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The Epic: an Essay

London mcmxxii

First published 1914.

New Edition, reset 1922.

By the same Author:

• Towards a Theory of Art
• Speculative Dialogues
• Four Short Plays
• Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study
• Principles of English Prosody

Table of Contents

PREFACE

I. BEGINNINGS

II. LITERARY EPIC

III. THE NATURE OF EPIC

IV. THE EPIC SERIES

V. AFTER MILTON

PREFACE

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.

I.

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