Note 42 — Chapter XIII

There is always poetry and pathos in the satire of Lucretius. There is no trace in him of the malice or the love of detraction which is seldom wholly absent from satiric writing. The futility of human effort is the burden of his complaint42: and this (as has been pointed out by M. Martha) is the explanation of the pathetic recurrence of the word 'nequicquam' in so many passages of his poem. His scorn and indignation are shown only in exposing the impostures which men mistake for truths. There is thus infinite compassion for the common lot of man blended with the irony of the passage in which he represents the aged husbandman complaining of the general decay of piety as the cause of the failure of the earth to respond to his labours. His direct and realistic power of expression enhances his power as a moral painter and teacher. Though the writings of Horace supply many more quotations applicable to various situations in life, and expressed in equally apposite language, yet such lines as these in the older poet seem to come from the heart of one ever 'sounding a deeper and more perilous way' over the sea of human life, than suited the more worldly wisdom of Horace,—