Part 55 (1/2)

sed metus in vita poenarum pro male factis est insignibus insignis, scelerisque luella, carcer et horribilis de saxo iactu' deorsum, verbera carnifices robur pix lammina taedae; quae tamen etsi absunt, at mens sibi conscia facti praemetuens adhibet stimulos terretque flagellis nec videt interea qui terminus esse malorum possit nec quae sit poenarum denique finis atque eadem metuit magis haec ne in morte gravescant.

The Greeks, by personifying those secret terrors, had removed them into a region of existences separate from man. They became dread G.o.ddesses, who might to some extent be propitiated by exorcisms or expiatory rites. This was in strict accordance with the mythopoeic and artistic quality of the Greek intellect. The stern and somewhat prosaic rect.i.tude of the Roman broke through such figments of the fancy, and exposed the sore places of the soul itself. The theory of the Conscience, moreover, is part of the Lucretian polemic against false notions of the G.o.ds and the pernicious belief in h.e.l.l.

Positivism and Realism were qualities of Roman as distinguished from Greek culture. There was no self-delusion in Lucretius--no attempt, however unconscious, to compromise unpalatable truth, or to invest philosophy with the charm of myth. A hundred ill.u.s.trations might be chosen to prove his method of setting forth thought with unadorned simplicity. These, however, are familiar to any one who has but opened the 'De Rerum Natura.' It is more profitable to trace this Roman ruggedness in the poet's treatment of the subject which more than any other seems to have preoccupied his intellect and fascinated his imagination--that is Death. His poem has been called by a great critic the 'poem of Death.' Shakspere's line--

And Death once dead, there's no more dying then,

might be written as a motto on the t.i.tle-page of the book, which is full of pa.s.sages like this:--

scire licet n.o.bis nil esse in morte timendum nec miserum fieri qui non est posse neque hilum differre anne ullo fuerit iam tempore natus, mortalem vitam mors c.u.m immortalis ademit.

His whole mind was steeped in the thought of death; and though he can hardly be said to have written 'the words that shall make death exhilarating,' he devoted his genius, in all its energy, to removing from before men the terror of the doom that waits for all.

Sometimes, in his attempt at consolation, he adduces images which, like the Delphian knife, are double-handled, and cut both ways:--

hinc indignatur se mortalem esse creatum nec videt in vera nullum fore morte alium se qui possit vivus sibi se lugere peremptum stansque iacentem se lacerari urive dolere.

This suggests, by way of contrast, Blake's picture of the soul that has just left the body and laments her separation. As we read, we are inclined to lay the book down, and wonder whether the argument is, after all, conclusive. May not the spirit, when she has quitted her old house, be forced to weep and wring her hands, and stretch vain shadowy arms to the limbs that were so dear? No one has felt more profoundly than Lucretius the pathos of the dead. The intensity with which he realised what we must lose in dying and what we leave behind of grief to those who loved us, reaches a climax of restrained pa.s.sion in this well-known paragraph:--

'iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent.

non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque praesidium. misero misere' aiunt 'omnia ademit una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae.'

illud in his rebus non addunt 'nec tibi earum iam desiderium rerum super insidet una.'

quod bene si videant animo dictisque sequantur, dissoluant animi magno se angore metuque.

'tu quidem ut es leto sopitus, sic eris aevi quod superest cunctis privatu' doloribus aegris.

at nos horrifico cinefactum te prope busto insatiabiliter deflevimus, aeternumque nulla dies n.o.bis maerorem e pectore demet.'

Images, again, of almost mediaeval grotesqueness, rise in his mind when he contemplates the universality of Death. Simonides had dared to say: 'One horrible Charybdis waits for all.' That was as near a discord as a Greek could venture on. Lucretius describes the open gate and 'huge wide-gaping maw' which must devour heaven, earth, and sea, and all that they contain:--

haut igitur leti praeclusa est ianua caelo nec soli terraeque neque altis aequoris undis, sed patet immani et vasto respectat hiatu.

The ever-during battle of life and death haunts his imagination.

Sometimes he sets it forth in philosophical array of argument.

Sometimes he touches on the theme with elegiac pity:--

miscetur funere vagor quem pueri tollunt visentis luminis oras; nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.

Then again he returns, with obstinate persistence, to describe how the dread of death, fortified by false religion, hangs like a pall over humanity, and how the whole world is a cemetery overshadowed by cypresses. The most sustained, perhaps, of these pa.s.sages is at the beginning of the third book (lines 31 to 93). The most profoundly melancholy is the description of the new-born child (v. 221):--

quare mors immatura vagatur?

tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni vitali auxilio, c.u.m primum in luminis oras nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit, vagituque loc.u.m lugubri complet, ut aec.u.mst cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.

Disease and old age, as akin to Death, touch his imagination with the same force. He rarely alludes to either without some lines as terrible as these (iii. 472, 453):--

nam dolor ac morbus leti fabricator uterquest.

claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, labat mens.

Another kindred subject affects him with an equal pathos. He sees the rising and decay of nations, age following after age, like waves hurrying to dissolve upon a barren sh.o.r.e, and writes (ii. 75):--

sic rerum summa novatur semper, et inter se mortales mutua vivunt, augesc.u.n.t aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur, inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.