§ I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPIC.

1. The epic must rely solely on Imagination and Memory. It deals with the past, while lyric poetry deals with the present. The individual author has little to do with the epic. The singer is a part of what he sings, whereas in lyric poetry the lyric is a part of the singer, is subjective. We may call most modern poetry a manufacture, something made; the epic is a growth. It is based on what has happened (history), or what men think has happened (legend and myth). An epic nearly always begins by telling what it is going to sing it is the wrath of Achilles, the wanderings of Ulysses, the woes of the Nibelungen. Very striking is the form of the Germanic epic, "We have heard," or "I (the singer) have heard." There is no invention. Indeed, the fate and story of his hero were generally well known to the minstrel's audience. His skill lay in presenting the legend with freshness and force.

2. The epic is simple in construction. It must flow on with smooth current, bearing the hearer to a definite goal. The metre must be uniform.

3. The epic enforces no moral. It tells a story, and the moral is in solution with the story. As Aristotle says, the epic "represents only a single action, entire and complete." There is no comment on that action.

4. The epic concentrates its action in a short time. In the Iliad the important events happen in a few days, though the war lasts ten years. In the Odyssey the time is six weeks. In Beowulf we have two main situations, in the first part taking up little time, and in the second part one brief scene.

5. Among the minor characteristics of the epic may be mentioned its love for Episodes. An episode is a story apparently not needed for the main plot of the poem, but really necessarily connected with some part of the action. In the Aeneid, the story of the destruction of Troy is a good example of the episode.

6. The singer's memory in those days of no written records was prodigiously strong. Often, too, he improvised passages. Hence he needed rests in his song. These were supplied by the repetition of certain sentences, often of whole speeches as frequently in the Odyssey. So there were many phrases and epithets which were common property and became epic formulas : "the wine-dark sea" was such an epithet; "now when they had put away the wish for meat and drink" was such a sentence. Epithets were particularly characteristic of our own epic. Thus for "sea" we have "the whale's path," a trope known to the Norse epic as a Kenning. (Cf. Part II.)

7. The epic loves dialogues. This dramatic element makes the story livelier, and gives the singer opportunity to do a little acting as he chants his verses.

8. Finally, we must remember, that in general it is the action of the whole, rather than the character of the particular, that is of chief importance in the epic. In the drama, on the contrary, the action depends on the characters; they shape it, determine it: in any mind the character of Hamlet outweighs, in importance, his story.

These are the more prominent traits of the epic. In its purity such a form of poetic composition is national, i.e., it is the spontaneous growth of a whole people.

It belongs to the first vigorous manhood of a race, just as the race is becoming conscious of itself and its importance, and mostly it springs from some victorious contact with neighboring tribes. Thus the Greek epic points to the struggle between Hellenic tribes of the western and eastern shores of the Aegean.

[For a fair summary of the rise of an epic, see the brief Introduction to Butcher and Lang's translation of the Odyssey.]

§ 2. THE WRITTEN EPIC.

Fancy and memory, the factors of the national epic, soon have a rival. As in individual life, so in the life of the race, close upon imagination and memory follows reason. As reason waxes, fancy wanes. Reason induces man to search after causes, not to trust the mere impression of the senses. But belief in the impressions of sense is the foundation of the early epic. To illustrate: a child, and the world in its youth, are alike satisfied, if told that the fire is eating the wood. That is an impression of sense; that 'tongues' of flame 'devour the wood is still a poetic figure. But reason begins to ask what fire really is, to seek the cause, to exercise the judgment instead of the fancy.

Henceforth reason and fancy are at strife; poetry and science separate. This means, too, that poetry becomes conscious of itself. Conscious poetry cannot be spontaneous, like the old national poetry. Hence, further, the poet becomes a distinct personage; there is a "maker" as well as a singer. The word "maker," which is exactly equivalent to the Greek word "poet,' is used by our earlier writers: cf. Dunbar's Lament for

the Makaris. Now it is on the threshold of this new age that the great epics are written, such as the Odyssey or the Iliad, and our own Beowulf. The singer is still lost in his song; no personality peeps out of his work; but it is his genius which binds together the scattered songs and hymns, and breathes into this mass the creative breath of a rich imagination. While the result is still national and spontaneous in origin, while the poet has simply given an artistic unity to his materials, we must not lose sight of this unifying process and its importance. The Odyssey, for example, with its consummate art of construction, is no mere collection of ballads jostled into unity.

But in the next epoch, the period of the written epic, when the "maker " claims the material as well as the form to be his own work, there is a great change. It is not the epic; it is epic poetry. Men ask, "Who wrote this?"

Thus, our Beowulf is impersonal- a true epic. The epic poems of Cynewulf (Eighth Century), though like Beowulf in style, are very different in other respects. First, the poet weaves his own name (in Acrostics) into his verse, thus claiming ownership; secondly, he uses a written account as the basis of his narrative. He reads (not "hears" as the older minstrel did) a story, and puts it into verse. But this implies another characteristic of the new age,―literature. Further, this literature is not only national; the spread of Latin and sacred lore makes it international. Poetry can now deliberately choose its subject; it has different roads before it. The epic process still goes on, but new customs disturb it and break up the grand march into petty detachments.

§ 3. LATER FORMS OF EPIC POETRY.

(1) LEGENDS ACCEPTED AS TRUE.

The tendency to sing about national heroes, and the battles which they fight, continues in force. Thus in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, scattered songs flash out from the monotony of prose; e.g., The Battle of Brunnanburh (937). Another such battle-ballad (not in the Chronicle) is Byrhtnoth's Fall (sometimes called The Battle of Maldon), a spirited song, composed, says Rieger, so soon after the fight that the poet is ignorant of the hostile leader's name. All the fire and the impetuosity of the old epic style live again in this 'ballad' (993). Under the Norman yoke, our forefathers still sung their favorite heroes; though not preserved to us, these songs were used by the later prose chroniclers of England. Then there were legendary characters of a less definite kind: cf. the Lay of Horn and of Havelok. In another similar story, Ten Brink sees a late form of the Beowulf myth.

The most important of these legendary poems is the famous Brut of Layamon (about the beginning of the Thirteenth Century). It is simply the mythical history of Britain. In tone and manner the Brut approaches the old national epic; it is partly based on tradition by word of mouth, though Wace's Geste des Bretons was Layamon's chief authority. Compared, however, with modern ventures in the same field say, with Tennyson's Idylls of the King — the Brut has much of the real epic flavor. From Layamon down, these national legends have been extensively drawn upon by our poets.

A