of maturing food,

And to extinction doomed the monster-brood.'-V. 1059.

Dr. Busby frequently rivals Creech, and sometimes undoubtedly excels him, as in the following passage :

———, sed primum, quicquid aquai

Tollitur, &c.'-V. 256.

'But, lest the mass of waters prove too great,
The sun drinks some, to quench his natural heat:
And some the winds brush off; with wanton play
They dip their wings, and bear some part away:
Some passes through the earth, diffused all o'er,."
And leaves its salt behind in every pore;
For all returns through narrow channels spread,
And joins where'er the fountain shews her head;
And thence sweet streams in fair meanders play,
And through the vallies cut their liquid way:

And herbs and flowers on every side bestow;

The fields all smile with flowers, where'er they flow.'-Creech. 'But lest too high the briny flood should swell,

The flying winds upon their pinions steal

Some parts redundant; some the sun exhales,

And some refreshen subterraneous vales;

Strained through the secret channels, they resign,

By due degrees, their particles saline;

Up to some fountain-head attracted glide,

Then lead through nurtured plains their sweet'ned tide;

With liquid feet retrace their shining ways,

Through former beds, and seek th' increasing seas.'-Busby.

In the following extract from the beautiful commencement of the second book, Dr. Busby is equally successful against Dryden whose version is in every one's hand.

Oh wretched mortals, souls devoid of light,
Lost in the shades of intellectual night,
This transient life they miserably spend,
Strangers to nature, and to nature's end:
Nor see all human wants in these combined,
A healthful body, and a peaceful mind.
But little our corporeal part requires
To sooth our pains, and feed our just desires.
From simplest sources purest pleasure flows,
And nature asks but pleasure, and repose.

What though no sculptured boys of burnished gold
Around thy hall the flaming torches hold,
Gilding the midnight banquet with their rays,
While goblets sparkle, and while lustres blaze,