No More Learning

They are composed in, or are drawn immediately out of, an heroic age; an
age, that is to say, when the idea of history has not arisen, when
anything that happens turns inevitably, and in a surprisingly short
time, into legend. Thus, an unimportant, probably unpunished, attack by
Basque mountaineers on the Emperor's rear-guard has become, in the _Song
of Roland_, a great infamy of Saracenic treachery, which must be greatly
avenged.

Such, in a broad description, is the nature of epic poetry. To define it
with any narrower nicety would probably be rash. We have not been
discovering what an epic poem ought to be, but roughly examining what
similarity of quality there is in all those poems which we feel,
strictly attending to the emotional experience of reading them, can be
classed together and, for convenience, termed epic. But it is not much
good having a name for this species of poetry if it is given as well to
poems of quite a different nature. It is not much good agreeing to call
by the name of epic such poems as the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_,
_Beowulf_ and the _Song of Roland_, _Paradise Lost_ and _Gerusalemme
Liberata_, if epic is also to be the title for _The Faery Queene_ and
_La Divina Commedia_, _The Idylls of the King_ and _The Ring and the
Book_. But I believe most of the importance in the meaning of the word
epic, when it is reasonably used, will be found in what is written
above. Apart from the specific form of epic, it shares much of its
ultimate intention with the greatest kind of drama (though not with all
drama). And just as drama, whatever grandeur of purpose it may attempt,
must be a good play, so epic must be a good story. It will tell its tale
both largely and intensely, and the diction will be carried on the
volume of a powerful, flowing metre. To distinguish, however, between
merely narrative poetry, and poetry which goes beyond being mere
narrative into the being of epic, must often be left to feeling which
can scarcely be precisely analysed. A curious instance of the
difficulty in exactly defining epic (but not in exactly deciding what is
epic) may be found in the work of William Morris. Morris left two long
narrative poems, _The Life and Death of Jason_, and _The Story of Sigurd
the Volsung_.

I do not think anyone need hesitate to put _Sigurd_ among the epics; but
I do not think anyone who will scrupulously compare the experience of
reading _Jason_ with the experience of reading _Sigurd_, can help
agreeing that _Jason_ should be kept out of the epics.
There is nothing
to choose between the subjects of the two poems. For an Englishman,
Greek mythology means as much as the mythology of the North. And I
should say that the bright, exact diction and the modest metre of
_Jason_ are more interesting and attractive than the diction, often
monotonous and vague, and the metre, often clumsily vehement, of
_Sigurd_. Yet for all that it is the style of _Sigurd_ that puts it with
the epics and apart from _Jason_; for style goes beyond metre and
diction, beyond execution, into conception. The whole imagination of
_Sigurd_ is incomparably larger than that of _Jason_. In _Sigurd_, you
feel that the fashioning grasp of imagination has not only seized on the
show of things, and not only on the physical or moral unity of things,
but has somehow brought into the midst of all this, and has kneaded into
the texture of it all, something of the ultimate and metaphysical
significance of life. You scarcely feel that in _Jason_.

Yes, epic poetry must be an affair of evident largeness. It was well
said, that "the praise of an epic poem is to feign a person exceeding
Nature. " "Feign" here means to imagine; and imagine does not mean to
invent. But, like most of the numerous epigrams that have been made
about epic poetry, the remark does not describe the nature of epic, but
rather one of the conspicuous signs that that nature is fulfilling
itself. A poem which is, in some sort, a summation for its time of the
values of life, will inevitably concern itself with at least one figure,
and probably with several, in whom the whole virtue, and perhaps also
the whole failure, of living seems superhumanly concentrated. A story
weighted with the epic purpose could not proceed at all, unless it were
expressed in persons big enough to support it. The subject, then, as the
epic poet uses it, will obviously be an important one. Whether, apart
from the way the poet uses it, the subject ought to be an important one,
would not start a very profitable discussion. Homer has been praised for
making, in the _Iliad_, a first-rate poem out of a second-rate subject.