The origin of the poem is not without interest.  Meeting Bayle in Holland, the ecclesiastic found the indefatigable skeptic most persistently citing Lucretius, in whose elaborate verse the atheistic materialism of Epicurus is developed and exalted.  Others had already answered the philosopher directly; but the indignant Christian was moved to answer the poet through whom the dangerous system was proclaimed.  His poem was, therefore, a vindication of God and religion, in direct response to a master-poem of antiquity, in which these are assailed.  The attempt was lofty, especially when the champion adopted the language of Lucretius.  Perhaps, since Sannazaro, no modern production in Latin verse has found equal success.  Even before its publication, in 1747, it was read at court, and was admired in the princely circle of Sceaux.  It appeared in elegant, editions, was translated into French prose by Bougainville, and into French verse by Jeanty-Laurans, also most successfully into Italian verse by Ricci.  At the latter part of the last century, when Franklin reached Paris, it was hardly less known in literary circles than a volume of Grote’s History in our own day.  Voltaire, the arbiter of literary fame at that time, regarding the author only on the side of literature, said of him, in his “Temple du Gout,”—­

    “Le Cardinal, oracle de la France,
    Reunissaut Virgile avec Platon,
    Vengeur du ciel et vainqueur de Lucrece.”

The last line of this remarkable eulogy has a movement and balance not unlike the Latin verse of Turgot, or that which suggested it in the poem of Polignac; but the praise which it so pointedly offers attests the fame of the author; nor was this praise confined to the “fine frenzy” of verse.  The “Anti-Lucretius” was gravely pronounced the “rival of the poem which it answered,”—­“with verses as flowing as Ovid, sometimes approaching the elegant simplicity of Horace and sometimes the nobleness of Virgil,”—­and then again, with a philosophy and a poetry combined “which would not be disavowed either by Descartes or by Virgil."[48]

Turning now to the poem itself, we shall see how completely the verse of Turgot finds its prototype there.  Epicurus is indignantly described as denying to the gods all power, and declaring man independent, so as to act for himself; and here the poet says, “Braving the thunderous recesses of heaven, he snatched the lightning from Jove and the arrows from Apollo, and, liberating the mortal race, ordered it to dare all things,”—­

“Coeli et tonitralia templa lacessens, Eripuit fulmenque Jovi, Phoeboque sagittas; Et mortale manumittens genus, omnia jussit Audere."[49]

To deny the power of God and to declare independence of His commands, which the poet here holds up to judgment, is very unlike the life of Franklin, all whose service was in obedience to God’s laws, whether in snatching the lightning from the skies or the sceptre from tyrants; and yet it is evident that the verse which pictured Epicurus in his impiety suggested the picture of the American plenipotentiary in his double labors of science and statesmanship.