The English Voices of Lucretius, from Lucy Hutchinson to John Mason Good

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers the ways in which writers from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century sought to give the Roman poet Lucretius an English poetic voice. Prominent attention will be paid to translations of the De Rerum Natura, in whole or part. But the chapter will also explore the ways in which specific passages from the De Rerum Natura, or the poem’s larger structures and rhetorics, were more obliquely recreated by English poets. The main focus is thus on specifically literary responses to Lucretius, rather than on the larger role of the De Rerum Natura in disseminating Epicurean ideas in England. But a distinction between ‘poetic’ and ‘philosophical’ re- sponses to Lucretius can never be absolute. English poets and critics regularly affirmed their admiration for Lucretius’ ‘poetry’, while de- ploring his ‘philosophy’. But is it possible to write convincing Lucretian poetry without displaying, or betraying, some sympathy for the Roman poet’s ideas? And can English poets, whatever their philosophical sympathies, convey anything of Lucretius’ poetic quality without being themselves poets of comparable stature?