The Epic Part 1

The Epic.

by Lascelles Abercrombie.

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 att.i.tude 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, a.s.sume 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 a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.sed 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 l.u.s.treless 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.

a.n.a.lysis 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 una.n.a.lysed whole of tribal existence. That existence, indeed, would find in the a.s.sertion 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 pa.s.ses 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 circ.u.mscribed 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 a.s.serting itself. The a.s.sertion is not always what we should call n.o.ble; but it is always forceful and unmistakable. There would be, no doubt, some social and religious scheme to contain the individual's self-a.s.sertion; 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 pa.s.sage 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 circ.u.mstance 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 n.o.bles 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 pa.s.s into possession of the common people, or at least into the possession of bards whose clients are peasants and not n.o.bles; 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 n.o.ble ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed into popular possession; and the _Nibelungenlied_ is thought to be made out of matter that has pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds "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, Ta.s.so 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 superst.i.tion 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 a.s.sociation 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 cla.s.ses, 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sumption 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 Ta.s.so and Virgil. But there is also as much difference here between the members of each cla.s.s as between the two cla.s.ses 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 ma.s.s--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 Ta.s.so's poetry implies the Italy of his time, and Milton's the England of his time. But where Homer and Beowulf together differ from Ta.s.so 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 circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstance 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds. 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. But what is true of Milton is true, in less degree, of the others. If there is any good in them, it is primarily because they have got very close to their subjects: that is required not only for epic, but for all poetry.

Coleridge, in a famous estimate put twenty years for the shortest period in which an epic could be composed; and of this, ten years were to be for preparation. He meant that not less than ten years would do for the poet to fill all his being with the theme; and nothing else will serve, It is well known how Milton brooded over his subject, how Virgil lingered over his, how Camoen. carried the _Luisads_ round the world with him, with what furious intensity Ta.s.so gave himself to writing _Jerusalem Delivered_. We may suppose, perhaps, that the poets of "authentic" epic had a somewhat easier task. There was no need for them to be "long choosing and beginning late." The pressure of racial tradition would see that they chose the right sort of subject; would see, too, that they lived right in the heart of their subject. For the poet of "literary" epic, however, it is his own consciousness that must select the kind of theme which will fulfil the epic intention for his own day; it is his own determination and studious endurance that will draw the theme into the secrets of his being. If he is not capable of getting close to his subject, we should not for that reason call his work "literary" epic. It would put him in the cla.s.s of Milton, the most literary of all poets. We must simply call his stuff bad epic. There is plenty of it. Southey is the great instance. Southey would decide to write an epic about Spain, or India, or Arabia, or America. Next he would read up, in several languages, about his proposed subject; that would take him perhaps a year. Then he would versify as much strange information as he could remember; that might take a few months. The result is deadly; and because he was never anywhere near his subject. It is for the same reason that the unspeakable labours of Blackmore, Glover and Wilkie, and Voltaire's ridiculous _Henriade_, have gone to pile up the rubbish-heaps of literature.

So far, supposed differences between "authentic" and "literary" epic have resolved themselves into little more than signs of development in epic intention; the change has not been found to produce enough artistic difference between early and later epic to warrant anything like a division into two distinct species. The epic, whether "literary" or "authentic," is a single form of art; but it is a form capable of adapting itself to the altering requirements of prevalent consciousness.

In addition, however, to differences in general conception, there are certain mechanical differences which should be just noticed. The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read. It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers. This in itself would be enough to rule out themes remote from common experience, supposing any such were to suggest themselves to the primitive epic poet. Perhaps, indeed, we should not be far wrong if we saw a chief reason for the pressure of surrounding tradition on the early epic in this very fact, that it is poetry meant for recitation.

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours. Traditional manner would be equally difficult to avoid; for it is a tradition that plainly embodies the requirements, fixed by experience, of _recited_ poetry. Those features of it which make for tedium when it is read--repet.i.tion, stock epithets, set phrases for given situations--are the very things best suited, with their recurring well-known syllables, to fix the attention of listeners more firmly, or to stir it when it drowses; at the least they provide a sort of recognizable scaffolding for the events, and it is remarkable how easily the progress of events may be missed when poetry is declaimed. Indeed, if the primitive epic poet could avoid some of the anxieties peculiar to the composition of literary epic, he had others to make up for it. He had to study closely the delicate science of holding auricular attention when once he had got it; and probably he would have some difficulty in getting it at all. The really great poet challenges it, like Homer, with some tremendous, irresistible opening; and in this respect the magnificent prelude to _Beowulf_ may almost be put beside Homer. But lesser poets have another way. That prolixity at the beginning of many primitive epics, their wordy deliberation in getting under way, is probably intentional. The _Song of Roland_, for instance, begins with a long series of exceedingly dull stanzas; to a reader, the preliminaries of the story seem insufferably drawn out. But by the time the reciter had got through this unimportant dreariness, no doubt his audience had settled down to listen. The _Chanson d'Antioche_ contains perhaps the most illuminating admission of this difficulty. In the first "Chant," the first section opens:[4]

Seigneurs, faites silence; et que tout bruit cesse, Si vous voulez entendre une glorieuse chanson.

Aucun jongleur ne vous en dira une meilleure.

Then some vaguely prelusive lines. But the audience is clearly not quite ready yet, for the second section begins:

Barons, ecoutez-moi, et cessez vos querelles!

Je vous dirai une tres-belle chanson.

And after some further prelude, the section ends:

Ici commence la chanson ou il y a tant a apprendre.

The "Chanson" does, indeed, make some show of beginning in the third section, but it still moves with a cautious and prelusive air, as if anxious not to launch out too soon. And this was evidently prudent, for when the fourth section opens, direct exhortation to the audience has again become necessary:

Maintenant, seigneurs, ecoutez ce que dit l'ecriture.

And once more in the fifth section:

Barons, ecoutez un excellent couplet.