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? The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Epic, by Lascelles Abercrombie

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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with this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. net


Title: The Epic
An Essay

Author: Lascelles Abercrombie

Release Date: January 14, 2004 [EBook #10716]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EPIC ***




Produced by Garrett Alley and PG Distributed Proofreaders




The Epic: an Essay

By Lascelles Abercrombie



1914.



By the same Author:


Towards a Theory of Art
Speculative Dialogues
Four Short Plays
Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study
Principles of English Prosody




PREFACE

_As this essay is disposed to consider epic poetry as a species of
literature, and not as a department of sociology or archaeology or
ethnology, the reader will not find it anything material to the
discussion which may be typified in those very interesting works,
Gilbert Murray's "The Rise of the Greek Epic" and Andrew Lang's "The
World of Homer. " The distinction between a literary and a scientific
attitude to Homer (and all other "authentic" epic) is, I think, finally
summed up in Mr. Mackail's "Lectures on Greek Poetry"; the following
pages, at any rate, assume that this is so. Theories about epic origins
were therefore indifferent to my purpose. Besides, I do not see the need
for any theories; I think it need only be said, of any epic poem
whatever, that it was composed by a man and transmitted by men. But this
is not to say that investigation of the "authentic" epic poet's_ milieu
_may not be extremely profitable; and for settling the preliminaries of
this essay, I owe a great deal to Mr. Chadwick's profoundly
interesting study, "The Heroic Age"; though I daresay Mr. Chadwick would
repudiate some of my conclusions. I must also acknowledge suggestions
taken from Mr. Macneile Dixon's learned and vigorous "English Epic and
Heroic Poetry"; and especially the assistance of Mr. John Clark's
"History of Epic Poetry. " Mr. Clark's book is so thorough and so
adequate that my own would certainly have been superfluous, were it not
that I have taken a particular point of view which his method seems to
rule out--a point of view which seemed well worth taking. This is my
excuse, too, for considering only the most conspicuous instances of epic
poetry. They have been discussed often enough; but not often, so far as
I know, primarily as stages of one continuous artistic development_.




I.


BEGINNINGS

The invention of epic poetry corresponds with a definite and, in the
history of the world, often recurring state of society.
That is to say,
epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the
needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the
invention itself has been. Most nations have passed through the same
sort of chemistry. Before their hot racial elements have been thoroughly
compounded, and thence have cooled into the stable convenience of
routine which is the material shape of civilization--before this has
firmly occurred, there has usually been what is called an "Heroic Age. "
It is apt to be the hottest and most glowing stage of the process. So
much is commonplace. Exactly what causes the racial elements of a
nation, with all their varying properties, to flash suddenly (as it
seems) into the splendid incandescence of an Heroic Age, and thence to
shift again into a comparatively rigid and perhaps comparatively
lustreless civilization--this difficult matter has been very nicely
investigated of late, and to interesting, though not decided, result.
But I may not concern myself with this; nor even with the detailed
characteristics, alleged or ascertained, of the Heroic Age of nations.
It is enough for the purpose of this book that the name "Heroic Age" is
a good one for this stage of the business; it is obviously, and on the
whole rightly, descriptive. For the stage displays the first vigorous
expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of
private individuality. In savagery, thought, sentiment, religion and
social organization may be exceedingly complicated, full of the most
subtle and strange relationships; but they exist as complete and
determined _wholes_, each part absolutely bound up with the rest.
Analysis has never come near them. The savage is blinded to the glaring
incongruities of his tribal ideas not so much by habit or reverence; it
is simply that the mere possibility of such a thing as analysis has
never occurred to him. He thinks, he feels, he lives, all in a whole.
Each person is the tribe in little. This may make everyone an
astoundingly complex character; but it makes strong individuality
impossible in savagery, since everyone accepts the same elaborate
unanalysed whole of tribal existence. That existence, indeed, would find
in the assertion of private individuality a serious danger; and tribal
organization guards against this so efficiently that it is doubtless
impossible, so long as there is no interruption from outside. In some
obscure manner, however, savage existence has been constantly
interrupted; and it seems as if the long-repressed forces of
individuality then burst out into exaggerated vehemence; for the result
(if it is not slavery) is, that a people passes from its savage to its
heroic age, on its way to some permanence of civilization. It must
always have taken a good deal to break up the rigidity of savage
society. It might be the shock of enforced mixture with a totally alien
race, the two kinds of blood, full of independent vigour, compelled to
flow together;[1] or it might be the migration, due to economic stress,
from one tract of country to which the tribal existence was perfectly
adapted to another for which it was quite unsuited, with the added
necessity of conquering the peoples found in possession. Whatever the
cause may have been, the result is obvious: a sudden liberation, a
delighted expansion, of numerous private individualities.

But the various appearances of the Heroic Age cannot, perhaps, be
completely generalized. What has just been written will probably do for
the Heroic Age which produced Homer, and for that which produced the
_Nibelungenlied, Beowulf_, and the Northern Sagas. It may, therefore
stand as the typical case; since Homer and these Northern poems are what
most people have in their minds when they speak of "authentic" epic. But
decidedly Heroic Ages have occurred much later than the latest of these
cases; and they arose out of a state of society which cannot roundly be
called savagery. Europe, for instance, had its unmistakable Heroic Age
when it was fighting with the Moslem, whether that warfare was a cause
or merely an accompaniment. And the period which preceded it, the period
after the failure of Roman civilization, was sufficiently "dark" and
devoid of individuality, to make the sudden plenty of potent and
splendid individuals seem a phenomenon of the same sort as that which
has been roughly described; it can scarcely be doubted that the age
which is exhibited in the _Poem of the Cid_, the _Song of Roland_, and
the lays of the Crusaders (_la Chanson d'Antioche_, for instance), was
similar in all essentials to the age we find in Homer and the
_Nibelungenlied_. Servia, too, has its ballad-cycles of Christian and
Mahometan warfare, which suppose an age obviously heroic. But it hardly
falls in with our scheme; Servia, at this time, might have been expected
to have gone well past its Heroic Age. Either, then, it was somehow
unusually prolonged, or else the clash of the Ottoman war revived it.
The case of Servia is interesting in another way. The songs about the
battle of Kossovo describe Servian defeat--defeat so overwhelming that
poetry cannot possibly translate it, and does not attempt it, into
anything that looks like victory. Even the splendid courage of its hero
Milos, who counters an imputation of treachery by riding in full
daylight into the Ottoman camp and murdering the Sultan, even this
courage is rather near to desperation. The Marko cycle--Marko whose
betrayal of his country seems wiped out by his immense prowess--has in a
less degree this utter defeat of Servia as its background. But Servian
history before all this has many glories, which, one would think, would
serve the turn of heroic song better than appalling defeat and, indeed,
enslavement. Why is the latter celebrated and not the former? The reason
can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is
heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does. Servia's
defeat by the armies of Amurath came at a time when its people was too
strongly possessed by the heroic spirit to avoid uttering itself in
poetry. And from this it appears, too, that when the heroic age sings,
it primarily sings of itself, even when that means singing of its own
humiliation. --One other exceptional kind of heroic age must just be
mentioned, in this professedly inadequate summary. It is the kind which
occurs quite locally and on a petty scale, with causes obscurer than
ever. The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads,
clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very
circumscribed and not very important heroic age. Here the households of
gentry take the place of courts, and the poetry in vogue there is
perhaps instantly taken up by the taverns; or perhaps this is a case in
which the heroes are so little removed from common folk that celebration
of individual prowess begins among the latter, not, as seems usually to
have happened, among the social equals of the heroes. But doubtless
there are infinite grades in the structure of the Heroic Age.

The note of the Heroic Age, then, is vehement private individuality
freely and greatly asserting itself. The assertion is not always what we
should call noble; but it is always forceful and unmistakable. There
would be, no doubt, some social and religious scheme to contain the
individual's self-assertion; but the latter, not the former, is the
thing that counts. It is not an age that lasts for very long as a rule;
and before there comes the state in which strong social organization and
strong private individuality are compatible--mutually helpful instead of
destroying one another, as they do, in opposite ways, in savagery and in
the Heroic Age--before the state called civilization can arrive, there
has commonly been a long passage of dark obscurity, which throws up into
exaggerated brightness the radiance of the Heroic Age. The balance of
private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals;
but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on
nothing else. In Homer, for instance, it can be seen pretty clearly that
a "good" man is simply a man of imposing, active individuality[2]; a
"bad" man is an inefficient, undistinguished man--probably, too, like
Thersites, ugly. It is, in fact, an absolutely aristocratic age--an age
in which he who rules is thereby proven the "best. " And from its nature
it must be an age very heartily engaged in something; usually fighting
whoever is near enough to be fought with, though in _Beowulf_ it seems
to be doing something more profitable to the civilization which is to
follow it--taming the fierceness of surrounding circumstance and man's
primitive kind. But in any case it has a good deal of leisure; and the
best way to prevent this from dragging heavily is (after feasting) to
glory in the things it has done; or perhaps in the things it would like
to have done. Hence heroic poetry. But exactly what heroic poetry was
in its origin, probably we shall never know. It would scarcely be
history, and it would scarcely be very ornate poetry. The first thing
required would be to translate the prowess of champions into good and
moving narrative; and this would be metrified, because so it becomes
both more exciting and more easily remembered. Each succeeding bard
would improve, according to his own notions, the material he received
from his teachers; the prowess of the great heroes would become more and
more astonishing, more and more calculated to keep awake the feasted
nobles who listened to the song. In an age when writing, if it exists at
all, is a rare and secret art, the mists of antiquity descend after a
very few generations. There is little chance of the songs of the bards
being checked by recorded actuality; for if anyone could write at all,
it would be the bards themselves, who would use the mystery or purposes
of their own trade. In quite a short time, oral tradition, in keeping of
the bards, whose business is to purvey wonders, makes the champions
perform easily, deeds which "the men of the present time" can only gape
at; and every bard takes over the stock of tradition, not from original
sources, but from the mingled fantasy and memory of the bard who came
just before him. So that when this tradition survives at all, it
survives in a form very different from what it was in the beginning. But
apparently we can mark out several stages in the fortunes of the
tradition. It is first of all court poetry, or perhaps baronial poetry;
and it may survive as that. From this stage it may pass into possession
of the common people, or at least into the possession of bards whose
clients are peasants and not nobles; from being court poetry it becomes
the poetry of cottages and taverns. It may survive as this. Finally, it
may be taken up again by the courts, and become poetry of much greater
sophistication and nicety than it was in either of the preceding stages.
But each stage leaves its sign on the tradition.

All this gives us what is conveniently called "epic material"; the
material out of which epic poetry might be made. But it does not give us
epic poetry. The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered
up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as
extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always. Instances
are our own Border Ballads and Robin Hood Ballads; the Servian cycles of
the Battle of Kossovo and the prowess of Marko; the modern Greek songs
of the revolt against Turkey (the conditions of which seem to have been
similar to those which surrounded the growth of our riding ballads); the
fragments of Finnish legend which were pieced together into the
_Kalevala_; the Ossianic poetry; and perhaps some of the minor sagas
should be put in here. Then there are the glorious Welsh stories of
Arthur, Tristram, and the rest, and the not less glorious Irish stories
of Deirdre and Cuchulain; both of these noble masses of legend seem to
have only just missed the final shaping which turns epic material into
epic poetry. For epic material, it must be repeated, is not the same
thing as epic poetry. Epic material is fragmentary, scattered, loosely
related, sometimes contradictory, each piece of comparatively small
size, with no intention beyond hearty narrative. It is a heap of
excellent stones, admirably quarried out of a great rock-face of
stubborn experience. But for this to be worked into some great
structure of epic poetry, the Heroic Age must be capable of producing
individuality of much profounder nature than any of its fighting
champions. Or rather, we should simply say that the production of epic
poetry depends on the occurrence (always an accidental occurrence) of
creative genius. It is quite likely that what Homer had to work on was
nothing superior to the Arthurian legends. But Homer occurred; and the
tales of Troy and Odysseus became incomparable poetry.

An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic lays, adjusting
their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative. An epic
is not even a re-creation of old things; it is altogether a new
creation, a new creation in terms of old things. And what else is any
other poetry? The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a
tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him
too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more
strictly compelling. This must not be lost sight of. It is what the
poet does with the tradition he falls in which is, artistically, the
important thing. He takes a mass of confused splendours, and he makes
them into something which they certainly were not before; something
which, as we can clearly see by comparing epic poetry with mere epic
material, the latter scarce hinted at. He makes this heap of matter into
a grand design; he forces it to obey a single presiding unity of
artistic purpose. Obviously, something much more potent is required for
this than a fine skill in narrative and poetic ornament. Unity is not
merely an external affair. There is only one thing which can master the
perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to
see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's
general destiny.

It is natural that, after the epic poet has arrived, the crude epic
material in which he worked should scarcely be heard of. It could only
be handed on by the minstrels themselves; and their audiences would not
be likely to listen comfortably to the old piecemeal songs after they
had heard the familiar events fall into the magnificent ordered pomp of
the genuine epic poet. The tradition, indeed, would start afresh with
him; but how the novel tradition fared as it grew old with his
successors, is difficult guesswork. We can tell, however, sometimes, in
what stage of the epic material's development the great unifying epic
poet occurred. Three roughly defined stages have been mentioned. Homer
perhaps came when the epic material was still in its first stage of
being court-poetry. Almost certainly this is when the poets of the
Crusading lays, of the _Song of Roland_, and the _Poem of the Cid_, set
to work. Hesiod is a clear instance of the poet who masters epic
material after it has passed into popular possession; and the
_Nibelungenlied_ is thought to be made out of matter that has passed
from the people back again to the courts.

Epic poetry, then, as distinct from mere epic material, is the concern
of this book. The intention is, to determine wherein epic poetry is a
definite species of literature, what it characteristically does for
conscious human life, and to find out whether this species and this
function have shown, and are likely to show, any development. It must be
admitted, that the great unifying poet who worked on the epic material
before him, did not always produce something which must come within the
scope of this intention. Hesiod has just been given as an instance of
such a poet; but his work is scarcely an epic. [3] The great sagas, too,
I must omit. They are epic enough in primary intention, but they are not
poetry; and I am among those who believe that there is a difference
between poetry and prose. If epic poetry is a definite species, the
sagas do not fall within it. But this will leave me more of the
"authentic" epic poetry than I can possibly deal with; and I shall have
to confine myself to its greatest examples. Before, however, proceeding
to consider epic poetry as a whole, as a constantly recurring form of
art, continually responding to the new needs of man's developing
consciousness, I must go, rapidly and generally, over the "literary
epic"; and especially I must question whether it is really justifiable
or profitable to divide epic poetry into the two contrasted departments
of "authentic" and "literary. "

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: hos d' ote cheimarroi potamoi kat opesthi rheontes es
misgagkeian xumballeton obrimon udor krounon ek melalon koilaes entosthe
charadraes. _Iliad_, IV, 452. ]

[Footnote 2: Etymologically, the "good" man is the "admirable" man. In
this sense, Homer's gods are certainly "good"; every epithet he gives
them--Joyous-Thunderer, Far-Darter, Cloud-Gatherer and the
rest--proclaims their unapproachable "goodness. " If it had been said to
Homer, that his gods cannot be "good" because their behaviour is
consistently cynical, cruel, unscrupulous and scandalous, he would
simply think he had not heard aright: Zeus is an habitual liar, of
course, but what has that got to do with his "goodness"? --Only those who
would have Homer a kind of Salvationist need regret this. Just because
he could only make his gods "good" in this primitive style, he was able
to treat their discordant family in that vein of exquisite comedy which
is one of the most precious things in the world. ]

[Footnote 3: Scarcely what _we_ call epic. "Epos" might include Hesiod
as well as epic material; "epopee" is the business that Homer started. ]




II.


LITERARY EPIC

Epic poetry, then, was invented to supply the artistic demands of
society in a certain definite and recognizable state. Or rather, it was
the epic material which supplied that; the first epic poets gave their
age, as genius always does, something which the age had never thought of
asking for; which, nevertheless, when it was given, the age took good
hold of, and found that, after all, this, too, it had wanted without
knowing it. But as society went on towards civilization, the need for
epic grew less and less; and its preservation, if not accidental, was an
act of conscious aesthetic admiration rather than of unconscious
necessity. It was preserved somehow, however; and after other kinds of
literature had arisen as inevitably and naturally as epic, and had
become, in their turn, things of less instant necessity than they were,
it was found that, in the manner and purpose of epic poetry, something
was given which was not given elsewhere; something of extraordinary
value. Epic poetry would therefore be undertaken again; but now, of
course, deliberately. With several different kinds of poetry to choose
from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and
he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem. The
result, good or bad, of such a determination is called "literary" epic.
The poems of Apollonius Rhodius, Virgil, Lucan, Camoens, Tasso and
Milton are "literary" epics. But such poetry as the _Odyssey_, the
_Iliad,_ _Beowulf_, the _Song of Roland_, and the _Nibelungenlied_,
poetry which seems an immediate response to some general and instant
need in its surrounding community--such poetry is "authentic" epic.

A great deal has been made of this distinction; it has almost been taken
to divide epic poetry into two species. And, as the names commonly given
to the two supposed species suggest, there is some notion that
"literary" epic must be in a way inferior to "authentic" epic. The
superstition of antiquity has something to do with this; but the
presence of Homer among the "authentic" epics has probably still more to
do with it. For Homer is the poet who is usually chosen to stand for
"authentic" epic; and, by a facile association of ideas, the conspicuous
characteristics of Homer seem to be the marks of "authentic" epic as a
species. It is, of course, quite true, that, for sustained grandeur and
splendour, no poet can be put beside Homer except Dante and Milton; but
it is also quite clear that in Homer, as in Dante, and Milton, such
conspicuous characteristics are simply the marks of peculiar poetic
genius. If we leave Homer out, and consider poetic greatness only (the
only important thing to consider), there is no "authentic" epic which
can stand against _Paradise Lost_ or the _Aeneid_. Then there is the
curious modern feeling--which is sometimes but dressed up by erroneous
aesthetic theory (the worship of a quite national "lyricism," for
instance) but which is really nothing but a sign of covert
barbarism--that lengthy poetic composition is somehow undesirable; and
Homer is thought to have had a better excuse for composing a long poem
than Milton.

But doubtless the real reason for the hard division of epic poetry into
two classes, and for the presumed inferiority of "literary" to
"authentic," lies in the application of that curiosity among false
ideas, the belief in a "folk-spirit. " This notion that such a thing as a
"folk-spirit" can create art, and that the art which it does create must
be somehow better than other art, is, I suppose, the offspring of
democratic ideas in politics. The chief objection to it is that there
never has been and never can be anything in actuality corresponding to
the "folk-spirit" which this notion supposes. Poetry is the work of
poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be
anything but the production of an individual mind. We may, if we like,
think that poetry would be more "natural" if it were composed by the
folk as the folk, and not by persons peculiarly endowed; and to think so
is doubtless agreeable to the notion that the folk is more important
than the individual. But there is nothing gained by thinking in this
way, except a very illusory kind of pleasure; since it is impossible
that the folk should ever be a poet. This indisputable axiom has been
ignored more in theories about ballads--about epic material--than in
theories about the epics themselves. But the belief in a real
folk-origin for ballads, untenable though it be in a little examination,
has had a decided effect on the common opinion of the authentic epics.
In the first place, a poem constructed out of ballads composed, somehow
or other, by the folk, ought to be more "natural" than a work of
deliberate art--a "literary" epic; that is to say, these Rousseau-ish
notions will admire it for being further from civilization and nearer to
the noble savage; civilization being held, by some mysterious argument,
to be deficient in "naturalness. " In the second place, this belief has
made it credible that the plain corruption of authentic epic by oral
transmission, or very limited transmission through script, might be the
sign of multiple authorship; for if you believe that a whole folk can
compose a ballad, you may easily believe that a dozen poets can compose
an epic.

But all this rests on simple ignoring of the nature of poetic
composition. The folk-origin of ballads and the multiple authorship of
epics are heresies worse than the futilities of the Baconians; at any
rate, they are based on the same resolute omission, and build on it a
wilder fantasy. They omit to consider what poetry is. Those who think
Bacon wrote _Hamlet_, and those who think several poets wrote the
_Iliad_, can make out a deal of ingenious evidence for their doctrines.
But it is all useless, because the first assumption in each case is
unthinkable. It is psychologically impossible that the mind of Bacon
should have produced _Hamlet_; but the impossibility is even more
clamant when it comes to supposing that several poets, not in
collaboration, but in haphazard succession, could produce a poem of vast
sweeping unity and superbly consistent splendour of style. So far as
mere authorship goes, then, we cannot make any real difference between
"authentic" and "literary" epic. We cannot say that, while this is
written by an individual genius, that is the work of a community.
Individual genius, of whatever quality, is responsible for both. The
folk, however, cannot be ruled out. Genius does the work; but the folk
is the condition in which genius does it. And here we may find a genuine
difference between "literary" and "authentic"; not so much in the nature
of the condition as in its closeness and insistence.

The kind of folk-spirit behind the poet is, indeed, different in the
_Iliad_ and _Beowulf_ and the _Song of Roland_ from what it is in Milton
and Tasso and Virgil. But there is also as much difference here between
the members of each class as between the two classes themselves. You
cannot read much of _Beowulf_ with Homer in your mind, without becoming
conscious that the difference in individual genius is by no means the
whole difference. Both poets maintain a similar ideal in life; but they
maintain it within conditions altogether unlike. The folk-spirit behind
_Beowulf_ is cloudy and tumultuous, finding grandeur in storm and gloom
and mere mass--in the misty _lack_ of shape. Behind Homer it is, on the
contrary, radiant and, however vehement, always delighting in measure,
finding grandeur in brightness and clarity and shining outline. So,
again, we may very easily see how Tasso's poetry implies the Italy of
his time, and Milton's the England of his time. But where Homer and
Beowulf together differ from Tasso and Milton is in the way the
surrounding folk-spirit contains the poet's mind. It would be a very
idle piece of work, to choose between the potency of Homer's genius and
of Milton's; but it is clear that the immediate circumstance of the
poet's life presses much more insistently on the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey_ than on _Paradise Lost_. It is the difference between the
contracted, precise, but vigorous tradition of an heroic age, and the
diffused, eclectic, complicated culture of a civilization. And if it may
be said that the insistence of racial circumstance in Homer gives him a
greater intensity of cordial, human inspiration, it must also be said
that the larger, less exacting conditions of Milton's mental life allow
his art to go into greater scope and more subtle complexity of
significance. Great epic poetry will always frankly accept the social
conditions within which it is composed; but the conditions contract and
intensify the conduct of the poem, or allow it to dilate and absorb
larger matter, according as the narrow primitive torrents of man's
spirit broaden into the greater but slower volume of civilized life. The
change is neither desirable nor undesirable; it is merely inevitable. It
means that epic poetry has kept up with the development of human life.

It is because of all this that we have heard a good deal about the
"authentic" epic getting "closer to its subject" than "literary" epic.
It seems, on the face of it, very improbable that there should be any
real difference here. No great poetry, of whatever kind, is conceivable
unless the subject has become integrated with the poet's mind and mood.
Milton is as close to his subject, Virgil to his, as Homer to Achilles
or the Saxon poet to Beowulf. What is really meant can be nothing but
the greater insistence of racial tradition in the "authentic" epics. The
subject of the _Iliad_ is the fighting of heroes, with all its
implications and consequences; the subject of the _Odyssey_ is adventure
and its opposite, the longing for safety and home; in _Beowulf_ it is
kingship--the ability to show man how to conquer the monstrous forces of
his world; and so on. Such were the subjects which an imperious racial
tradition pressed on the early epic poet, who delighted to be so
governed. These were the matters which his people could understand, of
which they could easily perceive the significance. For him, then, there
could be no other matters than these, or the like of these. But it is
not in such matters that a poet living in a time of less primitive and
more expanded consciousness would find the highest importance. For a
Roman, the chief matter for an epic poem would be Roman civilization;
for a Puritan, it would be the relations of God and man. When,
therefore, we consider how close to his subject an epic poet is, we must
be careful to be quite clear what his subject is. And if he has gone
beyond the immediate experiences of primitive society, we need not
expect him to be as close as the early poets were to the fury of battle
and the agony of wounds and the desolation of widows; or to the
sensation of exploring beyond the familiar regions; or to the
marsh-fiends and fire-drakes into which primitive imagination naturally
translated the terrible unknown powers of the world. We need not, in a
word, expect the "literary" epic to compete with the "authentic" epic;
for the fact is, that the purpose of epic poetry, and therefore the
nature of its subject, must continually develop. It is quite true that
the later epics take over, to a very great extent, the methods and
manners of the earlier poems; just as architecture hands on the style of
wooden structure to an age that builds in stone, and again imposes the
manners of stone construction on an age that builds in concrete and
steel. But, in the case of epic at any rate, this is not merely the
inertia of artistic convention. With the development of epic intention,
and the subsequent choosing of themes larger and subtler than what
common experience is wont to deal in, a certain duplicity becomes
inevitable. The real intention of the _Aeneid_, and the real intention
of _Paradise Lost_, are not easily brought into vivid apprehension. The
natural thing to do, then, would be to use the familiar substance of
early epic, but to use it as a convenient and pleasant solvent for the
novel intention. It is what has been done in all the great "literary"
epics. But hasty criticism, finding that where they resembled Homer
they seemed not so close to their matter, has taken this as a pervading
and unfortunate characteristic. It has not perceived that what in Homer
was the main business of the epic, has become in later epic a device.
Having so altered, it has naturally lost in significance; but in the
greatest instances of later epic, that for which the device was used has
been as profoundly absorbed into the poet's being as Homer's matter was
into his being. It may be noted, too, that a corresponding change has
also taken place in the opposite direction. As Homer's chief substance
becomes a device in later epic, so a device of Homer's becomes in later
epic the chief substance. Homer's supernatural machinery may be reckoned
as a device--a device to heighten the general style and action of his
poems; the _significance_ of Homer must be found among his heroes, not
among his gods. But with Milton, it has become necessary to entrust to
the supernatural action the whole aim and purport of the poem.

On the whole, then, there is no reason why "literary" epic should not be
as close to its subject as "authentic" epic; there is every reason why
both kinds should be equally close. But in testing whether they actually
are equally close, we have to remember that in the later epic it has
become necessary to use the ostensible subject as a vehicle for the real
subject. And who, with any active sympathy for poetry, can say that
Milton felt his theme with less intensity than Homer? Milton is not so
close to his fighting angels as Homer is to his fighting men; but the
war in heaven is an incident in Milton's figurative expression of
something that has become altogether himself--the mystery of individual
existence in universal existence, and the accompanying mystery of sin,
of individual will inexplicably allowed to tamper with the divinely
universal will. Milton, of course, in closeness to his subject and in
everything else, stands as supreme above the other poets of literary
epic as Homer does above the poets of authentic epic.