Many circumstances conduced to bring Virgil, more powerfully than any other Latin poet, under the spell of Lucretius. As is remarked by Mr. Munro(307), when the poem of his predecessor first appeared Virgil was at, or near, the age which is most immediately impressed and moulded by a contemporary work of genius. The enthusiasm for philosophy, expressed in the short poem written immediately before he began to study under Siron, implies that he had been already attracted by the subject of which Lucretius was the only worthy(308) Latin exponent; and his studies under that teacher must have prepared his mind to receive the higher instruction of the 'De Rerum Natura.' The song of Silenus in the sixth Eclogue and many expressions and cadences in other poems of the series attest the poetical, if not the speculative, impression thus produced. But the clearest testimony of Virgil's recognition of the influence of his predecessor is found in that passage of the Georgics in which he speaks of himself most from his heart,--
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, etc.,--(II. 475.)
and in which he declares his first wish to be that the Muses should reveal to him the secrets of Nature; but, if this were denied him, he next prays that 'the love of the woods and running streams in the valleys' might be his portion. He may not have meant the lines
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, etc.,--(II. 490.)
to be taken as a description of the individual Lucretius, or those containing the other picture, placed by its side,
Fortunatas et ille, deos qui novit agrestis, Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores, etc.,--(II. 493.)
as a description of himself. Such direct personal references are not in keeping with the allusive style in which he writes of himself and others. He seems rather in these passages to set forth two ideal states of mind, that of philosophic contemplation, on the one hand, that of the pure love of Nature and conformity with the simple beliefs of country-people, on the other, as equally capable of raising men above the vulgar passions and pleasures of the world. But it is evident that he thought of Lucretius as the poet who had held up the one ideal to the imagination and the severer mood of his countrymen, and of himself as holding up the other to their poetical feeling and their human affections.