ENGLISH EPIC AND HEROIC POETRY CHAPTER I THE IDEA OF EPIC If we ask what is an epic? a hundred critics hasten across the centuries to our assistance. Not alone Aristotle, a fixed star in any region of philosophical inquiry, who, as Roger Bacon said, had “the same authority in philosophy that the Apostle Paul had in divinity," but longo intervallo writers like Longinus, Horace, and Petronius may be consulted, all curious in the matter, and later, learned and very numerous, a great army of eager law-givers, the Humanists of Italy and their successors in France and England. One might well anticipate illumination from so noble a company in the obscurest field. Yet since it was from the consideration of one poet alone, although so royal a poet as Homer, that Aristotle derived his light, and since the whole subsequent procession, down to the last of Renaissance critics, leads back, an unbroken chain, to the unerring master, the discussion of epic poetry became in effect the discussion of Homer, "the mighty sea mark" by which not only the critics, but the poets also of former ages, were content to steer, and epic might well have been defined as a poem written in imita tion of the Iliad." To Homer's indeed was added the sacred name of Virgil, the most faithful disciple, "the moon of Homer," but "Nature and Homer were, he found, the same," we are told: no type but that of the Greek epic appeared possible. Thus Renaissance criticism kept its eye steadily fixed upon the Iliad and the Eneid, shining exemplars, and it is the more A surprising that, when questions of interpretation or of imitation arose, we none the less find ourselves embarked upon "a troubled sea of noises and harsh disputes." True and full appreciation of the matters at issue would be tedious-strange to our manner of thinking-but from selected judgments of the leading commentators the student may gather something to his purpose. Le Bossu, a great name, convinced himself and not a few others that in the Iliad Homer purposed to illustrate a general truth-" a misunderstanding between princes is the ruin of their states." Homer, he would have us believe, was a political philosopher, who perceived that petty principalities, like those of Greece, frequently quarrel to their disadvantage. To point his moral the poet, it would seem, invented a story. The names, the exploits, the characters of the heroes, Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, were then selected, as was the siege of Troy, to serve the purpose of the general plan, to illustrate the chosen and weighty thesis. Le Bossu defined epic, therefore, as "a composition in verse intended to form the manners by instructions disguised under the allegories of an important action." It is easy to agree with Lord Kames, however, that the ethical fervour of Le Bossu betrayed him when he demanded that before the story or even the name of the hero the precept must be selected, and that his definition "excludes every epic poem founded upon real facts, and perhaps includes some of Esop's fables." Let us consult less exigent moralists. Pressing more directly towards the centre, Davenant, in the preface to Gondibert, supporting his practice by his theory, would have the subject of the epic chosen from ancient times. Thus, he argues, the poet will escape bondage to well-known history, have freedom to expand his wings, and examples of lofty virtue will be more credible, withdrawn into the vaguer realm of the past, than among contemporaries, whom we are slow to believe better than ourselves. Some votes for this contention are given him. Kames is in agreement, "familiarity," he tells us, ought more especially to be avoided in an epic poem, the peculiar character of which is dignity and elevation modern manners make no figure in such a poem." Yet Lucan, to whom Corneille confessed greater indebtedness than to Virgil, preferred themes of recent date, and historical characters whose names were fresh in men's minds, trusting perhaps a safer instinct. Tasso, again, steering a middle course, advised a subject neither too old nor too new-readers, he thought, do not bear well with changes introduced by the poet into histories familiar, and are interested but languidly in things far off or foreign manners. Some respect for history, if history is at all to be drawn upon, might, we may allow, be legitimately required, but what respect? Is Virgil to be censured because, in choosing Dido for his heroine, he presumed "to make a lady die for love two hundred years before her birth?" Turning from this problem-choice of subject-where no firm principle seems to have been at any time accepted or even outlined, to another—the proper duration of epic action—there is Aristotelian authority for great elasticity. The best examples of tragedy limited the action " to a single revolution of the sun." But the scale of epic he saw admitted, nay even demanded, enlarged dimensions, and it was required to submit to the more easily satisfied principle that the beginning and the end must be within the scope of a single view, a phrase perhaps to be interpreted simply “ of such a length as can be read in a day.” Minturno, however, would restrict the canvas of the epic poet, permitting him only the events of a single year, and Ronsard allows no more. Horace, not venturing himself upon so wide a sea as epic, was prepared nevertheless to legislate for his friends: an episode or episodes in the life of the hero he thought, with his accustomed moderation, should provide sufficient material, but Giraldi held, both in theory and practice, that the whole biography of the hero was indispensable. 66 The discussion of the hero's character exhibits similar disagreement. Unlike the hero of tragedy, who should not, according to Aristotle, be either faultless or a ruffian, the epic hero should be perfectly virtuous, says Tasso, but, argues Dryden, it is not necessary that the manners of the hero should be immaculate; they are practically good if they are of a piece, and though Achilles is the protagonist of the Iliad we must abhor his cruelty to a dead enemy, and the sale of that enemy's body, Hector's, to his father Priam. That the hero of epic should be pre-eminent in war was, however, generally conceded, and some critics charge Virgil, the supreme master, with a grievous fault, that he made Æneas "fitter to be the founder of an order of monks than of an empire," and chiefly pre-eminent in tears. "The praise of an epic poem is to feign a person exceeding Nature," argues Alexander in his pleasant Anacrisis, “with all the perfections whereof a man can be capable, every deficiency in that imaginary man being really the author's own." Alexander is all for "soaring above the course of Nature" in epic, though it be "agreeable with the gravity of tragedy that it be grounded upon a true history," and of Virgil he complains that by attenuating the courage of Turnus, who dies like a dastard, Æneas is robbed of the higher glory that springs from triumph over valour. We pass to other, but hardly less contentious matters. No commentator ventured to challenge the Aristotelian canon that the epic poem must possess unity. There is no greater horror than the sprawling poetic monster, of which one can view the parts but never the whole; yet wherein, one may ask, consists the idea of unity, if, as Castelvetro allows, not alone the doings of a single person, but even the multifarious actions of a whole nation, may in the epic properly be recalled? Once more, a chief support and ornament of heroic poetry—the machinery of Olympus, the interest of Heaven in the affairs of earth-was not easily to be thought away. Yet here the critical battle raged, perhaps, most fiercely. For Voltaire it was a faded dream: "Lucan is to be commended for having laid the gods aside," and thus given proof that "the intervention of the gods is not absolutely required in an epic poem." Yet what to substitute? The allegory of the Henriade has not found many admirers, the new spiritualities were fainter than the old, dim shadows of dim abstractions. "What Homer saw, what Virgil dreamed, was truth, Lucan, indeed, attained a measure of success without assistance of the gods, and the nature of things, it may be, supplies no overpowering argument to recall them, yet for the majority of the French critics the law of their presence was immutable, nor was it easy to break with so delightful a tradition. Machinery such as Homer's, belonging to the religion of his race and country, Virgil's even, was inevitable and proper; the Christian poet owed elsewhere his allegiance. Doubtless Ossian was rightly praised by Blair; he found the tales of his country full of ghosts and spirits, he stood on the border of debateable land, he had claims upon his country's beliefs. But the plan and limits of the supernatural in epic poetry-that problem, greatly complicated when the turbid tributaries of medieval romance began to flow into the pure classical stream, had been foreshadowed by the doubts of Longinus, who thought it a sign of age and declining power in Homer that the Odyssey harboured romantic fictions. That the Renaissance, more classical than the classics, would tolerate the Gothic strain was unthinkable, and Tasso after an adventure in the forbidden field hastily retreated into the safer region of allegory. His afterthought of a symbolical sense for his romantic inventions saved him from the impending sword of ecclesiastical censure, but only to incur the contempt of the literary critic. "He could not be insensible," is Voltaire's commentary, that such wild fairy tales, at that time so much in fashion not in Italy only, but in all Europe, were altogether inconsistent with the gravity of epic poetry. In order to cover this defect he printed a preface, in which he pretends all his poem is but a shadow and a type. The army of the Christian princes, says he, represents the body and the soul. Jerusalem the figure of true happiness, which cannot be obtained but by labour and difficulties. The spells and illusions of the enchanted forest shadow out the false reasoning into which our passions are apt to mislead us. . . . However, the ridiculous explanation which Tasso gives, with so much gravity, of his extravagance, cannot impose upon mankind." Hobbes was of the same opinion-" There are some that are not pleased with fiction unless it be bold not only to exceed the work, but also the possibility of nature: they would have impenetrable armours, |