sense) and its crushing effects can hardly be otherwise explained. He does not—nor did Epicurus—absolutely deny the existence of gods; these are logically as producible as other “things.” What he denies is their interference with the processes of nature. All this and more he sets forth in the six books of the _De Rerum Natura_. In the use of verse as the vehicle of philosophic teaching, Lucretius is but following the lead of the older Greeks, Empedocles, Xenophanes, or Parmenides. The task is technically difficult, and in modern times it would be purposeless. But for Lucretius we must not only grant the utility of the method in awakening intellectual interest as widely as possible among a community less prepared for philosophy than for poetry; we are also compelled to recognize that his effort to make philosophy talk in Latin verse was technically a triumph. Yet Lucretius is much more than a translator of Greek philosophy into Latin hexameters. He is a poet. Doubtless the passages in which he is setting forth bare statement of theory, or bare argument, are of necessity as dull as many passages of theologizing in Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ or _Paradise Regained_, or as many passages in Wordsworth’s _Excursion_. But when the poetic opportunity arrives, and when he is irresistibly borne away with such reflections as those upon the life and death of man, he writes in lines as splendid as those of Milton and Wordsworth at their best. Through all the work there is a tone of the ardent missionary of intellectual deliverance, blent with a certain melancholy which recalls Ecclesiastes. Latin literature is not strong in great intellectual forces, but among these Lucretius must hold a foremost place.