The object of the poem of Lucretius is to emancipate mankind from the debasing effects of superstition by an exposition of philosophy, and though a follower of Epicurus, he is not entirely destitute of the religious sentiment, for he deifies nature and has a veneration for her laws. His infidelity must be viewed rather in the light of a philosophical protest against the results of heathen superstition, than a total rejection of the principles of religious faith.
Lucretius valued the capabilities of the Latin language. He wielded at will its power of embodying the noblest thoughts, and showed how its copious and flexible properties could overcome the hard technicalities of science. The great beauty of his poetry is its variety; his fancy is always lively, his imagination has always free scope. He is sublime, as a philosopher who penetrates the secrets of the natural world, and discloses to the eyes of man the hidden causes of its wonderful phenomena. His object was a lofty one; for although the absurdities of the national creed drove him into skepticism, his aim was to set the intellect free from the trammels of superstition. But besides grandeur and sublimity, we find the totally different qualities of softness and tenderness. Rome had long known nothing but war, and was now rent by civil dissension. Lucretius yearned for peace; and his prayer, that the fabled goddess of all that is beautiful in nature would heal the wounds which discord had made, is distinguished by tenderness and pathos even more than by sublimity. He is superior to Ovid in force, though inferior in facility; not so smooth or harmonious as Virgil, his poetry always falls upon the ear with a swelling and sonorous melody. Virgil appreciated his excellence, and imitated not only single expressions, but almost entire verses and passages; and Ovid exclaims, that the sublime strains of Lucretius shall never perish until the world shall be given up to destruction.
5. LYRIC POETRY.--The Romans had not the ideality and the enthusiasm which are the elements of lyric poetry, and in all the range of their literature there are only two poets who, greatly inferior to the lyric poets of Greece, have a positive claim to a place in this department, Catullus and Horace. Catullus (86-46 B.C.) was born near Verona. At an early age he went to Rome, where he plunged into all the excesses of the capital, and where his sole occupation was the cultivation of his literary tastes and talents. A career of extravagance and debauchery terminated in the ruin of his fortune, and he died at the age of forty. The works of Catullus consist of numerous short pieces of a lyrical character, elegies and other poems. He was one of the most popular of the Roman poets, because he possessed those qualities which the literary society at Rome most valued, polish and learning, and because, although an imitator, there was a truly Roman nationality in all that he wrote. His satire was the bitter resentment of a vindictive spirit; his love and his hate were both purely selfish, but his excellences were of the most alluring and captivating kind. He has never been surpassed in gracefulness, melody, and tenderness.