Lucretius

In didactic poetry Lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by Schlegel as the first of Roman poets in native genius.

Even in Lucretius, he said, what was poetry was not philosophy, and what was philosophy was not poetry.

Lucretius is scabrous and rough in these; he seeks them: as some do Chaucerisms with us, which were better expunged and banished.

And hence we find the same sort of clumsiness in the Timaeus of Plato which characterizes the philosophical poem of Lucretius.

Gilbert Wakefield, second wrangler in 1776, published an edition of Lucretius, and was a man of great ability and energy.