Excerpt from The Poetry of Lucretius, Vol. 4: A Lecture Delivered at the John Rylands Library on the 14th February, 1917 Reprinted From the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1918 Creek who first of mortals dared to defy and withstand the monstrous tyrant Religion to her face. No fabled terror could appal him. No crashing thunder. Nor the anger of heaven; these only kindled the more the eager courage of his soul. To be the first to break the bars of Nature's gates. 50 the living might of his soul prevailed and he passed beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe returning thence in triumph to tell us what can. And what cannot. Come into being having trampled under foot Religion who once crushed mankind. And lifted mankind in turn by his victory up to the height of heaven. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.