Lucretius, The Poet of Our Time

Extract

Lucretius is not only one of the most inspired but he is also surely the most modern of the ancient poets. In what breast of all those that love the Camenae did not the news of three volumes of the poet from the hand of Cyril Bailey awaken something of the divina voluptas atque horror? When the reader rises from the study of this new edition he will certainly have concluded that his notitia, as the poet calls it, of what was to be there has been far surpassed by the reality; but he will say too that the deed is a timely one, for Lucretius alone has the scientific outlook of the present age. Possessed of the theories of Democritus and Empedocles he looked out on a world which in many important respects was much the same as our own, with this outstanding difference, that science for him was wedded with great poetry and for us it is not. He is modern then, but he is unique among the moderns, and no thoughtful man who reads Latin can afford to be without him. Scholarship has reaped the field and brought in a rich harvest, but there still remains one corner of the corn uncut. Physicians, as their art requires, assess character and motive in their patients. To some extent their methods can be applied to poetry, and it is due to Lucretius to make the attempt with him. The similarity of his view of the world to ours makes him seem like one of ourselves, but in the divergence all the advantage lies with him.