No More Learning

All
the great epics of the world have, however, perfectly clearly a
significance in close relation with the spirit of their time; the
intense desire to symbolize the consciousness of man as far as it has
attained, is what vitally inspires an epic poet, and the ardour of this
infects his whole style. Morris, in this sense, was not vitally
inspired. _Sigurd the Volsung_ is a kind of set exercise in epic poetry.
It is great, but it is not _needed_. It is, in fact, an attempt to write
epic poetry as it might have been written, and to make epic poetry mean
what it might have meant, in the days when the tale of Sigurd and the
Niblungs was newly come among men's minds. Mr. Doughty, in his
surprising poem _The Dawn in Britain_, also seems trying to compose an
epic exercise, rather than to be obeying a vital necessity of
inspiration. For all that, it is a great poem, full of irresistible
vision and memorable diction. But it is written in a revolutionary
syntax, which, like most revolutions of this kind, achieves nothing
beyond the fact of being revolutionary; and Mr. Doughty often uses the
unexpected effects of his queer syntax instead of the unexpected effects
of poetry, which makes the poem even longer psychologically than it is
physically. Lander's _Gebir_ has much that can truly be called epic in
it; and it has learned the lessons in manner which Virgil and Milton so
nobly taught. It has perhaps learned them too well; never were
concision, and the loading of each word with heavy duties, so thoroughly
practised. The action is so compressed that it is difficult to make out
exactly what is going on; we no sooner realize that an incident has
begun than we find ourselves in the midst of another. Apart from these
idiosyncrasies, the poetry of _Gebir_ is a curious mixture of splendour
and commonplace. If fiction could ever be wholly, and not only
partially, epic, it would be in _Gebir_.
In all these poems, we see an epic intention still combined with a
recognizably epic manner. But what is quite evident is, that in all of
them there is no attempt to carry on the development of epic, to take up
its symbolic power where Milton left it. On the contrary, this seems to
be deliberately avoided. For any tentative advance on Miltonic
significance, even for any real acceptance of it, we must go to poetry
which tries to put epic intention into a new form. Some obvious
peculiarities of epic style are sufficiently definite to be detachable.
Since Theocritus, a perverse kind of pleasure has often been obtained by
putting some of the peculiarities of epic--peculiarities really required
by a very long poem--into the compass of a very short poem. An epic
idyll cannot, of course, contain any considerable epic intention; it is
wrought out of the mere shell of epic, and avoids any semblance of epic
scope. But by devising somehow a connected sequence of idylls, something
of epic scope can be acquired again. As Hugo says, in his preface to _La
Legende des Siecles_: "Comme dans une mosaique, chaque pierre a sa
couleur et sa forme propre; l'ensemble donne une figure. La figure de ce
livre," he goes on, "c'est l'homme. " To get an epic design or _figure_
through a sequence of small idylls need not be the result of mere
technical curiosity. It may be a valuable method for the future of epic.
Tennyson attempted this method in _Idylls of the King_; not, as is now
usually admitted, with any great success. The sequence is admirable for
sheer craftsmanship, for astonishing craftsmanship; but it did not
manage to effect anything like a conspicuous symbolism. You have but to
think of _Paradise Lost_ to see what _Idylls of the King_ lacks. Victor
Hugo, however, did better in _La Legende des Siecles_.