London mcmxxii
First published 1914.
New Edition, reset 1922.
By the same Author:
Table of Contents
As this essay is disposed to consider epic poetry as a species ofliterature, and not as a department of sociology or archaeology orethnology, the reader will not find it anything material to thediscussion which may be typified in those very interesting works,Gilbert Murray's "The Rise of the Greek Epic" and Andrew Lang's "TheWorld of Homer." The distinction between a literary and a scientificattitude to Homer (and all other "authentic" epic) is, I think, finallysummed up in Mr. Mackail's "Lectures on Greek Poetry"; the followingpages, at any rate, assume that this is so. Theories about epic originswere therefore indifferent to my purpose. Besides, I do not see the needfor any theories; I think it need only be said, of any epic poemwhatever, that it was composed by a man and transmitted by men. But thisis not to say that investigation of the "authentic" epic poet's milieumay not be extremely profitable; and for settling the preliminaries ofthis essay, I owe a great deal to Mr. Chadwick's profoundlyinteresting study, "The Heroic Age"; though I daresay Mr. Chadwick wouldrepudiate some of my conclusions. I must also acknowledge suggestionstaken from Mr. Macneile Dixon's learned and vigorous "English Epic andHeroic Poetry"; and especially the assistance of Mr. John Clark's"History of Epic Poetry." Mr. Clark's book is so thorough and soadequate that my own would certainly have been superfluous, were it notthat I have taken a particular point of view which his method seems torule out—a point of view which seemed well worth taking. This is myexcuse, too, for considering only the most conspicuous instances of epicpoetry. They have been discussed often enough; but not often, so far asI know, primarily as stages of one continuous artistic development.
The invention of epic poetry corresponds with a definite and, in thehistory of the world, often recurring state of society. That is to say,epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as theneeds which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so theinvention itself has been. Most nations have passed through the samesort of chemistry. Before their hot racial elements have been thoroughlycompounded, and thence have cooled into the stable convenience ofroutine which is the material shape of civilization—before this hasfirmly 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. Somuch is commonplace. Exactly what causes the racial elements of anation, with all their varying properties, to flash suddenly (as itseems) into the splendid incandescence of an Heroic Age, and thence to