Note 4 — Chapter XIV

Thus although the poetical style of Lucretius shows the traces of labour and premeditation, and of occasional imitation both of foreign and native models, it is more than that of any other Latin poet, the immediate creation of his own genius. The 'ingenuei fontis,' by which his imagination was so abundantly fed, found many spontaneous outlets, and were not checked in their speed or stained in their purity by the artificial channels in which he sometimes forced them to flow. If the loving labour, so prodigally bestowed upon the task of finding words and rhythm4 adequate to his great theme, explains some peculiarities of his diction, the qualities which have made the work immortal are due to his noble singleness of heart and sincerity of nature, and to the openness and sensibility with which his imagination received impressions, the penetrative force with which it saw into the heart of things, and the creative energy with which it shaped what it received and discerned into vivid pictures and symbols.