With Chremes' family ?-so oft contem'd
And held in scorn!-all done, concluded all!-
Rejected, then recall'd :—and why?—unless,
For so I must suspect, they breed some monster:
Whom as they can obtrude on no one else,

My father! what to say of him?-Oh shame!
A thing of so much consequence to treat
So negligently!-For but even now

Passing me in the Forum, Pamphilus !

To-day's your wedding-day, said he: Prepare ;
Go, get you home!-This sounded in my ears
As if he said, Go, hang yourself!—I stood

Confounded. Think you I could speak one word?
Or offer an excuse, how weak soe'er?

No, I was dumb:-and had I been aware,

Should any ask what I'd have done, I would,
Rather than this, do anything.-But now
What to resolve upon ?-So many cares
Entangle me at once, and rend my mind,
Pulling it diff'rent ways. My love, compassion,
This urgent match, my rev'rence for my father,
Who yet has ever been so gentle to me,
And held so slack a rein upon my pleasures.-
And I oppose him?-Racking thought!-Ah me!
I know not what to do.

Mys.

Alas, I fear

Where this uncertainty will end.

"Twere best

He should confer with her; or I at least

Speak touching her to him. For while the mind
Hangs in suspense, a trifle turns the scale.

Pam. Who's there? what, Mysis! save you!
Mys. (coming forward.)

Save you! sir.

How! oppress'd with wretchedness;

Pam. How does she?
Mys.
To-day supremely wretched, as to-day
Was formerly appointed for your wedding.
And then she fears lest you desert her.

Desert her? Can I think on't? or deceive
A wretched maid, who trusted to my care
Her life and honor! Her, whom I have held
Near to my heart, and cherish'd as my wife?
O leave her modest and well-nurtur'd mind
Through want to be corrupted? Never, never.
Mys. No doubt, did it depend on you alone;

But if constrain'd

Pam.
Do you think me so vile?
Or so ungrateful, so inhuman, savage,

That nor long intercourse, nor love, nor shame,
Can make me keep my faith?

Mys.
I only know
That she deserves you should remember her.

Pam. I should remember her? Oh, Mysis, Mysis!
The words of Chrysis touching my Glycerium
Are written in my heart. On her death-bed
She call'd me. I approach'd her. You retir'd.
We were alone; and Chrysis thus began:
"My Pamphilus, you see the youth and beauty
Of this unhappy maid: and well you know
These are but feeble guardians to preserve
Her fortune or her fame. By this right hand
I do beseech you, by your better angel,
By your tried faith, by her forlorn condition,
I do conjure you, put her not away,
Nor leave her to distress. If I have ever,
As my own brother, lov'd you; or if she
Has ever held you dear 'bove all the world,
And ever shown obedience to your will-
I do bequeath you to her as a husband,
Friend, guardian, father: All our little wealth
To you I leave, and trust it to your care.”—

She join'd our hands, and died.—I did receive her,
And once receiv'd will keep her.'

HUMANITY.

Menedemus. Have you such leisure from your own affairs
To think of those that don't concern you, Chremes?
Chremes. I am a man, and feel for all mankind.2

From the Self-Tormentor.

THE MIND IS ITS OWN PLACE.

Clitipho. They say that he is miserable.

Chremes.

Miserable!

Who needs be less so? For what earthly good

Can man possess which he may not enjoy?

Parents, a prosperous country, friends, birth, riches

Cicero has bestowed great praise on this act. "The picture," he observes, "of the manners of Pamphilus-the death and funeral of Chrysis -and the grief of her supposed sister-are all represented in the most delightful colors."

The Latin of this noble sentiment, so well known, is Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, "I am a man, and whatever interests humanity I consider as interesting myself," and the thousands upon thousands in the vast amphitheatre shouted applause. And shall not we who live under a brighter dispensation cherish and act out this truly Christian sentiment?

B. C. 95-52.]

LUCRETIUS.

Yet these all take their value from the mind
Of the possessor: He, that knows their use,
To him they're blessings; he that knows it not,
To him misuse converts them into curses.

From the Self-Tormentor.

WOMEN.

Oh heaven and earth, what animals are women!
What a conspiracy between them all

To do or not, to hate or love alike!

Not one but has the sex so strong within her,
She differs nothing from the rest. Step-mothers
All hate their step-daughters: and every wife
Studies alike to contradict her husband,

The same perverseness running through them all.
Each seems train'd up in the same school of mischief;
And of that school, if any such there be,

My wife, I think, is schoolmistress.

From the Step-Mother.

THE UNFORTUNATE NEGLECTED.

For they, whose fortunes are less prosperous,
Are all, I know not how, the more suspicious;
And think themselves neglected and contemn'd
Because of their distress and poverty.

LUCRETIUS.
95-52 B. C.

Or the great didactic poet of Rome, Titus Lucretius Carus, we know but little more than that he was born at Rome, educated at Athens, lived a retired life, and died in his forty-fourth year, by his own hand, in a paroxysm of insanity, occasioned, as was supposed, by grief for the banishment of his friend Memmius.

The work which has immortalized the name of Lucretius is a philosophical didactic poem, in hexameter verse, of seven thousand four hundred lines, divided into six books, entitled De Rerum Natura, "On the Nature of Things." It was introduced into the world under the auspices and revision of Cicero, whose admiration of the genius of the poet was equalled only by his contempt for his Epicurean principles of 31*

philosophy. Indeed, in his atheistical views he seems to have gone further than Epicurus, maintaining that certain particles of matter, which are the seeds or elemental principles of all things, animate and inanimate, after having been agitated to and fro in the vacuum of space from all eternity, and after having undergone every possible configuration and change of position, settled themselves, by this continued fluctuation and collision, into the organic structure of the universe. To this view of things Cicero opposes this indignant interrogatory: "What can be more foolishly arrogant, than for a man to think that he has an understanding in himself, but that yet in all the universe there is no such thing; or to suppose that those things which by the utmost stretch of his reason he can scarcely comprehend, should be moved and managed without any reason at all."

But to do justice to Lucretius we must bear in mind the age in which he lived. In all times men are more or less affected by the opinions around them; and the absurdities of Pagan polytheism, the natural revulsion of the human mind from

Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust,

had, doubtless, as strong an influence in driving Lucretius to atheism, as the palpable nonsense and monstrous absurdities of popery, which claimed to be Christianity, had in leading Voltaire and the other infidels of the French Revolution to renounce Christianity itself.2

The first two books of the work of Lucretius are taken up with an explication of his speculative theories on the origin of things. In the third he endeavors to apply his principles, and to show that the soul is material and perishes with the body. The fourth is devoted to the theory of the five senses. The fifth book, generally regarded as the most finished, treats of the origin of the world and of all things therein, of the movements of the heavenly bodies, of the vicissitudes of the seasons, of day and night, of the rise and progress of society, and of the various arts and sciences which embellish and ennoble life. The sixth book explains some of the most striking natural phenomena, especially thunder, lightning, hail, rain, snow, earthquakes, volcanoes, &c., also the nature of diseases, closing with an appalling description of the great plague at Athens.

"As a didactic poet and reasoner in verse, there is no writer, with

Cicero, De Legibus, 1, 2.

And what, in our day, could more tend to promote infidelity than for those who assume to be teachers of religion, to maintain that the Scriptures, claiming to be the revealed will of God, sanction the monstrous barbarism and sin of slavery?"

His

the exception of Pope, who can be compared with Lucretius. skill and perspicuity in pressing his inferences and pursuing his strains of argument are assisted by the lucid elegance of his language, and a style emphatical and clear. His luminous and nervous diction, and the grandeur of his versification, throw over the abstruseness of metaphysics a splendid and agreeable coloring; and the unremitted ardor of his manner, no less than the fertility of his matter, enables him to take full and despotic possession of the faculties of the reader. With his fondness for scientific demonstrations drawn from subjects of natural philosophy, and his expertness in logical processes of reasoning, he combines the seldom associated qualities of a rich and excursive imagination, and a genius which delights in glowing creations of imagery, and in bold and magnificent conceptions. His poetry is marked by a peculiar romantic wildness, and a kind of gloomy and melancholy sublimity: yet his fancy is equally conversant with soft and smiling images; and the delicate grouping of some of his figures would furnish subjects for the pencil and the chisel."

IN PRAISE OF PHILOSOPHY.

'Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore
The rolling ship, and hear the tempest roar:
Not that another's pain is our delight:
But pains unfelt produce the pleasing sight.
"Tis pleasant also to behold from far

The moving legions mingled in the war:

But much more sweet thy laboring steps to guide
To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied,
And all the magazines of learning fortified:
From thence to look below on humankind,
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind:
To see vain fools ambitiously contend

For wit and power; their last endeavors lend

To outshine each other, waste their time and health
In search of honor, and pursuit of wealth.

O wretched man! in what a mist of life,

Enclos'd with dangers and with noisy strife,

He spends his little span; and overfeeds

His cramm'd desires with more than nature needs!

For nature wisely stints our appetite,

And craves no more than undisturb'd delight,

Which minds unmix'd with cares and fears obtain;

A soul serene, a body void of pain.

So little this corporeal frame requires,
So bounded are our natural desires,