The reading of the whole poem of the late Cardinal Polignac has confirmed me in the idea which I formed of it when he read to me the first book. I am moreover astonished that amidst the dissipations of the world and the troubles in public life, he should have been able to write a long work in verse, in a foreign language; he, who could hardly have made four good lines in his own tongue. It seems to me that he often united the strength of Lucretius and the elegance of Virgil. I admire him, above all, for that facility with which he expresses such difficult things.

Perhaps, indeed, his “Anti-Lucretius” is too diffuse, and too little diversified, but he is here to be examined as a philosopher, not as a poet. It appears to me that so fine a mind as his should have done more justice to the morals of Epicurus, who, though he was a very bad natural philosopher, was, nevertheless, a very worthy man and always taught mildness, temperance, moderation, and justice, virtues which his example inculcated still more forcibly.

In the “Anti-Lucretius,” this great man is thus apostrophized:

Si virtutis eras avidus, rectique bonique

Tam sitiens, quid relligio tibi sancta nocebat?

Aspera quippe nimis visa est. Asperrima certe

Gaudenti vitiis, sed non virtutis amanti.

Ergo perfugium culpa, solisque benignus

Perjuris ac f?difragis, Epicure, parabas.

Solam hominum faecem poteras, devotaque fureis

Corpora, etc.

If virtue, justice, goodness, were thy care,

Why didst thou tremble at Religion’s call? —

Whose laws are harsh to vicious minds alone —

Not to the spirit that delights in virtue.

No, no — the worst of men, the worst of crimes

Has thy solicitude — thy dearest aim

To find a refuge for the guilty soul, etc.

But Epicurus might reply to the cardinal: “If I had had the happiness of knowing, like you, the true God, of being born, like you, in a pure and holy religion, I should certainly not have rejected that revealed God, whose tenets were necessarily unknown to my mind, but whose morality was in my heart. I could not admit the existence of such gods as were announced to me by paganism. I was too rational to adore divinities, made to spring from a father and a mother, like mortals, and like them, to make war upon one another. I was too great a friend to virtue not to hate a religion which now invited to crime by the example of those gods themselve............