-It remains, however, slightly surprising that Evelyn was attracted to Lucretius, for, despite his appeal to men like Gassendi and Charleton, Lucretius was a figure who had long been frowned on in orthodox circles, - Michael Hunter, the unrivalled expert on Evelyn s philosophical and scientific interests, states in his article on the translator. In addition to presenting, for the first time, the full text of Evelyn s translation of De rerum natura, still in manuscript in the British Library, this study tries to answer the question why the project appealed at all to somebody who -had a...