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Position of Lucretius Summed Up.

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"This terror, therefore, and darkness of the mind, must be dis'persed, not by the rays of the sun and the bright shafts of 'day, but by the aspect of Nature and her laws.' Whenever this is apprehended, forthwith Nature is freed from her 'haughty lords,' the gods. The first two books, in which he states the principles of the Atomic philosophy-to be applied in the remaining four-are the basis of his whole argument. They are the foundation on which he hopes to build a system that shall deliver men from all such fears.

The position and aim of Lucretius, so far as we can gather, is this. He was a man of intense earnestness as a religious reformer, and at the same time the vision of Nature had filled his soul with the majesty of natural law. To him Nature seemed far grander than the old gods of the Pantheon at their mightiest. Moreover, he could not but feel that the consciencenature of man, with its stainless majesty and instinctive abhorrence of wrong, represented something infinitely higher than the old impure, selfish, jealous gods. Conscience, too (though he misunderstood its origin and the source of its authority), told him that they were false. But while he possessed a turn of mind for scientific inquiry, his strongest craving was not to pursue science, but to cast out the superstitious terrors of a false and insufficient creed. He was seriously impressed with the evils of the national religion, and sought on all sides for some philosophical weapon against them. He found this in the Atomic theory, which, no doubt, he had first heard expounded in his student days at Athens. The philosophy of his age found little difficulty in accepting this as a proof that the gods have not created man, and, so far as he is concerned, are powerless for good or evil. He seized eagerly on it, and followed it up with all the strength of his intellect, the more so as he had a natural faculty and decided fondness for such pursuits; but Lucretius is to be viewed primarily as the opponent of Paganism, and only in a secondary sense as a physical inquirer. Even the strong intellectual passion which he shows for scientific research pales before the intense white heat of his human sympathies. Perhaps these are nowhere more strongly shown than in the wonderful description of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Who that has once read can ever forget that description of the weeping human victim-the young girl

decked with the fillet on her soft hair, like a beast for sacrifice, dropping on the ground in terror when she sees the approving priests, who stand by and conceal the knife, appealing in vain to her father, and at last carried by force to the altar? The scene is painfully vivid. Probably Lucretius may have seen horrible punishments inflicted at Rome for offences against religion. At any rate he uses this story of the past because he believes that the religion of his own day is fit to produce evil deeds and crimes like this and does produce them. If he had drawn but this one picture, its every detail speaking his burning abhorrence of cruelty in religion's name, he had not lived in vain. Indeed this seems to us the noblest, bravest thing that he was allowed to do. Surely when man seeks to propitiate Deity and win his favour by sacrificing his weaker brothers, this is the incarnation of selfishness. Human selfseeking can go no farther. What could Lucretius do but protest against a power like this? The bare picture is enough, but his feeling rises to a climax in the single concluding word,—

"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!'

Could there be a God, and leave this appeal unanswered? Not in Lucretius's day did the answer come, not till years after he had died, perhaps, as tradition murmurs, by his own hand and in a moment of despair. Yet an answer did come, and the next generation saw it. Not in vain had he raised against Paganism a voice which could never more be silent. Viewed in a wider horizon, and with reference to the progress of the world, we may look at his poem and even say, 'It is well and 'rightly done,' yet not altogether well for Lucretius himself, for he had done violence to the God-consciousness within him! His aim was to show that the ancient religion, which assigned for natural operations irregular, capricious Divine agents, was contradicted by the newly-discovered majesty and regularity of nature's laws, while the conscience of man remonstrated against the cruelty and wickedness which it sanctioned. And beyond question the poem must have had a mighty power, especially with the thoughtful and imaginative, in destroying the old polytheistic creed, which could never be made new again and had to pass away. Moreover, the poet's conception

He Prepares the Way for a Higher Faith.

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of 'Nature' as a mysterious, all-pervading power-sometimes, in spite of himself, his language almost implies a personal power, helped to prepare the way for a purer and larger faith. Though in defiance of his Materialistic system, he, too, dimly felt the presence in the world of a hidden Power, a mystery, something more than matter.

ART. III.-The Poetry of Alfred Tennyson.

(1.) The Works of Alfred Tennyson. Author's Edition. 5 Vols. Henry S. King and Co.

(2.) The Works of Alfred Tennyson.

Vols. Henry S. King and Co.

Cabinet Edition. 10

(8.) Queen Mary: a Drama. By ALFRED TENNYSON. Henry S. King and Co.

ALL admirers of Mr. Tennyson's poetry will rejoice that his genius has sought fresh fields in the broad and inviting region of the historical drama. We are not sure that his Queen Mary: a Drama,' can be pronounced a complete success. Though written apparently for the stage, it strikes us as much more a poem to be read than a play to be acted. It is deficient in parts in dramatic intensity and fire. It is too often merely pensive, pale, colourless; it wants passion, and but rarely stirs the pulse to a quicker beat. Even as poetry it presents but few rememberable lines and phrases glowing with vivid meaning, struck off with thought and feeling at white heat; while the movement of the piece is sometimes tardy, wanting the energy, the rush, of dramatic action of the highest order. Yet it would be most unjust to deny that the work is one of great interest and merit, and only fails, if it does fail, in realising the sort of ideal created for us by the great historical dramas of our literaturenotably by those of Shakespeare.

The subject chosen is sufficiently unpromising, and the choice indicates no mean measure of courage. Yet is this choice-notwithstanding the depreciatory comment just made -abundantly justified. The poem shows how rich in the elements of true poetry even an unpromising historical field

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may prove. There is no name in our history against which stronger prejudice exists, than the name to which we prefix the epithet 'Bloody.' No historian has yet ventured to 'whitewash' the bearer of this name of hate and dread. Yet Mr. Tennyson, without doing violence to historical truth, without lessening, but rather strengthening, our abhorrence of the deeds of crime and cruelty that earned this evil designation for the unhappy, ill-fated daughter of Katherine of Arragon, has nevertheless succeeded in investing her character with a genuine interest. He does not merely excite our pity, or fan the flame of our hatred he but exhibits the true portraiture of this

'Unhappiest

Of queens, and wives, and women;'

and, in spite of ourselves, we come to feel there was much
in her not only to commiserate, but almost to admire, and
even love; though it is mixed with so much that we both
hate and loathe.

'Bagenhall: The "thou shalt do no murder," which God's hand
Wrote on her conscience, Mary rubb'd out pale-

She could not make it white-and over that

Traced in the blackest text of hell-" Thou shalt !"

And sign'd it" Mary!"

Stafford :

Must have sign'd too.'

Philip and the Pope

Mr. Tennyson has been charged with disregard to historical truth in making Queen Mary so much an object of sympathy, in interesting even affection in her favour We think, however, that he is right in this, both historically and philosophically. Mr. Browning has somewhere said:

'God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures
Has two soul-sides: one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her.'

It is true to nature, at all events, and we think it true to fact as well, to represent Mary as having a better soul-side' than that on which we have most of us hitherto seen her. For the honour of humanity we may assume, even if there were not positive evidence to that effect, that she shrank from some of the deeds that have given to her her immortality of

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Character of Mary.

379

shame. She must have shrunk from putting the innocent Lady Jane Grey to death:

'Being traitor

Her head will fall: shall it? She is but a child.

We do not kill the child for doing that

His father whipt him into doing. A head

So full of grace and beauty!'

It needed the importunity of evil counsellors, Spaniards and others, with the strong motive of pleasing Philip, to induce her to commit this unspeakable crime; while she resisted all importunity and all suggestions of personal dislike, if not of policy, to destroy her sister Elizabeth, sprout of bastardy' though she deemed her. With all her faults-and God forbid we should extenuate these for a moment!- Mary was true woman: as witness her ardent, yearning love for Philip; her faith in him, spite of all evidence and reason; her pitiable weakness when he left her, and still more as she lost hope of his return; her solemn passionate yearning for issue, an heir to Philip and her Crown, with her bitter sorrow and despair when this hope ceased to be possible. She was a true queen too. We cannot but admire the indomitable Tudor will, the dauntless Tudor courage:

'I am Harry's daughter, and not fear.'

'Good, then, they will revolt: but I am Tudor,

And shall control them.'

And this proud Tudor queen was, after a sort, loyally and patriotically English:

'Calais !

Our one point on the main, the gate of France!

I am Queen of England; take mine eyes, mine heart,
But do not lose me Calais !'

The basis of Mary's character was a sincere, but stern, hard, fanaticism. The Roman faith had not only been instilled into her mind by her education; it had been burned into her very soul by her own and her mother's early wrongs. The vindication of her mother's name was a religion with her:

'Yea, may God

Forget me at most need when I forget
Her foul divorce-my sainted mother!'

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