SOURCE: “‘Living and Speaking Statues’: Domesticating Epicurus,” in The Material World: Literate Culture in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, pp. 140-79.

In this excerpt from his study of literature and culture in Restoration England, Kroll argues for Gassendi's importance to the importation of Epicureanism into England. Emphasizing motifs of circulation, the critic demonstrates the influence of not only Gassendi's written works, but also the symbolic figure of Gassendi himself.

If Galilaeus with his new found glass, Former Invention doth so far surpass, By bringing distant bodies to our sight, And make it judge their shape by neerer light, How much have you oblig'd us? In whose mind Y'have coucht that Cataract w(ch) made us blind, And given our soul and optick can descrie Not things alone, but where their causes lie? Lucretius Englished, Natures great Code And Digest too, where her deep...