In consequence of their ignorance and superstitions, the Roman people were rendered perpetual slaves of the most idle and unfounded terrors. In order to counteract these popular prejudices, and to heal the constant disquietudes that accompanied them, Lucretius proceeds, in the sixth book, to account for a variety of extraordinary phænomena both in the heavens and on the earth, which, at first view, seemed to deviate from the usual laws of nature:— “Sunt tempestates et fulmina clara canenda.” Having discussed the various theories formed to account for electricity, water-spouts, hurricanes, the rainbow, and volcanoes, he lastly considers the origin of pestilential and endemic disorders. This introduces the celebrated account of the plague, which ravaged Athens during the Peloponnesian war, with which Lucretius concludes this book, and his magnificent poem. “In this narrative,” says a late translator of Lucretius, “the true genius of poetry is perhaps more powerfully and triumphantly exhibited than in any other poem that was ever written. Lucretius has ventured upon one of the most uncouth and repressing subjects to the muses that can possibly be brought forward—the history and symptoms of a disease, and this disease accompanied with circumstances naturally the most nauseating and indelicate. It was a subject altogether new to numerical composition; and he had to strive with all the pedantry of technical terms, and all the abstruseness of a science in which he does not appear to have been professionally initiated. He strove, however, and he conquered. In language the most captivating and nervous, and with ideas the most precise and appropriate, he has given us the entire history of this tremendous pestilence. There is not, perhaps, a symptom omitted, yet there is not a verse with which the most scrupulous can be offended. The description of the symptoms, and also the various circumstances of horror and distress attending this dreadful scourge, have been derived from Thucydides, who furnished the facts with great accuracy, having been himself a spectator and a sufferer under this calamity. His narrative is esteemed an elaborate and complete performance; and to the faithful yet elegant detail of the Greek historian, the Roman bard has added all that was necessary to convert the description into poetry.” In the whole history of Roman taste and criticism, nothing appears to us so extraordinary as the slight mention that is made of Lucretius by succeeding Latin authors; and, when mentioned, the coldness with which he is spoken of by all Roman critics and poets, with the exception of Ovid. Perhaps the spirit of free-thinking which pervaded his writings, rendered it unsuitable or unsafe to extol even his poetical talents. There was a time, when, in this country, it was thought scarcely decorous or becoming to express high admiration of the genius of Rousseau or Voltaire.