15 - Lucretius in the English Renaissance

Summary

Anyone relying on the once standard 1934 study by Thomas Mayo, Epicurus in England 1650-1725, might well suppose there is little or nothing to say about the period with which this chapter deals. It was Mayo’s understanding that English readers had no more than a general familarity with Epicurean doctrine or Lucretian exposition of it before 1656, the date at which, he held, John Evelyn’s partial translation of the DRN and Walter Charleton’s Epicurus’ Morals first attracted serious attention to the subject in the wake of French apologists such as Gassendi. Mayo’s account posits a volte-face where a more gradual development is perceptible. While it may be true that Lucretius had had less impact on English writers than any other major Latin poet by 1650, he had been read and appreciated by an important minority. And while he is not a mainstream figure in English culture before the mid seventeenth century, Dryden is still apologising for translating him in 1685. This discussion will examine the long-standing and diffuse interest in Lucretius as poet and philosopher in Britain before the second half of the seventeenth century and suggest some of the reasons for its previous neglect. The story is taken forward from about 1650 in two further essays in this volume.

To be sure, evidence of neglect of, or hostility towards, Lucretius down to this date can easily be assembled. Some references to the DRN are indeed second-hand, some ill-informed, and some hostile. There is a serious dearth of recent editions and commentaries on Lucretius in British libraries and book inventories from this period - scarcely a single documented example of the work of Jansson, or Pareus, or Nardi is to be found.