and when the two knights with all gentleness assist each other

to arm

"As freendly as he were his owne brother."

And to what height of courtesy does the mortally-wounded Arcite rise in his last words, as he resigns Emely to his more fortunate rival

"Forget nat Palamon, the gentil man."

How the sentiment of pity dominates the tale, the badge of knighthood's flower

"For pitee renneth sone in gentil herte."

Exquisite the tale is, none more admirably wrought of pathos, of arms and amours," depicting a conflict between friendship and love, in which both are victorious, a tale delightful in its music to the ear, in its picturesqueness to the inner eye, in its delicacy of sentiment to the heart. It were hard to deny to it the title " heroic," though times and men and manners have all been transfigured. But behind it, as never in the older heroic poetry, there stands the author, gravely smiling at our pleasure, amused a little at his own success, and hinting now and again, with an engaging charm, at the humours of a piece not wholly serious.

CHAPTER VII

EPIC AND HISTORY-LAYAMON-BARBOUR

EPIC, it has been said, "is a compromise between poetry and history."1 Perhaps, but in what sense a compromise? Is a portion of historical truth sacrificed, or are the graces of poetry limited? Which gives way to the other? Or are there mutual concessions? And when history has become a science is epic no longer possible? The poet and the historian differ," says Aristotle in the Poetics, "not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with metre no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history, for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular." There is nothing to exclude, as Aristotle expressly allows, from the epic category the poem which has an historical theme, for what has actually happened may well "conform to the law of the probable," and in virtue of that quality prove suitable poetic material. The poem which takes its hero from authentic history, and describes again, in the manner proper to poetry, events which are known to have taken place, may be legitimate epic, epic of the secondary type, like that of Tasso. Yet, not by reason of its metre, but as a result of its method, it will still differ from history. For the poet, in one way freer than the historian since he is not bound within the circle of fact, is in another way subject to a stricter law. He must conform to a principle by which the historian is not and cannot be bound, the principle of rigid unity. Historical compositions, as Aristotle is careful to explain, survey a wide region, 1 F. W. Newman, Miscellanies, p. 8.

2

2 "What has not happened we do not at once feel sure to be possible; but what has happened is manifestly possible; otherwise it would not have happened."-Butcher, Aristotle's Poetics, ix. 6.

of necessity present not a single action, but a single period, and all that happened within that period to one person or to many, little connected together as the events may be." Thus the poet may be an historian, but he will be a selective historian, whose method involves excision of all matters which cannot be closely knit into relation with his main action, whose contact with his hero and hero's doings cannot somehow be preserved. Clear and close must be the bond between the events narrated, tend they must to one result, march together to one end. No mere loose alliance in time will suffice; a connection far closer must hold together all the parts, as constituents of a single body, in itself complete, intelligible, significant.

Though free of the historical province, therefore, the poet in a cultivated age never in any way or measure encroaches upon the historian. Their paths in advanced society lie far apart, for the one will sacrifice to the truth of fact, as he believes it, the dearest wishes of his readers; the other, as minister to their pleasure, will be tempted "for the sake of the turn of phrase," as was said of Plutarch, "to make Pompey win the battle of Pharsalia." Not until late, however, in national development was this separation possible between the epic and history, between the functions of poet and chronicler. Their aims in the infancy of society are undivided, their parts are one. The poet is the historian of the heroic age. For long the Greeks looked upon Homer as essentially a narrator of historical facts, the Iliad was often quoted as an authoritative document, "a kind of scripture." The island of Salamis was on the authority of a single passage assigned to Athens-Thucydides, himself an historian, writing at the zenith of Greek culture, cited the Homeric catalogue of the ships as authentic. While no written records exist, it would not manifestly be easy for a sceptical spirit of discrimination between fact and fiction to assert itself. Credible" and "incredible are words of an advanced and sceptical age. The world is full of wonders, and the past may well have been believed more wonderful than the present to men in heroic times. Where scientific doubt was impossible the field of belief was wide, and the singer when he clothed tradition

—that which was in fact universally believed—in new and striking phrases, amplified and decorated it, was himself, doubtless, convinced of the truth of his own tale. Nothing suggested, nothing was to be gained by reluctance in belief. Commonly he sang of his own kin and that of his hearers, and to make their achievements magnificent, magnificent even beyond the mortal prowess of his own day, what hindered? Poetic enthusiasm served its true end when it kindled a passion of pride and desire to emulate the glory of so famous an ancestry. With the progress of civilisation, the growth of cities, the increase of travel, and the interchange of ideas with men of other races a frigid spirit of inquiry arises—like that of Froissart, who made journeys to obtain exact information about men and events— a spirit half-sister to distrust. Hunger for the fact, a huntsman's eagerness after new quarry seizes upon less imaginative men, and the historian, a shrewd brain, presents himself as rival of the poet at the Court of Letters. "I write what I believe true,” proudly announced Hecatæus of Miletus, “for the traditions of the Greeks seem to me many and ridiculous." It is the historian's hour when the prosaic present throws its shadow upon the poetic past; when in his attempt to understand the past, he reads the record by the light of his own experience, and reduces that record to the level of his daily life. For long, nevertheless, he remained in some measure a poet still, not wholly scientific, not wholly unwilling to believe in things more wonderful than he himself had seen. Herodotus, says Gibbon—the fully emancipated of the half emancipated historian-" sometimes writes for children, sometimes for philosophers." Herodotus is as much a poet in relation to Thucydides," wrote Peacock, "as Homer in relation to Herodotus. The history of Herodotus is half a poem, it was written when the whole field of literature yet belonged to the Muses, and the nine books of which it was composed were therefore of right, as well as of courtesy, superinscribed with their nine names." One may imagine that physical improbabilities would first arouse the spirit of scepticism, but it is not easy to fix the limits of the credible. If the intervention of the gods must

1

66

1 The Four Ages of Poetry.

be abandoned, men like gods may without so great difficulty be imagined, and feats almost divine substituted for those altogether beyond the limits of belief. The myth gives way to the "historische Novelle," and for a time the historian, though inspired by different emotions, carries on the work of the maker. Herodotus wrote history in prose, but published his work as a minstrel might have done, by reading it aloud to an audience. He adopted, too, the devices of the epic. Herodotus knew that every narrative of great length wearies the ears of the hearer, if it dwell without a break on the subject; but if pauses are introduced at intervals, it affects the mind agreeably. And so he desired to lend variety to his work and imitated Homer." 1 Our own early chroniclers employed verse, yet they too chanted their poetic history when chance or occasion offered. Writing and printing deprived the minstrel, or the scôp, of his vocation, but his immediate successors, half poets, half historians, belong to the age of transition, since they had in mind not one, but two, types of audience, the listeners and the readers. How slowly and reluctantly imagination withdraws from the province in which it had been so long supreme! So slowly and reluctantly that the chroniclers of the Middle Ages display it not seldom in a more eminent degree, as they not seldom display a more marked individuality, than the professed poets themselves.

For two centuries after the Norman Conquest it went hard with English literature. Latin, in the work of the ecclesiastics, overshadows the native tongue. The tales and ballads of the people received no favour from the new aristocracy. The literature of the Norman nobles made no immediate appeal to the English. Nor could any revival of English letters take place till the Norman had ceased to be a Frenchman, and made the language of the new home-land his own. Side by side with the monkish scholars and chroniclers lived the men who fashioned the romances, like Horn and Havelok, translated though they were from the French, in which the national spirit still lived, but Christianity and the foreign conquest had tamed the rude strength

1 Dionysius quoted by Professor Bury in The Ancient Greek Historians, P. 42.