These statements seem to be eminently true.

Lucretius' interest in animal life is well known. And where neither animal nor plant life are being described it is most frequently the movement, the vigorous energy of Nature that are portrayed, the manifestation of the secret power that guides all things. Nature active appeals to him more strongly than Nature at rest, and at times a real personality seems to be attributed to the objects of which he is speaking.

This point can be abundantly illustrated. It is to be seen in the opening passage of the first book, already several times quoted, where the picture teems with life --the sea alive with ships--the fertile earth, the flights of winds and clouds, and the glad rejoicing of sea at the coming spring.

The springing forth of animals and plants from the earth, the rapid growth of vegetation, the production of fruits, the formation and rapid movements of clouds, the travelling of the heavenly bodies through the sky, and the sun flooding the world with light, all pictureed so vividly in different parts of the poem are illustratio of this point. The sea, too, he represents in many phases. It is brought before us smiling in the brilliant light of the spring sun, and again when laying off the smile it treacherously turns upon the works of man and

scatters their fragments in all

directions, warning

man not to trust its fickle promise.

Lucretius' strong feeling for the grandeur and

majesty of Nature has already been spoken of. His delight

in the life and in the active forces displayed by Nature seems to be a phase of that same feeling.

The "landschaftliche Sinn" which Friedlander speaks

of as being a very modern development in appreciation of Nature, is found only very slightly developed in

Lucretius.

Vivid bits of scenery are pictured, (as in passage beginning B.II.29. V.938 for example) sketches of one or another feature of the landscape; indeed in quick succession different features may be portrayed, as in B.I.250, but they are rather of the nature of a panoramic representation than a finished landscape. It is still

upon the separate details that the attention is fixed, an in general no attempt is made to unite them to an

harmonious whole.

An exception to this statement is the passage already quoted from B.V., where, beginning verse 1375, the

Italian landscape with its plains and hills, its grey and green, its "varios lepores" is pictured.

Again in a lesser degree the picture of the cow seeking her lost calf through green pastures and by flowing

streams, and that where the flocks shine white upon the green hillside, should be placed here also.

In this connection must be considered another

the landscape. This element, except in its most ordinary

Twice to be sure, the grass is spoken of as

aparkling with dew.

(1)

In B.4.404, too, the rising sun is spoken of as touching the mountain with fire, but the bare statement of the fact is all that is given --there is no further elaboration of the scene, no mention of the changing lights and shadows that follow each other upon the mountain sides as the sun rises higher.

The light upon the landscape never varies --all nature lies in the brilliant glow of a perpetual noon

for even where the clouds are mentioned, as passing across

(1) 5.461 2.319