Satires (Horace) similes, and the fiction of an anonymous interlocutor whose objections the speaker easily refutes. In addition, Horace alludes to another inspiration, the poet Lucretius whose didactic epic "De rerum natura" ("On the Nature of Things"), also written in hexameters, popularized Epicurean physics in Rome. For example, Horace's comparison of his satires with cookies that a teacher uses to encourage his students to learn their letters, reminds of Lucretius' more traditional comparison of his poetry with the sugar that sweetens the bitter medicine of philosophy. Moreover, Lucretian stock phrases such as "nunc ad rem redeo" ("now I return to the matter
William Hamilton (comic poet) William Hamilton (comic poet) William Hamilton (1665? – 24 May 1751) was a Scottish poet. He wrote comic, mock-tragic poetry such as ""The Last Dying Words of Bonny Heck"" - a once-champion hare coursing greyhound in the East Neuk of Fife who was about to be hanged, for growing too slow. It is written in anglified Scots, with a sprightly narrative and wry comic touches. Hamilton was born in Gilbertfield, Cambuslang, Scotland. In the "Familiar Epistles" he exchanged with Allan Ramsay, he modestly acknowledges the limitations of his own muse. Ramsay singles out "Heck" as he suggests there is room