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ture of cutting off Saul's skirt. However, the taking away of the spear, and sparing his life at Engeddi, is very well told. Saul's visit to the witch of Endor, is described in the very words of the Bible.

"I entreat thee, at my pray'r, divine By the familiar fpirit, and bring up

Him, whom I name.

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"Thou know'ft: what need to tell?

How from the living land Saul has cut off
Such as I am.

Com'ft thou to fnare my life?"

Each word the forceress spake, fell on Saul's heart,
At length: So thou confent, and whom I name
Bring up, I fwear, witnefs the Lord! for this,
Vengeance fhall not o'ertake thee.”

"Name the man. ""

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The forcerefs, at his rifing, with loud cry

Shriek'd out,

"Thou haft deceiv'd me: thou art Saul, "

"Fear not; declare, what view'ft thou?"

"I behold

Gods out of earth afcending."

"What the form?"

"The form of one in years comes up, with veil O'ermantled. "

Saul perceiv'd it was the Seer,

Stoop'd, and low bow'd his forehead to the ground.
"Why haft thou thus difquieted, and brought
My fpirit from its reft?"

Saul anfwering faid,

Oh, I am fore diftreft. Philiftia's hoft

Gathers against me. Terror fills the realm,
God is departed from me, nor vouchfafes

Anfwer by dream or prophet. Therefore, Seer,
Thus, I have call'd on thee. "

"Wherefore on me,

If God is clean departed, and become

T'hy foe? What God by me foretold, is done,

Thy kingdom from thee rent.

In David's rule

Thy fceptre. For that thou, oh man, didst scorn

Obedience to Jehovah, thee, and thine,

And Ifrael's army, into hoftile hands

God has deliver'd. " p. 183-5.

The catastrophe of Saul, and the song of his successor over him and Jonathan, are in like manner versified almost literally from the Chronicles: and the poem ends with this brief moralization.

" Thou

Thus the Lord

From land to land, throughout the regions, fpread
The fame of his anointed :—and his fear
Fell on all nations.

Man! obey thy God!' p. 190. From the copious extracts which we have given, our readers will be able to judge for themselves of the merits of this performance. There is sweetness and delicacy in many passages; and an air of elegance throughout; but it is deficient in animation, in characters, and in action. Its beauties belong rather to pastoral and lyric poetry, than to epic; and are scarcely calculated to strike with sufficient force to command the attention of this fastidious age. The work, however, is respectable, and cannot be perused without giving us a very pleasing impression of the character and virtues of the author.

ART. XV. The Nature of Things: A Didactic Poem. Tranflated from the Latin of Titus Lucretius Carus, accompanied with the Original Text, and Illuftrated with Notes Philological and Explanatory. By John Mafon Good. 2 vol. 4to. pp. 1180. Longman. London. 1805.

THE

HESE vaft volumes are more like the work of a learned German profeffor, than of an ungraduated Englishman. They difplay extenfive erudition, confiderable judgment, and some taste; yet, upon the whole, they are extremely heavy and uninteresting, and the leading emotion they excite in the reader, is that of fympathy with the fatigue the author must have undergone in the compilation. They contain, first of all, a moft learned preface, giving an account of all the editions of Lucretius, and all the verfions which have been made of him into modern languages; then a life of this author, dilated by biographical sketches of all his ancestors and famous contemporaries, and of the state of literature in the ancient world, into upwards of eighty clofely printed pages: and this, again, is followed by an appendix of thirty pages more, containing a long analyfis and defence of the fyftem of Epicurus; a comparative view of all the other ancient fyftems of philofophy; and a fhort deduction from these, of all the celebrated theories of modern times, from the nominalism of Abelard, to the transcendentalism of Kant. Then comes the original text of Lucretius, correctly printed from Mr Wakefield's edition, with Mr Good's tranflation in blank verfe on the oppofite page; and underneath, a vast and most indigefted mafs of notes, exhibiting not only a copious collection of parallel paffages, and alleged imitations, in

Hebrew,

Hebrew, Perfiat, Arabic, Greek, Latin, German, Spanish, Italian, French and English, but an incredible quantity of incidental criticism and differtation upon every poffible variety of fubject,— metaphyfics, manufactures, medicine, ethics, wool-dreffing, generation, government, hufbandry and engineering. The mere defcription of such a commentary, is enough to give our readers an alarming idea of Mr Good's industry and the extent of his reading; and when we add to this, that he neither reasons nor writes very ill upon most of the fubjects he difcuffes, we fhall probably give an impreffion of the work fomething more favourable than we can confcientiously agree to fanction. The truth is, that Mr Good, though very intelligent, is very indifcrimate in the selection of his information; and though, for the most part, fufficiently candid and judicious in his remarks, is at the fame time intolerably dull and tedious. He has no vivacity; no delicacy of taste or fancy; very little originality; and a gift of extreme prolixity. His profe is better than his poetry; his reasonings are more to be trusted to than his criticism; and his statements and explanations are of more value than his argument. We can afford to give but short specimens of his multifarious labours; but in a work of this magnitude it is fair that our readers fhould be enabled, in fome degree, to judge for themselves.

In writing the life of the poet, it certainly was fcarcely neceffary for Mr Good to inform his readers, that, immediately upon the expulfion of the Tarquins, Spurius Lucretius was unanimously chosen interrex, or king for the time being,' or to give an account of the library of Appellicon, or the labours of Sylla in correcting the text of Aristotle. Some mention of Greek literature, however, was natural; and as Lucretius appears to have studied at Athens, the following elaborate encomium on that feat of learning is not perhaps altogether out of place.

But the literature of Greece was, nevertheless, beft to be acquired in Greece itfelf; and the Romans, though they transplanted books, could not tranfplant the general tafte and spirit that produced them. Athens, although confiderably fhorn of the glory of her original conftitution, and dependent upon Rome for protection, had till to boat of her fchools, her fcholars, and her libraries. Every scene, every edi, fice, every conversation was a living lecture of tafte and elegance. Here was the venerable grove, in which Plato had unfolded his fublime myfteries to enraptured multitudes: here the awful lyceum, in which Ariftotle had anatomised the fprings of human intellect and action: here the porch of Zeno, still erect and ftately as its founder: and here, the learned fhades and winding walks, in which Epicurus had delineated the origin and NATURE OF THINGS, and inculcated tranquillity and temperance and here too was the vaft and magnificent library that Pififtratus first established, and endowed for the gratuitous ufe of his countrymen.

countrymen. Here Homer fung, and Apelles painted: here Sophocles had drawn tears of tenderness, and Demofthenes fired the foul to deeds of heroifm and patriotic revenge. The monuments of every thing great or glorious, dignified or refined, virtuous or worthy, were ftill exifting at Athens; and she had ftill philofophers to boast of, who were capable of elucidating the erudition that blazed forth more confpicuously in her earlier ages of independence. I. xxix. xxx.

This piece of biography, which, of itself, would fill a moderate volume, contains, we think, about three authenticated paffages: one is, that Lucretius ftudied at Athens; another is, that he lived a retired life, and did not mingle in the political contentions of his age; a third is, that he had a wife, or a mistress, of the name of Lucilia; and the laft is, that he became infane, and destroyed himself at the age of forty-four. Whether his madness was brought on by grief for the banishment of his friend Memmius, or by the unlucky operation of a love potion administered by Lucilia, is much and learnedly difputed by Eufebius, Giffenius, and Mr Good, who, of course, prefers the former and more creditable fuppofition.

We cannot undertake to give our readers even a fpecimen of the profundities that are difcuffed in the life and the appendix. They contain, among other things, a refolute defence of materialism, and of almoft every particular tenet of the school of Epicurus. Mr Good has given, however, a very clear and accurate fummary of the atomical philofophy of that teacher, which we fhall beg leave to extract, as by far the most confiftent and masterly account we have ever met with of that comprehenfive system.

In its mere phyfical contemplation, the theory of Epicurus allows of nothing but matter and fpace, which are equally infinite and unbounded, which have equally exifted from all eternity, and from different combinations of which every individual being is created. These existences have no property in common with each other; for, whatever matter is, that space is the reverse of; and whatever space is, matter is the contrary to. The actually folid parts of all bodies, therefore, are matter; their actual pores, space, and the parts which are not altogether folid, but an intermixture of folidity and pore, are space and matter combined. Anterior to the formation of the univerfe, space and matter exifted uncombined, or in their pure and elementary ftate. Space, in its elementary ftate, is pofitive and unfolid void: matter, in its elementary state, confifts of inconceivably minute feeds or atomsfo fmall that the corpufcles of vapour, light, and heat, are compounds of them and fo folid that they cannot poffibly be broken, or made fmaller, by any concuffion or violence whatever. The express figure of thefe primary atoms is various: there are round; fquare, pointed, jagged, as well as many other shapes. These fhapes, however, are not diverfi. ed to infinity; but the atoms themselves, of each exiftent shape, are in

fruite or innumerable. Every atom is poffeffed of certain intrinfic powers of motion. Under the old fchool of Democritus, the perpetual motions exhibited were of two kinds :-a defcending motion, from its own gravity; and a rebounding motion, from mutual concuffion. Befides thefe two motions, and to explain certain phenomena which the follow ing poem develops, and which were not accounted for under the old fyftem, Epicurus fuppofed that fome atoms were occafionally poffeffed of a third, by which, in fome very fmall degree, they defcended in an oblique or curvilinear direction, deviating from the common and right line anomaloufly; and hence, in this refpect, refembling the ofcillations of the magnetic needle.

Thefe infinitudes of atoms, flying immemorially in such different directions, through all the immenfity of space, have interchangeably tried and exhibited every poffible mode of action,-fometimes repelled from each other by concuffion,-and fometimes adhering to each other from their own jagged or pointed conftruction, or from the cafual interfices which two or more connected atoms muft produce, and which may just be adapted to those of other configurations, as globular, oval, or fquare. Hence the origin of compound bodies; hence the origin of immenfe maffes of matter; hence, eventually, the origin of the world itfelf. When thefe primary atoms are clofely.compacted together, and but little vacuity or fpace intervenes, they produce thofe kinds of fubftances which we denominate folid, as ftones, and metals: when they are loofe and disjoined, and a large quantity of fpace or vacuity occurs between them, they produce the phenomena of wool, water, vapour. In one mode of combination, they form earth; in another, air; and in another, fire. Arranged in one way, they produce vegetation and irritability; in another way, animal life and perception.-Man hence arifes families are formed-fociety multiplies, and governments are inftituted.

• The world, thus generated, is perpetually fuftained by the application of freth elementary atoms, flying with inconceivable rapidity through all the infinitude of fpace, invifible from their minutenefs, aud occupying the pofts of all thofe that are as perpetually flying off. Yet, nothing is eternal and immutable but thefe elementary feeds or atoms themfelves: the compound forms of matter are continually decompounding, and diffolving into their original corpufcles: to this there is o exception-minerals, vegetables, and animals, in this refpect all alike, when they lofe their prefent configuration, perifhing from exiitence for ever, and new combinations proceeding from the matter into which they diffolve. But the world itfelf is a compound, though not an organized being; fuftained and nourished like organized beings from the material pabulum that floats through the void of infinity. The world itself must therefore, in the fame manner, perifh it had a beginning, and it will eventually have an end. Its prefent crafis will be decompounded; it will return to its original, its elementary atoms; and new worlds will arife from its deftruction.

• Space

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