Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027089246 Cornell University Library PN 1303.C59 History of epic poetry (post-Virgilian' 3 1924 027 089 246 A History of Epic Poetry A History of Epic Poetry (POST-VIRGILIAN) BY JOHN CLARK. M.A. Second Classical Master in the High School of Dundee Author of "Manual of Linguistics" U ne suffit pas, pour connaitre I'^popee d'avoir lu Virgile et Homere. Voltaire, Essai snr la Foesie Epique. EDINBURGH OLIVER AND BOYD LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LIMITED 1900 _^ PREFACE The following pages are meant to exhibit the different national renderings of a variety of poetry that perhaps more than any other has given status to the literature possessing a great specimen of it, and supremacy to the poet of that specimen. I have restricted my formal examination of poems to those of the post - Virgilian period. So much excellent criticism has been made on Homer and Virgil that it seemed presumption on my part, as well as a needless increase of the bulk of the book, to adventure a full statement of the epical position of these two princely poets. It is clear, however, that no history of epic poetry could be called satisfactory that did not contain some reference to these poets — that did not, indeed, to a definite if limited extent, take into account and appraise their work. I have therefore in the Introduction devoted some pages to a consideration of certain aspects of the epical quality of their respective poems. Other pre- Virgilian epics than those of Homer claim, and have received, a certain amount of attention. A study like mine, to reach true conclusions, needs observation not only of the great masters of epic, but also of humbler poets whose good intentions have not been reinforced by potent inspiration. It needs an examination not only of mature specimens of varying quality, but of those earlier specimens that are often vi PREFACE immature only as regards poetic dressing and amplifica- tion, and that have a movement and vigour not always associated with maturity. I have tried by the consideration of some three dozen poems representing different qualities and different stages of the epopee to supply what is needed. I should say that the history of the literature of a particular poetry ought, by a comparison of poems and by reflection on the facts of the evolution of the species, to be able to set down something of value regarding its nature and possibilities. This I have essayed to do according to the measure of my ability. Although I have treated the subject under national names, my reader must not expect from me a full history of national epics. Such a work would have required several volumes for its satisfactory completion, and would, I think, by the size and independence of the separate accretions have defeated my aim, which was, to write a short history of a poetical variety as such. All my quotations are translated. I think the author of a book like this, which professes to be the history of a poetry in which all are interested, has no right to inflict on the general reader the presumably slow understanding of numerous quotations from poems written in different tongues. The history of literature has been written in various ways. It has been written in panorama, it has been written in periods, it has been written from national standpoints, it has been written with reference to the work of individuals. I think there is much to be said for writing it under the head of literary variety. I wish in this place to thank Mr A. Taylor, M.A., of Dundee High School, for assistance in reading the proof-sheets. J. C. CONTENTS List of Poems PAGE xix INTRODUCTORY THE DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE OF EPIC POETRY Development of the Variety Earliest heroic. Widest definition of epic The beginnings of literature The tribal god and individuality . Beginnings of narrative. Primitive Epic . Early actors and early actions Outstanding individuals Heightened narrative. Potential Epic . Individual pre-eminence : when developed and where seen . . ... Heroic Epic . ... Epic Poetry ... Ancient Epics : Homer ( Virgil), The Kalevala, Indian Epics The Homeric poems. Their epic quality . . 8 Homer's manner ..... 8 Homer's characters ..... 9 _ilchilles-aTid- Hector — — _ . . ., . 10 The special effect of the Iliad . . . .10 The special eifeet of the Odyssey . . .11 The content of the name epic . 11 Epic poets of Rome before Virgil . . .12 Hostile criticism of Virgil ..... 12 Virgil and Homer .... . . 13 CONTENTS PAOE The latter part of the jEneid 14 Pallas ..... IS The story of the shield 16 iEneas. Different conceptions of the heroic 16 The heroic of Virgil's time ir iEneas a manly warrior 18 His mission ... 19 Antores ..... 20 Pius .ffineas .... 20 Turnus ..... 21 Dido. The Medea of Apollonius 21 Dido's initiative .... 21 .ffineas' alleged insensibiUty 22 Dramatic drawing of Dido 23 Virgil's metre : its distinction 23 Its vocality ..... 24 Its moral and emotional quality . 25 Its general excellence 25 Lesson of life in epic 26 TheKalevala .... 27 Its argument .... 27 The Indian Epics .... 29 Criticism of the Variety Epic action. Its length and loftiness Its variety ...... There must be sanity in the action and in the episodes Advantages of a national, and at the same time un- touched subject .... Homer the first great poet of his subject . Quintus Smyrnaeus. His subject . Quintus and Homer .... Illustrations from the poem Ossian's Fingal ..... Difference between national and historical History as epic matter .... Difficulty of historic epic. Lucan The Araucana. Its subject Its style ...... Citations ...... Cervantes on the Araucana The Henriqueida .... 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 35 36 36 37 38 39 40 41 41 CONTENTS The effect of a national theme on its poet The jEneid national : not so the Argonautica The Argonautica The depicting of Medea . Nationality in the Iliad Ideality in epic, but naturalness withal There should be no thesis in epic . Aristotle and the theme of an epic poem ^A suitable fable with masterful individuals needed ^n epic poem proper has to do with civilisation The difference between epic and heroic . The epic poet a fuller poet than the heroic There is much virtue in the touch of the epic poet An epic poet must have poetic versatility Barbour's Bruce .... The storj' of The Bruce a fine subject for an epic Blind Harry's WaEace The heroico-romantic our substitute for epic Former and present requirements of an epic poet So-called short epics Firdusi's Shahnameh Epic and romantic narrative The short romantic poem . The change in the epic manner The wonderful in the new epic : its adaptations and restrictions . The poet of heroic and the poet of romantic epos Comprehensiveness of epic Epic action ready-made ^^Actors and acting in epic . ,^ The gods in epic .... Heroic poetry treats of man The heroic has an aifinity with the antique ^But must have modernity as well . The language of epic poetry ~^ Epic should have metrical form Poetry and metre . ^TEpic prevailingly impersonal ~" And without hurry . ^he episode Clearness of epic Ethics t)riginal treatment in epic CONTENTS \ Definition of an epic poem .... Features and eitcellencies of epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry ...... FAOU T8 79 CHAPTER I THE LATER ROMAN EPIC The Pharsalia. Lucan once more read than now 83 His merits will always command attention 83 His projected epic foredoomed to imperfection 84 Historic fact as material for epic poetry 85 Pompey and Caesar . ... 86 Lucan's subject-matter .... 88 The First Book. The apostrophe to Nero 88 The causes of the war ..... 90 The action of the First Book .... 91 The Second Book 91 Brutus and Cato ..... 93 Marcia ....... 93 The Third Book 94 The naval battle off Massilia . 97 The Fourth Book 97 The Fifth Book . 99 The Sixth Book 102 Scasva . 103 Erichtho . 103 The Seventh Book 104 The Eighth Book 107 The Ninth Book 109 Caesar at Troy . HI Lucan's treatment of his historic subject 113 He used description, as was then the custom 114 Lucan declamatory and oratorical IIS His sincerity and intellectuality 116 His subjection to words . . . . , 116 The Thebaid of Statius : its subject . 117 Tydeus . . . . ... 118 Two similes from the Second Book . . . . 119 Capaneus ....... 120 Amphiaraus • 121 CONTENTS The Hall of Sleep The poet's style and diction A simile from the Eleventh Book Statins' workmanship . His reverence for Virgil TheAchilleid .... The Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus. Brief argument The Roman and Greek treatment of the theme Description in Valerius Flaccus Battle-scenes Virgilianisms Similes and metre Points in a comparison of Valerius Flaccus and ApoUonius Rhodius .... Mr Morris's Jason Silius Italicus : his Punica The theme of the poem and its treatment The reputation of Silius A reference to the fable of the poem . Hannibal and Scipio in the poem Ennius and Archimedes Venus in the poem ^pic commonplaces Hannibal's shield Some incongruities Battle-pieces Metre, etc. PAGE 121 122 123 124 12S 12S 127 127 128 129 129 131 131 132 133 134 135 136 136 137 138 138 139 139 139 140 CHAPTER II THE ENGLISH EPIC The Story of the Beowulf . . . . .141 The attractiveness of the poem 143 The scenery .... 144 The world of the poem . 145 The characters .... 146 Beowulf ..... 147 The undeveloped reference of the poem ISO Its poetic author ISO Its antiqueness . 151 xii CONTENTS PAGiS Paradise Lost : a literary epic . . . . 15T The difficulties of its subject ..... 152 The argument as usually received . . . .153 Its unepical aspect ...... 153 Its theology . . . . . . .154 The quantity of the received argument . . . 155 The attractiveness of Paradise Lost will endure in spite of its theology, is, in fact, independent of it . . 157 The usual statement of the argument makes too much of the poem episodic ..... 157 The ostensible and the real argument .... 158 There is one story, one action, in Paradise Lost, permitting of poetical or religious description . . .159 The real episodic portion of the argument . . .160 Theological obscurations ..... 160 The amplification of incident in the poem . . . 161 The supplying and delineation of characters . . .162 Milton's metre . . ' . . . . .164. The tamer portions of the poem .... 165 Its allusiveness ....... 165 The most impressive portion of the poem . . 166 Satan ........ 167 Paradise Regained : it is neither in matter nor in form an epic ....... 171 Its story might furnish a termination to an epic action . 172 The characters ....... 172 The Fourth Book ..... 173 Spenser's Faery Queen . . . , .174 Southey's Roderick ... . . 177 Tennyson's Idylls of the King . . . . .179 Morris's Jason . . . . . . .181 CHAPTER III THE FRENCH EPIC Song of Roland. The historical in the poem . . .183 The colouring and amplification of the historical facts . 183 The animation of the poet His battle-pictures . .185 His tenderness and patriotism . . . . jgg Roland's qualities . • • . . 186 CONTENTS Olivier's death . Roland's death . Ganelon Olivier and Turpin Charlemagne The spirit of the poem Its place among epics . The Henriade. Its argument . The documentary heroic There must be some adaptability in the matter and of epic ..... Voltaire's elaborate epic exterior Camoens and his historical subject Reasons for Voltaire's failure. Henri Quatre Specimens of the argument CHAPTER IV THE GERMAN EPIC The Nibelungenlied. Its argument . Metre ..... Prominence of Kriemhild The meeting between Siegfried and Kriemhild Kriemhild and Hagen , The manner of the narrative . An amount of tedium in the poem But enduring attractiveness The characters of the poem The literary presentation The root-idea exemplified in the poem Kriemhild's blood-guiltiness The unity of the poem . Its ending .... Northern version of the Nibelung story The fight in Etzel's Hall Its wildness .... The behaviour of the virarriors . Armour-effects in the fight Ebb and flow in the fighting . Its verbal descriptions and knightly aspects xiv CONTENTS Pathetic side of the fighting . Siegfried ..... Kriemhild ..... Hagen ...... The Messiah. The quaUty of Klopstock's matter His handling of the matter A specimen . . . . ■ The poet analyses the subjectivity of the actors The metre of the poem .... The argument of one book The characters. Abbadona Philo Judas Satan Portia Similes . Poetical fervour The poet has not epic force He has general literary power and the gift of language PAG 21 91 21 21 22 22 22 22 22 22 22 CHAPTER V THE ITALIAN EPIC The Jerusalem Delivered. The first crusade as a subject for an epic ..... The subject suited Tasso Its potentialities .... The strong individuality in the crusading army The argument ..... Tasso's characters .... Impartiality in the character-drawing of epic Clorinda ...... Clorinda and Camilla .... Warrior-maids have often to die out of their poems Erminia : her enduring attractiveness Erminia's flight from the city . Tasso's translation of feeling into sound Erminia's life with the shepherd The story of Tancredi and Erminia unfinished Armida : her palace .... 23 23 23 23 23 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 CONTENTS XV Her delineation is the love-song of a youthful poet Armida in her abandonment . Armida's part in the poem. Her conversion Camoens perhaps warmer than Tasso . The descriptive erotic of Spenser and Tasso Sincerity in amatory poetry Spenser's method in description. Tasso's Argante . Tancredi and Rinaldo Godfrey . The quality of Tasso's style Specimens Allusiveness Similes . The story of this epic The Ismeno portion The romance The part of Armida The enduring worth of the G. L. Tasso's characters abide with us Ariosto's Orlando Furioso : its constant changing The nature of its unity . Its purpose ostensible and real Aim and means in serious and non-serious poems Ariosto's story is more entertaining than epical Chivalry in the Itahan epic Virtues and faults of the chivalrous life The characters of the poem The grave and gay in the poem. The presumptive mockery Brief outline of the story The attraction in Ariosto Illustrations of his manner The Divine Comedy : its naming It is an allegory, and written with a purpose Quality of the allegory - Quasi-epic significance of the poem Its scenery .... The poet too intense for an epic poet. The matter too hard to be epical .... Is the Divine Comedy the epic of the conscience ? Writers who have called the poem an epic The Divine Comedy an epic because not definitely anything else. Yet it is dramatic .... PAGE 247 280 xvi CONTENTS Remarks in definition The Inferno and the Purgatorio The Paradiso. Deity in Dante and Milton . CHAPTER VI THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS The Poema del Cid : its fable .... The metre ...... The Cid, a heroic poem in the narrow sense . Its strong and natural story .... The fighting is sane and an everyday accomplishment The story is frankly and simply told . The vigorous expression .... The duels with the Counts of Carrion . The Poema del Cid and the NibelungenUed . Ruy Diaz ...... The Cid at the Cortes of Toledo The religion of the Cid . ... His courtesy His beard ... His titles .... The characters ...... The story of the Lusiads The plaint and intercession of Venus . Ignez de Castro ..... The Dream of Dom Manoel .... The Old Man of Belem . Adamastor . ... The Palace of Neptune ..... The Isle of Loves. Venus seeks the help of Cupid . Cupid the reformer ..... Cupid helps his mother .... The aspect of the Isle ..... The faring in the Isle of two types of Portuguese youth The meaning of the Isle of Loves The alleged indelicacy of Camoens Flaws in the story. Its lack of a unifying personality Its episodic character ..... The narrative at Melinde only the response to a request The piecing of the voyage and the history into a whole CONTENTS The strict matter of the voyage Certain cantos ...... The looseness and the strong element of unity in the Lusiads ...... The mythology of the poem .... A homage to use and wont, and not inappropriate . A device to justify its employment The gods lent grace to poetry, and they lend something this poem ..... Camoens' descriptive power .... Allusiveness ...... Grandeur ...... to 323 323 324 324 325 326 326 326 Index 329 LIST OF POEMS DATE POEM BC 1100 Kalevala „ 850 „ 300 ,, 235 „ 200 Iliad \ Odyssey Ramayana Argonautica (ApoUonius) Mahabharata 19 jEneid A.D. 65 Pharsalia 72 85 Argonautica (Valerius Flaccus) Punica 95 Thebaid „ 300 „ 600 Fingal Beowulf „ 1000 Shahnameh „ 1080 „ 1150 Song of Roland Poema del Cid „ 1200 ,, 131-^1317 „ 1375 Nibelungenlied Divine Comedy Bruce ,, 1461 WaUace „ 1516 Orlando Furioso ,, 1572 Lusiads „ 1575 Jerusalem Delivered „ 1589 Araucana „ 1590-1596 „ 1667 Faery Queen Paradise Lost „ 1671 „ 1726 Paradise Regained Henriade L/Sr OF POEJ/S DATE POEM A.D. 17 « . . Henriqueida „ ir4«-1773 Messiah ,. ISU Roderick ., 1859-1885 Idylls of the King ., 18G7 Jason Certain of tlie dates are quite doubtful, certain are only approxi- mately correct. /.vr/!ODrcro.<{y THE DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE OF EPIC POETRY I SHOULD like to begin this introduction with a passably correct account of the development of epic. I wish to ., „ work along the literary line that has led to lienric. the heroic species proper of literature, so Widest deft- that it inav be possible to have a retrospect nttlon ot epic 'u ^ -n '. ■ •.- • , 7- that will be at once claritx mg and fact- bindinjv. riic accv^unt will be. in a way, hypothetical, but still, I believe, of some validity, presenting a bridge from the known into the unknown, or rather, in regard to my procedure, part of an arch and a pier that rests on cloud thrown forward to meet part of an arch and its pier that rests on fact. This bridge will, I hope, form some sort of pathway, in spite of the queerness of the pontifical art, I shall, of course, have to isolate a mode of literature that did not for a long time exist in sever- ance, but that ctrtainly was always present in noticeable development, or in embryo, even in those parti-coloured efforts at expression that we ra.ay, by a stretch of imagina- tion, call literarx- strivings. I am here giving the term ' epic ' its most comprehensive meaning, and, if I define an epic as a inJt or./^'wf/i' aioui itu/wit/ua/s, I think that very far back w^ shall find foreshadowings and adumbra- tions moiv or less amorphous, potential of our variety of literature, and of much else. We can im.igine sav-ages takuig one another by the A 2 EPIC POETR V hand, and in wild chant, accompanied by movemen The begin- expressing their feelings. These utteranc nings of of entreaty or thanks to the beings wl literature frightened or gladdened them were tl beginnings of literature. They were acts of worshi and such dignity as was in the world then must hai been in them. There could have been no story in the chants, for it was not definite personality that w addressed. Personification, doubtless, was operating, bi rather indistinctly, I should say, and personification do not necessarily give personality with its predicate rational activity. The beings worshipped, malevolent i benevolent,. or both, were vaguely imagined, with fia for attributes, and caprice for forethought. Early man was not an individual. He was a unit : a group. He acted and thought with his fellows. E The tribal Hvcd for his tribe, and believed in its pe god and in- manence, and in its past. Dead tribesme dividuaiity were this past, and these were revere especially those great ones who had served the tribe we As time went on these tribal worthies were brought in line with one another. Between them there would vei often have existed the relationship of father and son, ar paternity, and dignity with it, would be thrown alwa; backward, until some conspicuous ancient would ha' transferred to him all the reverence that was owed to tl past as past, and as the cause of the present. His positic as ancestor, representative, and protector of the trih was one that conferred dignity. He became the trib god. At tribal ceremonials he was worshipped, at invoked, and the story of his birth and deeds was chante His glory would be that of the ideal tribesman, ai although this would not mean possession of the Individ ality of a heroic personage, yet his apotheosis would b and-by work into the story of his life notions of i dependence and authority. We may call this story ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 3 narrative-chant, addressed to, and celebrating, person- ality. Chants to a divine power were only worship, choral hymns ; the story of the tribal god was a part of worship Beeinnines of ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ P"* off incoherence and narrative. put On sequence, must have had, in fact, Primitive Epic ^j^g semblance of a narrative. My point is, that no hymn to a god would, as such, give a story, which, in days when imagination was weak and only existed in the shape of emotion, could not have been uttered save about the experienced and the known, and that only the feats of the tribal god recited in the act of worship — and worship was then the one thing that charmed the imagination of men into recital — supplied materials with enough human interest and human scope to be called a narrative. Further, that the humanity of the story, being that of the society of the period, would have been very deficient in the self-sufficingness that ought to belong to what is called pre-heroic energy, had not the godhead of the tribal hero imparted a quantum of this quality to it. With our narrative-song we are still a good way from heroic quality of narrative, and from the kingship among men that is the property of the hero, but we have got a promising beginning. We may call this epoch, a long one, and gradually entered on, that of Rudimentary Literature, and, under that aspect of literature now being considered, that of Primitive Epic. It was an epoch in which every man was, so to speak, his own poet. When the deifying faculty increased the number of gods, who, at first, had been the creations of terror and Early actors interest, and anthropomorphism was en- and early dowing deity with human attributes, many . actions subjects for narrative-song of big import and of human bearings were provided. The multiplication of tribal heroes went on with time, and these, as pro- tectors of the tribe, being associated with gods, were trans- 4 EPIC POETRY figured as actors in matters that concerned their specia activity. Gods with human attributes on the one hand and tribal heroes with divine aflEnities on the other speedily, by the mouths of their worshippers, spread notions of detached and self-determined activity, while the record of their co-operation for some given object imparted body to the chanted narrative, and was ar anticipation of an epic feature. The sphere of actiof was, as yet, too confined to have much in it of the nature of heroic action, limited as it was to energy sometimes man-like, along the lines of the divine anc the semi-divine. I have emphasised the dignity and purposefulness that the superhuman functions of heroes gave to their deeds Outstanding Celebrated in official lays, but the conditions Individuals of life were rapidly becoming such, that heroes who had not been admitted to the heroic pantheon and even live heroes, were beings of outstanding excel lence. Let us suppose a leader in war to have been slain. His tribesmen meet to sing his death-song. They describe his feats of war, his glorious leadership, and his noble death. Be it granted that these are the self-sacrifices ol a number of the tribe, yet the stuff is not unlike that ol a heroic lay. Again, a warlike brave has won for his tribe a victory in war. At the next feast of the tribal god a song is added to the tribal song celebrating him and his feats, and comparing him to the tribal god. This is something like a psean to individual excellence. The similar surnames of heroes and gods, as benefactors ol the community, would cause confusion, transference, and commingling of services. Stories told of heroes would be tinged with matter derived from stories of the gods. Therefrom would arise an exaggeration in matter, £ proudness of style, and a mixture of legend and myti that we find in some specimens of early heroic. ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE S I think I may say that at the end of this epoch the narrative-song had become something more than an act Heightened °^ worship or semi-reHgious commemora- narrative. tion, that it had, in fact, assumed pro- Potentiai Epic potions, and a tone that entitled it to be called the predecessor of ordered rhythmical narrative. It is to be thought that adorations and litanies addressed to the gods, and sacred recitals of their deeds were in the preparation of a religious brotherhood, and it is likely that lays which could not be known ofF-Jiand, being more than formal invocation and entreaty, but which needed attention to details in the secular activity of the heroes, were arranged by forerunners of the professional bards of a later age. The tribesman is no longer his own poet, but a listener to the poetical renderings of others. The epoch, with its rhythmical recitative and its high-toned narrative, may be justifiably named the epoch of Potential Epic. The wider life of men and an jncipient distribution of tasks were subtly originating feelings of isolation and Individual self-interest. The leaven of individualism pre-eminence : was in operation. Combination for purposes veioped'and o^ conquest and defence necessitated leader- wiiere seen ship, and special positions, and subordina- tion. Tribal narrowness and levelling began to disappear. Leaders awoke to the consciousness of personal power, and fondness of this, and circumstances made permanent the assumption of superiority. Great war-lords acquired not only place, but property and a following, and, tribal ties being broken, men became personally devoted to a leader as leader. These great ones took the place of the tribe in the minds of the many, and had transferred to them all the regard and service that were owed to it. They were divine with its divinity, and descent from the tribal god when transferred to and centred in them, gave to their position of superiors among inferiors, of leaders 6 EPIC POETRY among led, the sanction of right as well as the lustre of divine ancestry. Round such chiefs a httle court gathered, of which their more distinguished followers were the pillars. Minstrels were in their retinue, and sang their praises, and the praises of their kin, for the forefathers of the chief became subjects of song. As chiefs advanced to petty kings, the principal men of their following were in turn glorified, and common men sank into insignificance beside the royal house and the noble families. Each petty dominion became a focus of heroic song. The chief's hall, the tyrant's court, and the castle of the feudal superior have been so many environments for the glorification of individuals, and centres for the diffusion of poetry celebrating these. The patronage of a chief gave a direction and a free spirit to heroic litera- ture that it would not have possessed had it remained in the hands of priestly castes. What these can do in the way of epic production may be seen in the Indian epics. With the epoch of the chief began Heroic Epic. It was a progressive species for a long time. Heroic epic is, indeed, a permanent variety in litera- ture. From this time onward, there will be no lack of specimens of this variety. Poets of heroic Heroic Epic • ■ • i u --.u epic have in a sense always been with us, but their productions belong to many stages of poetical development, beginning from the untutored poem of thin but sometimes nervous matter, and reaching to the poem of great technical skill and poetical decoration. Rhythm was developed into metre during this period, and needed special devotion and practice. The poet was now a craftsman, and employed a form that was not at the command of everybody, and a diction that differed from that heard in ordinary speech. I have given a rapid survey of the progress of epic writing. I have left lacunce ; I have not distributed time and emphasis ; I have been one-sided in my view of ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 7 literary origines; I have described generals cursorily, and left out important particulars, but I hope to have given an intelligible conception of the development of epic style. The era of Epic Poetry followed on that of Heroic Epic. There were now guilds of bards, and legends were pre- served, utilised, and grouped. He who Epic Poetry or could group and dock legendary lays, unify the reference, and give creative touches, breathe over them the breath of an original spirit, and provide full poetry, was a poet in epic poetry. Another, with less systematising power and shorter poetical flight, remained a poet in heroic epic. Heroic epic is the sine qua non of epic poetry. The poet of the first is a builder, the poet of the second a master-builder. A poem of the first sort is a chapel, a poem of the second, a cathedral. Epic poetry needs, externally, wide horizons, national life in some form or other, and movement of many men. I have tried to trace our dignified tale about individuals down to the era of Epic Poetry. I call Homer an epic poet. I do not see why he should, with so great parsi- mony of phrase, be called an epic singer. Demodocus was one person. Homer another. The latter was something more than a composing rhapsodist of poetic ability. The man who arranged the Iliad, overlaid it with his own workmanship, and marked on it the sign- manual of his own poetic hand, made epic poetry. It is essential, indeed, to note two varieties of this, namely, natural epic poetry and artistic epic poetry. Homer wrote the one, Virgil the other. I propose now to offer some remarks on these two poets. This introduction is historical as well as critical, and it seems natural to pre- face it with some account of Homer as an epic poet. I shall take Virgil next, because Homer suggests Virgil. I shall have occasion, in the critical portion of the intro- 8 EPIC POETRY duction, to mention most other epics that are not treate in the body of the book. It is not to be supposed that the Iliad and the Odysse sprang into being without a fulness of time being reachec The Homeric ^hey are not primitive epics, except in poems. Their special sense of the term. They have to epic quality much literary art, and too many manner isms of a school of bards to be primitive in the stric sense of the word. They are certainly not like what are called the literar or art epics. They have not their self-consciousness nor, if I may use the word, their far-fetchedness. Ther is not so much sameness in the ordinary narrative matte of a modern epic, as in that of an ancient. The Iliad i certainly picturesque and animated, but it has repetitioi and much of it. It has, it is true, no dreary flats, bu tedium occasionally besets one who peruses it continuously One could not say this of the Odyssey, which has a stor' of surpassing interest, and, better than the Anabasis merits the name of the ' best story in the world.' Wouh not the Iliad, it may be asked, were we to take out of i the Hector and Andromache episode, the first book, th( meeting between Achilles and Priam, etc., be shorn of it excellence, and its attractiveness repose on the homeri( manner ? Not so. The excellencies of the Iliad an very widely distributed, meet one, in fact, everywhere All the same, the homeric manner — using the expressioi in the narrower sense, for in the larger, the homeri( manner is just Homer, matter and manner combined— is a very powerful factor in producing the pleasure tha all feel who peruse Homer attentively. What is the specialty of this homeric manner ? It ii not nobility, for every epic — genuine epic — has that Homer's Well, Homer has solid vigour, clearly out manner lined action, an effortless style, and i mastery of love- compelling speech. A strong, straigh ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 9 speech it is, painted with simile, and adorned with the objectivity of epithet, full of life, and a something or other of primal virtue, that is not in, or, rather, that cannot be made to shine through words now. And the speech has the added charm of conveyance in a resonant metre of big flow, which can be ponderous or rapid as the occasion requires, and which reflects the gravity or gaiety of the thought. These facts are very imperfectly given by those who say that it is Homer's old-world manner that fascinates. The statement is very true, no doubt, but it is rather brief and somewhat dark. Homer's Pegasus needs no spur. It passes over the plains, climbs the mountain sides, shoots aloft, travels round, and stands out on the azure sky, and prances in the brilliancy of the sun, all placidly, and naturally, and with most easy alternation. Homer is so engaging. He says his say and does not throw one off, now to this quarter, now to that, after a reminiscence or a coincid- ence. This constitutes one of his greatest charms to a modern. The effect he produces is not due to complexity or tumultuousness of imagery, but to the singleness of his simplicity, and to the strength of his lines of power. We may say, indeed, speaking of the Iliad, that it is not the deeds of war narrated that attract, but the art of the poet-narrator. And yet it was a big fray, a fray that had divine sanction and was honoured by divine participa- tion, more heroic, more doom-fraught, and more a picture of lifeinjittle-than other frays seem to be. ""TeriiaprfEeprerogative of precedence enjoyed by the poet, as well as his unlaboured manner, has got some- Homer'schar- thing to do with Our partiality for the acters fighting of these embattled chiefs. Any- how, the homeric portraiture of characters needs no pre- rogative to commend it. Their awful and lovable, attributes are skilfully interfused and naturally blended. We are not unaffected by the bovine force of Ajax and lo EPIC POETRY the outrecuidance of Diomede, but it is Achilles and Hector that aiFect us the most. We admire Achilles' Achilles and manliness, his ebulliency, his haughty self- Hector righteousness, his dogged, but not quite tearless resignation, and his tender gentility. We love Hector's patriotism, his loyalty, his moral manliness ; we admire the father, the husband, the hope and bulwark oi his race. What a testimony to the worth of Hector, and to the impartiality of the poet, are the three laments that close the Iliad. Andromache misses the tender word he had left unspoken, Hecuba exults in the favour shown to her dead son by the gods, and Helen, Helen remembers his chivalry. The Iliad is a poem of great activity and of strong emotions. In it we follow the fortunes of a fight taken The special P'''^'' '^"^ ^^ many actors, and conditioned by effect of the the inaction and action of a hero of pas- "'*^ sionate individuality. When we think of the Iliad as a story, we think of the actors and their acting, in particular, we think of Pelides in wrath, of Pelides in the fight, of Pelides in tears ; when we close the book we say to ourselves, " What a man was Pelides." It is a tale limited to four moments — anger, turmoil, reconciliation, vengeance — and ending in an ethical sunset of warm and radiant humanity. The Iliad makes one's pulses beat, it makes one feel the emotions of a participant. One reads the Odyssey, lax and out- stretched, as it were, and with a mind free from tension, whereas in the companion epic we feel a tightening of our attention, have a personal interest in the actors, and are conscious of a mimicry of the movements of the com- batants, and a strong disposition to range ourselves now on this side, now on that. All this feeling, however, is due to strong interest and not to an intuition of vicarious- ness, which latter is a dramatic and not epic sensation. The Odyssey remains abidingly objective. Its read- ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE u iiig is pure enjoyment tempered by compassionateness. The special '^^^ Iliad is objective enough, for that effect of the matter, and all genuine epic must be such, ^***y but it is objective in a diiferent way. There is more stirring action, more dramatic intensity in the Iliad, and one passes readily from spectator into quasi- actor. In reading the Odyssey we nearly always remain spectators, and passive gatherers of delight. When we think of the Odyssey as a story, we do not think of the feats of the hero, but of the lands he visited, the wonders he saw, the hairbreadth escapes he made, and not even the deed of vengeance wrought on the wooers, or the recognition and our satisfaction thereover, makes us for- get the record of these ten years of wandering and adventure. Its variety is concerned with externals, is that afforded by adventure and shifting of scene, and is highly enhanced by the general romantic setting. The story, however, is not like an eastern tale of wonder, for, amid all the wonder, its sanity and rationalness are con- spicuous, and we never lose our way in it, always retain- ing a hold on the individuality of the hero. Just after the slaughter of the wooers, before we read of the punish- ment of the faithless maids that dangled from nooses and wriggled with their feet for a little, but only for a little, the feeling of passivity that I have spoken of reasserts itself, and remains to the deus ex machina conclusion. The epopee is not a genre that necessarily appears in every age. There was a time when it, or its anticipa- The content '-^°°' ^^^ produced galore, but, at other of the name times, it needs a man of genius — an epic *•"" craftsman par excellence. The name epic, in the proper content of the term, implies something not primitive. Primitive epics are heroic poems. It is literary style, and scope and quality of story that give us epic ; it is thoughtful searching, an aesthetic setting 12 EPIC POETRY forth, and, in later epic, romanticism that give us tl literary or art epic. /Esthetic setting forth does n imply a story with a purpose, but does imply one with plot, for without this we cannot have even a good hero poem. The epic has to present adventures and even aesthetically, but it has dramatic qualities, and, when these are added elegiac and general poetic excellencies, in the ^neid, its range of attractiveness is much widene Before Virgil, Naevius and Ennius wrote historic epics, and between these and him there were fres Epic poets of essays— e.^., those of Varius in the fir Rome before kind, and those of Varro Atacinus in bot Virgil — jjj j.jjg historical epic, and also essa; in the mythological. There had also been written ep tales — viz., by Cinna, Calvus, Catullus — with dramat allurements, dramatic situations, and stagey passionati ness. Virgil began his great poem at a time when, ; regards metre, style, and words, the language was read for the attempt, and he chose a story that had hold' of tl popular imagination. Virgil has been subjected to some most unjust an most minuscule criticism. I have never been able t Hostile criti- follow the Statements of those who belitt! cism of Virgil the Mantuan. Much of the depreciation due to the fact that Virgil is not Homer. If it is tri: that without Homer there would have been no Virgil, c rather, no .^neid, what does that prove ? Nothinj Simplicity, nature's beauty, and sheer power are admirab: things, but so is grace, so is art, when reinforced by geniu and so is power that is vivifying, dramatic, and tremuloi with emotion. I believe with Voltaire, that, if Hom« made Virgil, it was his greatest work. Virgil has, wit obvious exceptions, stamped his influence on all -the ep: literature that comes after him. I speak not only < manifest copying of incident, and disposition of fable, bi of communication of tone. ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 13 If we had never known Homer, we had never discerned the homeric imitations, and why should our knowledge Virgil and of their existence detract from our apprecia- Homer tion of Virgil, seeing that he professedly imitated Homer. He produced something with homeric echoes, it is true, but solidly distinctive as well. The resemblance only proves that he heired the homeric, which, indeed, he bettered. Let us forget Homer and read the -^neid as an independent bit of literature. We shall then be in a position to appreciate its power. We are not at all times bound to describe a poet in terms of his literary father. It must not be forgotten that Virgil dealt with a Trojan hero, and a tale that had had a development among his own countrymen, and that many homeric aspects are not so much virgilian copyings as national rifacimenti. Much that is in Homer is older than the poet and stock-in-trade of all heroic poets. Virgil exercised the same right as did Homer. His originality is not disproved by his procedure. Let us contrast the copyings done on Virgil of Silius Italicus. The .^Eneid is not a contaminatio of the Iliad and the Odyssey, as some would have us believe, with pathos and patriotism and intellectuality thrown in. The effect produced by the JKnevA is altogether different from that produced by the Iliad or Odyssey. There is a conscious ethical colouring in Virgil. The special quality of his poem is a thoughtful and not a sensuous one. Homer gives us activity, manliness, isolated deeds, sorrow, and outbursts of sheer humanity. Virgil draws for us character, purpose, a passage to an end, weariness, and the still sadness that oppresses souls. Homer sings, as sing he must, from impulse, and not from purpose, though he had to eat, 1 daresay. I think that too much is sometimes made of the impromptuness and naivete oi the Homeric poems, if it is meant, as would sometimes seem, that no plan, no reflectiveness, but mere 14 EPIC PQETRY eclectic haphazardness, as it were, and instinctive singi amassed and produced the verse. Naive ought to m« unconventional, and devoid of reflection, in the sense devoid of thoughtful searching. Homer had art as w as Virgil, in fact, no man can be a poet without art, in this connection, I should say, technic. The rhapsod poets had not only traditional methods of handling a poetic art, but had to write in a style that suited delive It is one thing to say that Virgil lived at a time wh reflection and poetic artifice were recognised, anoth and an erroneous thing, to say that he imposed art-for: on his story. Virgil made explicit what appeared to h implicit in the national history and strivings, read ir them an order, a beginning, a middle, and an end. 1 voiced the thoughts, conscious and half-conscious, of 1 fellows. He idealised history. Virgil has been much blamed. He has been blam for his limning of ^neas, and he has been blamed i The latter ^^ alleged lameness of his story, and t part of the comparative feebleness of the latter part jBasAi jjjg poem. Leaving out the ' tale of Tro portion of the epic, and comparing narrative wi narrative, we, to my thinking, ought to say that t! latter part is as narrative superior to the first. T] argument of the first six books is nobly weighted wi the Descent and the Story of Dido, which are, howev( both episodes. The later books are a better specimen epic narrative than the earlier. They are in their wi as good as Homer, and ought to be more pleasant modern taste, unless a special effect is sought aft£ Their story is more compact, and has a more rollir volume than that of the Iliad or Odyssey. If they are all tedious, it is when they reproduce the homeric for too closely. The second part of the ^neid seems to me to be wh; Virgil says it is, viz., a record of the greater events of tl ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 15 Story. So far as even running narrative is concerned, it is the better part of the epic. And it is more than an assemblage of heroic incidents. The plot has marked saliency and development. The landing, the compact, the outbreak of war, the alliance, the leaguered camp, the Trojan advance, the truce, the single combat frustrated and passing into a duel to death on the field of battle, are culminant points in a well-ordered and swiftly moving march of events. Nor does it take rank only as a story, as a recital of events germane to a main issue. The tale of Silvia's pet stag, the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, the account of the life and death of the warrior-maid Camilla, the figured glories of the shield are embellishments of a master-poet. Lausus, Mezentius, Turnus himself, and the old Evander have, as personalities, attractiveness, and the first two, and last, have, in addition, a virgilian flavour. And Pallas, who, next to Camilla, was, I am sure, Pallas Virgil's favourite character, and whose name sounds to the reader in the finale of the ^neid, more like a dirge than a war-cry of vengeance, Pallas, who died ere his prime, after barely earning the first fruits of his youthful valour, surely Pallas has a more than common attractiveness. Over his fate, by mouth of Jupiter, Virgil utters the passive and active, the fatalism and freedom contained in his conception of life ; — Stat sua cuique dies ; breve et inreparabile tempus Omnibus est vitas : sed famam extendere factis, Hoc viitutis opus.* JEn. X, 467. The story of the shield in the eighth book is the story of Rome. It is a fine grouping of the psychological The story ot moments in the city's history, and a long- the shield sounding psean on its glories. The verse * His own day awaiteth each ; short is the time of life to all men, and beyond recall : but to spread fame by deeds— this is valour's task. i6 EPIC POETRY is as magnificent as the matter is imaginative and pictorial. Its lines, to mention one quality, have, in virtue of their imaginative rhythm, all the effect on the ear that a historical procession would have on the eye, a difBcult effect to produce, because the ear, unless to direct musical appeal, is not so impressionable as the eye, and is, moreover, somewhat barren of projecting power. Perhaps the sense filters through the sound and aids the impression. In that case it is a fine thing to have written poetry so interpreting and so permeable. It has been, and still is, fashionable, even among admirers of Virgil, to speak disparagingly or apologeti- cally of jEneas as a creation of poetic fiction Different con- that we must be content to look kindly on ceptions of the out of homage to the genius of its creator, or at least as an amiable though occasionally lapsing saint, liable to accesses of battle-frenzy. He has even been called a ' milksop,' and a ' perjured adulterer.' Such criticisms are off the line ; they are unsympathetic, they argue angularity. They prove that the critic either does not know the mind of Virgil, or has become pre- possessed by some pet type of hero, the thought of which warps his judgment of another variety. In common life we have become emancipated, intellectually, at anyrate, from narrowness, and have become civilised in our conceptions of the heroic. We no longer look for barbaric or feudal elements in heroism, but in certain of our literary likes and dislikes we are still barbarians. How otherwise shall we explain it that the patriotic, the fiHal, the reverent ^neas is reckoned inferior to the, from some points of view, ruffling roisterers of Homer ? I suppose it is felt that the combination of piety, pessimism, and homerico-heroic in ^Eneas, is not a happy one. But in the hero's days there was enough of religious fear, and pessimism, or fatalism, to make possible the attribution of such a personage to them. The tinge of ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 17 modernity, or domestication, in the hero's character, is not unjustifiable, and ought not to be unpleasing. ^neas had to perform a task that no hero of ancient epic had to perform. He had to transplant a religion and found a kingdom. He is made to feel a weight that the real .^Eneas never felt, and made prescient of a re- sponsibility that the real .(Eneas never feared. It is the task allotted that accounts in large measure for the presentation of the hero. His character is a bit of an anachronism in the period of action of the poem. But all poetic and objective literature that concerns the past is more or less an anachronism, for is it not this much or that much of the thought of the present with the environment and matter of the past ? The homeric dressing of epic is not the ultimate, nor, as I think, the best — it was not even the pre-virgilian — and the new epical wine of the human spirit could not have been always confined in homeric bottles. The literary epic has notes of many poetic moods, and is all the fuller and better a species for these. And if the individuality of the poet has passed into his creation, and .^EneaSj like Virgil, has the sense of tears, the epic poets who have succeeded the epic singers have all marked on their poems the imprint of their own personality, and could not, as poetic masters and creators, have done otherwise. It is the literary or patriotic halo investing the ebullient Achilles and Wallace wicht that makes them acceptable The heroic of to US as heroes. To the Romans of Virgil's Virgil's time time the fighting qualities of such persons, isolated from other qualities, and in a national poem, would have appeared the attributes of a centurion rather than of a national hero. At that time there was a dis- belief in the permanency and utility of mere burning individualism. Vehement endeavour and self-asserting action had not, in the experience of the men of that age, had the recommendation of stability, nor did they have the B 1 8 EPIC POETRY sanction of the sober and ethical propriety of the national spirit. Virgil's hero reposed on the divine backing, was a waiter on Deity, and the delineation of such a person was at once a guide and homage to current public feeling, and, in that time of national hopes built on a politic if not perfervid individual, a hopeful augury for the future. It is possible to be too philosophical in one's interpre- tation of a character like ^neas, but it is plain even to a cursory reader that, individually, he is meant to be a pattern of self-denial and sage acquiescence in the will of higher powers. He is also, typically, I should say, meant to be a prehistorical embodiment of the patience and reverent purpose of the best national sentiment pressing towards the realisation of its destiny and ideal. While .(Eneas is, to a certain extent, a type, he is also a warrior and must not be denuded of manliness. Virgil ^neas a meant him to be a fighting man, meant to manly warrior carry on the homeric tradition about his hero. On this homeric conception he grafted ideas of another sort. He certainly made .^neas a man with a mission, and a vehicle for the exhibition and glorification of certain virtues ; he imparted to him certain qualities of the ideal man of his own thoughts, and he saddened his visage over with the cast of the thought of his own day, but he did not mean to suggest to us that his creation was a seeker after a happy domesticity, balked of his quest, or a warrior and a hero in his own despite, ^neas was to Virgil the countryman, the comrade in arms, and the peer of Hector. Diomedes' view is the poet's : — Ambo animis, ambo insignes prsestantibus armis ; Hie pietate prior.* jEn. xi, 291. * Both (Hector and jEneas) excelled in courage, both excelled in brilliant feats of arms, the latter was more advanced in goodness. ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 19 The following words have no meaning, unless addressed to a great-hearted warrior : — Tu ne cede raalis, sed contra audentior ito, Quam tua te fortuna sinet.* Mu. vi, 95. Not only must we not denude ^neas of manliness, but we must not misrepresent to ourselves the nature of his mission, or narrow the conception His mission , r -r-i . <■ ■ thereof. He was not a mere religious missioner, and colporteur of his ancestral penates, but a conqueror and civiliser. He may be looked on as the introducer of a cult, but when he says on his oath before Latinus, Sacra deosque dabo ; socer arma Latinus habeto,t ^n. xii, 192. he is not conveying a declaration of preference, or hint- ing at a theory of life, but uttering a highly-strung supplication, and using, I think, politic and conciliatory terms, which are to be taken loosely and not literally. He is rather speaking sentimentally than enunciating a formula that is to be his guide through life, or that gives the raison d'etre of his voyage to Italy. In any case, the poet never dreamt of stating the whole mission of his hero in a supplication. The braveries, defiances, and gloatings attributed to .^neas by Virgil are not simply war-paint, but really the marks of a heroic soul abound- ing in courage. It is the religiously-ordered life, the reflective and self-conscious sentiment, and the abiding and intensely-realised purpose of ^neas that make them sometimes appear incongruous. The incongruity is more apparent in objective epic than it would be in lyric or drama. But, whatever ^neas is, he is not a poor little Trojan mouse with a mission. * Yield thee not to adversity, but aye go more daringly forward, more daringly than thy fortune will permit thee. + Rites and gods I shall supply ; let my father-in-law, Latinus, wield the sword. 20 EPIC POETRY It is not, indeed, as the poet of frays and blows that we are pleased to remember Virgil, but as the sad singer, the poet of a joy whose hand is ever at its lips ° *"^** ' bidding adieu. Antores, the Argive, died at the hands of Mezentius by a spear-cast meant for ^neas : — Sternitur infelix alieno vulnere, caelumque Adspicit, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos.* ^n. X, 781. It is a squeamishness born of barbarian tastes and narrow prejudices that cavils at the epithet pius as applied to .(Eneas. The much-maligned Sum pius ^neas was addressed by him to one whose deity he divined, and whom he wished to propitiate by proclaiming himself god-fearing, for he straightway passes on to speak of his rescue of the penates, or Virgil may not have written the first book before the others, and, having fixed on the epithet /z«j as appropriate to .(Eneas, he may give it here, as a dis- tinguishing item in the heraldic epical announcement. So that it has a reference to the hearer or reader as well as to the goddess. Epithets are constant things in epic, and .(Eneas is more self-conscious than other epic heroes. In any case the contemptuous superciliousness with which the designation is sometimes treated is quite misplaced. It has always appeared to me that pius has strong under- tones of modern import. It has its well-known triple meaning — good, filial, patriotic— but there is more in it than these. These tones seem to me to say, as nearly as ancient fatalism and buffeted and somewhat passive individuality could say, " Whatsoever other men do, as for me, I shall serve the Lord." .(Eneas had the con- sciousness of right of the dictum quoted, if not its special aggressiveness. * Hapless, by a wound not meant for him, he is laid low, and turns his eyes skywards, and in his death sweetly remembers Argos. ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 21 ^neas is the real, and not merely the titular hero of epic. Some lovers of paradox and framers of hasty and narrow generalisations will have it that Turnus is the real hero. Turnus is a homage to use and wont in epic, and doubtless the poet's recognition of the old Italian race, and the embodiment of its virtues, but .^neas is the real hero. Turnus is a marplot, an unthinking, irreligious, impulse-ruled semi- barbarian, the associate of tyrants and impious men. He is maddened by the gods. His bravery is the bravery of animalism and self-will, and he is not over-chivalrous. Virgil, working after Apollonius, introduced love into his epic. Apollonius' Medea, smitten of Eros, became Dido The enamoured of Jason's youthful beauty and Medea oi heroic mould. Before she abandoned her- ApoUonius ggj£ j.^ ^q^q and unfilial conduct, she passed through a severe struggle. Her self-respect, and her duty as the king's daughter, alike forbade a facile ac- quiescence in the dictates of an overpowering passion. But Medea's heart had been too deeply wounded, and her whole emotional nature too completely captivated to permit of resistance. Such resistance as she made, by rebound, only increased her infatuation. So with Dido. Even before the intervention of Cupid- Ascanius, her woman's imagination had been won for the Trojan chief. Afterwards, neither her duties as queen-foundress, nor her self-imposed and self-consecrated loyalty to her dead husband, could stem the torrent of the desire that went out towards .^neas. It is common to rate iEneas, and through him, Virgil, for cruel treatment of Dido. But ^neas, to do him Dido's initia. justice, took no initiative in the wooing. tive The initiative was all with the queen. First her imagination, and then her passion beguiled her. .^neas played the part of a human magnet. Perhaps Anna's services saved forwardness on his part. It was 22 EPIC POETRY not till the hunt that he became aggressive, and then the snug occasion and the sensual queen overpowered his passivity, and he sank the Trojan in the Phrygian. Of course ^neas must have been conscious that he was neglecting his mission, that he was toying with indecision, and trifling with a woman's tenderness. But the solace of womanly sympathy must have been welcome to the wave-worn hero, and was not Dido as beautiful as Dian ? Dido, too, on her side, was neglecting a mission, and surely we are not to remember nothing against Dido and everything against .^neas. That impassioned appeal of the queen beginning with reproach, melting into tenderness, and ending in Eneas' ai- amorous breath did not dissuade .^neas leged insensi. from his recovered purpose. And why ''"'**' should it have done so ? .^neas, convinced of neglectful dalliance, could not have acted otherwise than he did, and have at the same time remained true to the sad sincerity of his character. He cut a poor figure in the circumstances, as any man would. At least he made soft answer to the tempestuous queen. His reference to the work cut out for him by the gods sounds callous and cruel after Dido's moving statement of her sacrifices, sacrifices, one can call them, of principle to passion. I suppose .(Eneas ought to have gone on sinning against the light that had been flashed in on his silken wantonness and unfatherly conduct. It is to my mind Dido's second appeal to .^neas, in which, by Anna, she entreated him to delay his departure for a little, were it only till the winds were fair, that she might learn to school herself into submission, it is this second appeal, I think, that makes defence of .Eneas' action particularly difficult. It is always correct, however, to plead the high necessities of the epic. It was better that a woman should weep and die, than that Rome should remain unfounded. ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 23 Censure of ^neas is really a compliment to the art with which Virgil has drawn Dido. The poet of the Dramatic nioUe atque facetum has developed, among drawing oi other qualities,, a dramatic power of sur- ""*" prising intensity. Any suggestions that Virgil has got from ApoUonius only account for one half of the picture of the queen, that half which concerns the triumph of love over her former prepossessions. In the other half, that which concerns her behaviour after the scorning, he must be painting with memories of Greek tragedy present to his mind, as Nettleship points out, rather than with any definite recollection of the conduct of Medea towards Jason when the Colchians forced the Minyans into a compact that endangered her safety. Indeed, there is a strong tragic cast about the whole story of the queen. Dido is overthrown and punished by the blind forces that work the will of the gods for an act half involuntary. No one can read, or, better, recite, Virgil's verse with- out being conscious of a distinction that compels the „, ,„ attention and affection. This consciousness Virgil s metre: its is due, broadly speaking, to the stateliness distinction Qf jj^g yg^gg There are other charac- teristics that will soon further rivet the attention and affection. These are the graceful and illumining diction with the special verbal delicacy of the poet, as well as the tender gravity of his language with its palpable surcharge of sorrow. We meet, too, as we read, with other characteristics that are national, and common to the prose and verse of the poet's fellow-countrymen, to wit, oratorical pomp and the proud brilliance of the full-throated Roman. It is partly this last characteristic that Sainte Beuve refers to, when he speaks of Virgil's influence causing to reflow in mediaeval times, after long drought, le large fleuve de la grande parole. But there is something of greater rarity and subtlety 24 EPIC POETRY in the Virgilian harmony. All high poetry has its met rical forte, its special rhythmical flavour Its voca 1 y ^^^^ j think, spiritual impressiveness Virgil's metrical specialty is not the fitness of words tc thought that we may find even in prose, or the simpk suiting of sound to sense, but something not rational oi imitative, something more perfect in the direction o: harmonious adaptation and rhythmic realisation. It ii difficult to define this in words, for we now touch on the very ontology of poetics, and at such a point one is apt to grow dithyrambic. There are several good transla- tions of Virgil, each presenting a facet of the Virgiliar manner. But nothing like the totality or purity of this manner is presented in any. No translation, of course, car do this service for an original, and still less can it do sc for a poet like Virgil, whose whole individual nature, sc to speak, is in his verse. The manner of a poem largelj depends on its metrical quality, and Virgil, in the mattei of harmony, is not only a hexametrist in regular succes- sion, but a hierophant, mitred and endowed with utter- ance by nature herself. Milton's verse, with all its majestic volume and severe music has not to my ear, a vocality equal to that of Virgil, with its something oi sorrow, its echo of thoughts too deep for utterance, its pure and human stateliness, and its suggestion of person- ality. It is the expressive, the speaking quality of the Virgilian melody that engages one's attention and wonder. It has eloquence, and seems by predestined appropriateness to convey thought. The Spirit of the World in melancholy mood must chant some such melody as Virgil's. Mr F. W. H. Myers well describes this quality of the poet's verse, when he says in his remarkable essay on Virgil : " His thoughts seem to come to us on the wings of melodies prepared for them since the founda- tion of the world," ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 25 The moral and emotional quality of Virgil's metre grows on one. The metre has a dying fall of patlios that Its moral often sounds, refrain-like, amidst all its and emotional Stately nobility and golden roll. It has a 1"* '*y wondrous and individual charm, which the poet's own intonation must have converted into a very gospel of harmony. The outward features of the tech- nique of the metre may be searched for and set down, but its full effect is not due to any trick of style, but to the natural systole and diastole of metrical emotion. Virgil's poetry is epical threnody, often overflowing the narrative into pathetic comment or sorrowful exaltation. His poetry is epical threnody, but we must have emerged from boyhood, and experienced more than one disillusion before we can understand to the full its word-and-song philosophy, or hear with responsive ear its notes of world-sorrow. Then we find in it the reflex of our sorrowful reminiscence and sombre anticipation. We seem then to hear in it an almost audible wail over the tender grace of a day that is dead, and a half-articulate lament over the perishable happiness of a day that is to be. The .^Eneid is weighted with psychology, and a psychology that has not many joyous notes. Now and again there float to our ears mufHed murmurs of bliss from prophesied communities that are descendants of the saintly good — communitiesj for individuals as recipients of happiness count for almost nothing in Virgil — or from a few typical personages who have been adjudged worthy of permanent joys in the unseen. Virgil was indeed skilled to make one realise his con- ceptions by striking language and rhythm. Witness the Its general hallowing pomp that lives in the rhythm of excellence many of the allusive and prophetic passages in the poem. Witness the chanting dirge over mankind or individuals that sounds in much of the immortal Sixth Book, a dirge that speaks in tones of melodious and 26 EPIC POETRY melancholy philanthropy. We find also a striking dramatic appropriateness in the language of the poet's smaller efforts. Stateliness never leaves Virgil. His Muse is always matronly and self-contained, never hysterical, like Lucan's. An objective tale has aspects that reveal to us the poet's notions of vsrhat is most desirable in life. These Lesson of life do not sketch an ideal to be striven after, in epic but Only answcr the question, what is the best lot in life ? An answer may also be given to the deeper question, what is life ? The question is, of course, not to be formally propounded nor pointedly answered. That would be unepical. Is there a lesson of life portrayed for us in the Iliad ? I daresay there is in the Odyssey, and it is perhaps materialistic in its advice, preaching something like the superior attractiveness of home life, pace Tennyson's dantesque conception of Ulysses, but I do not find a lesson obtruded in the latter epic, and do not find one at all in the former. If lesson of life means the picture drawn, then I think Mr E. Myers gives us it, with his ' Gain of a Friend,' 'Quest of Honour,' 'Untimely Death.' The Iliad is simply a story, and says nothing about an end in life, either explicitly or implicitly, but merely registers some fapts that concern select men, and experiences that occur to all. There is a lesson of life behind Virgil's lines, and it is ' Duty,' ' Self-Sacrifice,' ' the Nation before the Individual.' Virgil is not formally didactic, but he may in a sense be said to teach resolution, and enthusiasm, and that tearful determination born of a baffling that is no baffling, but only education. For a nobly ideal tone, for the presence of that presentation of literary grace that makes the grace a direct moral force, that makes beauty of style to have a strong sentimental effect on the reader, Virgil is unsurpassed and unsurpassable. I have considered Virgil here, as I said, that I might ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 27 place my remarks on Virgil in juxtaposition with those on Homer. But there are certain epics that I ought to describe early in this introduction, and these are the Kalevala and the Indian Epics. The Kalevala, the great poem of Finland, is an example of an epic that owes nothing to civilisation. The Kale Indeed, it reads more like a primitive de- scription and resolution of creation than an epic. There appears in it a universal co-operation of nature with the mood of man, and the song-men of the Kalevala are just those who would have spoken of the sun as their brother, of the moon as their sister, and of rivers and trees as kinsmen. Imagining expatiates without let, there is quite a flux of personification. We see the musings and beliefs of nature-children who have passed from a savage state onward, without being drawn into the progress of the world, without being made to realise that man's activity is more engrossing and more important than the face of nature. Nature lay before them like an open book, and they read it narrowly and in detail. Necessarily there is in their nature-talk much that is crude and misty. In the poem is told the shadowy story of one Wainamoinen, a mighty magician of Kalevala (' the land of heroes '), of wondrous birth, who went sargumen ^^ Pohyola ('Northland'), to get to wife the daughter of Louhi, the lady of the land. He had before this courted Aino, by permission of her brother Youkahainen, whom he had vanquished in singing. The maiden, however, had rejected his addresses and drowned herself. Youkahainen, the rival minstrel, shoots Waina- moinen as he rides along the coast, and he tumbles into the sea. He floats, swims, and is borne by an eagle to Louhi's territory. She consoles him in his piteous condition, and tells him that the hand of her daughter is 28 EPIC POETRY to be given to him who shall make the sampo, a talisman of some sort. This Wainamoinen cannot do, but names his brother llmariiien, a worker in metals, as a Hkely maker. The latter does make the object, but is for the nonce refused the hand of the maiden. Louhi sends home, at his own request, the weary Wainamoinen in her own sledge drawn by her own steed. On the road home he meets Louhi's daughter, or the Maiden of the Rainbow, as she is called in Rime VIII, and solicits her hand. She intimates her preference for the single state as follows : — Bright and warm are days of summer, Warmer still is maiden-freedom ; Cold is iron in the winter, Thus the lives of married women ; Maidens living with their mothers Are like ripe and ruddy berries, But the most of married women Are like dogs enchained in kennel, Rarely do they ask for favours, Not to wives are favours given. Crawford's Trans., p. 99. However, on being pressed to wed, she prescribes him three seemingly impossible tasks that must be accom- plished by a successful wooer, two of which he performs, and in the performance of the last wounds his knee. After some trouble he gets the blood staunched by magic words, and the wound healed by magic balsam. He then resumes work at the third task, which was, to build a boat from the fragments of the maiden's distaff and the splinters of her spindle, and to move it into sea without so much as touching it. For the completion of the boat-building he needs to know certain magic words. He seeks these in the land of Puoni ('Death'), without success, and at last learns them and much more, from the giant Wipunen, who swallowed him and thus passed on JTS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 29 the knowledge. Wipunen is not only a Cyclops, but a sort of lopas as well. He sang : How the moon was first created, How the sun was set in heaven, Whence the colours of the rainbow, Whence the ether's crjrstal pillars. How the skies with stars were sprinkled. Crawford's Trans., p. 254. Wainamoinen goes home disconsolate over his rejection and his old age, but obligingly appears at the house- warming of Ilmarinen, and sings wedding-songs. He afterwards sails with Ilmarinen and Lemmikainen for the sampo. There are some harp-songs of his given in a later rime, and in the last he is censured by the two- weeks-old child of the virgin mother Mariatta, and sails away to the sunset. Lemminkainen, brother of Waina- moinen, and Kullervo have parts of the poem to them- selves. The story is very loose. I have read the Kalevala in Mr Crawford's translation. His metre, a reproduction of the original, resembles that of Hiawatha. Both the Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, exhibit the vice of a too lengthy action. The Indian I^ f^^t, Several epics might be quarried out Epics of their materials. In the Ramayana there are proofs of the existence of genuinely heroic stuff that might have given an epic whole with one conspicuous personality, had it come into the hands of a poet who knew how to select, and who possessed a sense of epic construction. Rama is too mild, or rather, too much drawn to rule. It is deeds on the part of the individual, and broadly human preconceptions on the part of the poet, that should define an epic hero. Both poems are too biographical. It is the biographical that regulates the heroic, and not the heroic the biographical. We 3° EPIC POETRY have to follow Rama and the Pandavas into heaven, not because heroism militant brings them nigh it, but be- cause it is good to round off human life with a trans- lation. Both poems have been spoiled by accretions, and emasculated by brahmanising. The Mahabharata is an example of an epic of growth with little continuity, or at all events, without the informing unity in continuity of a great artist. It extends to over 200,000 lines, and must have been the work of generations. There is no central event in the poem. It is a chronicle of family matters, of feuds between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, with attach- ments thrown in, and with interlardings of morality, metaphysics, and precepts of kingcraft. One has only to read Prof. Monier Williams' sketch and criticism of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, or to bethink him of a satisfying reason for their great popularity, to be con- vinced that the poems, whatever objection may be taken to their form, possess a matter that is powerful and attractive. An epic, as we understand the term, should have a lengthy and satisfying story. Without length it is im- Epic action. possible to have the long vistas of action Its length and and the variety of character that such a loftiness poem requires. And the story cannot be commonplace, but must satisfy the grand emotions of the soul. The traditional reputation and the internal necessities of this class of poem, unite in tying the story down to the description of big, if not momentous action. We have only to interrogate our memories. All our recollections of epic are recollections of actions that vitally concerned a section of humanity, and the names of the great heroes of epic are synonyms for brave and noble actors. It is impossible to exhibit the character-play of the high personages typical of epic in a petty action. Such ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 31 actions enshrine nothing but commonplace actors of earthy mould and paltry behaviour. A lofty action lifts actors, it lifts a poet's manner, and sustains his spirit at the high general level Tjf epic. An epic action is not likely to be simple, for its interlacing of conflicting energies demands a modicum of complexity. An action that is lofty and long, and that has some complexity, is a requisite of an epic poem. The ramifi- cations of a long action will, however, bring the reader into touch with much that is subordinate in tone, with much that is ordinary. The largeness of such a poem must for mere relief's sake admit these things, and the life of epic being human life, or humanised life, must, to be true to its pattern, exhibit a representative amount, though not a plethora of the human mood. The show of epic cannot and must not be all splendid, and its field of action has and must have its byways of calm as well as its highways of effort. Any great action of sufficient length and sufficient pitch can be treated epically, provided it have movement There must ^"^ human or humanised striving. The be sanity in story unfolded in the action may be as and In the heroic as is desired, provided that its episodes heroism do not exceed credibility, or, as we should rather say, transgress the limits of traditional liberties, and that sanity, poetical sanity, I mean, which is not the same as prosaical, rule its conceptions and animate its plot. Even in episodes, where more freedom may sometimes justly be claimed, there must appear traces of the dominion of sober wisdom — sober in exalta- tion, for soberness, as a pure intellectual quality, and exaltation are not contraries. Not that the poet is to be limed to earth, or that his poetry is not to be dyed in the tint that his imagination may colour it with, but because in episodes we ought to see some fulfilment of the real 32 EPIC POETRY necessities of a genuine story, and not pure play of the fancy. A national subject presents many obvious advantages to an epic poet. It supplies him in a definite manner Advantaees ^^^"^ ^^ ready-made and not unpliable of a national, objectivity that is the basis of epic narration, sam"«me ^^ engenders patriotic feeling, and thus untouched increases the range of the emotional imagi- subject nation, and it enlists beforehand the sym- pathies of the reader. Suitable subjects of this sort are the most susceptible of epic treatment, and fortunate is the would-be epic poet who finds an untouched one at his hand. To him a virgin theme of national and historical significance is, to say nothing of the unreachable precedence genius may thereby win, an excitant of effort and an earnest of success. It presents him with an unused ' warp of poetical story on which to weave a texture of his own planning and colouring, it furnishes real outlines of character with shadowy interiors, over which he will have a creator's opportunities and rights. It gives a good poet a prescriptive right to knock at the door of the Temple of Fame. The history of poetic greatness will repeat itself : — Erunt etiam altera bella, Atque iterum ad Trojara magnus mittetur Achilles. We may be fairly sure that no poets of great parts forestalled Homer, otherwise, in virtue of their being poets, they would not have been lost in the Homer the , • i). t .1 -r-r first great long night. I use the name Homer for the poet of his poetical draughtsman that sketched the main contour of the Iliad, whom no one that can diagnose literary proprietorship, or gauge in- tellectual autocracy, will ever believe to have been a ghostly eponymus of the Homeridse, or a convenient expression for a corporation of bards that wrote, and ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 33 not all at the same period, epic rhapsodies with some centripetal quality to be thrown on a common stone- heap. Homer had the advantage of handling a great theme inadequately handled by predecessors, and was poet enough to give effect to all its potentialities. Contrast Homer's good fortune with the evil fortune of his continuator, Quintus Smyrnseus, who follows his poetical sire with not so unequal steps. Quintus is not Homer, but Homer would not have banned his work. Quintus wrote the to jj-eff 'O/jt'qpov in fourteen Xoyoc. It is a sequel to Homer's account of the beleaguering Quintus °^ "^""oyi ^^'^ introduces to us fresh Trojan smyrnaeiis. champions, Penthesilea, Memnon, and His subject Eurypylus, son of Telephus. Achilles overshadows all in the first few books. Neoptolemus is pre-eminent in the last half. The former kills Penthe- silea and Memnon, the latter, Eurypylus. Antilochus, Achilles, and the Telamonian Ajax die out of the story, Deiphobus, with access of heroism, plays the patriot among the Trojans till his death. Philoctetes is brought back from Lemnos, and kills Paris with a poisoned arrow. We are told, as we know them from Virgil, of the woes of Troy : — The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their blaze, Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades, Struggling, and blood, and shrieks. There is an extra book telling of the faring of some of the Greeks after the fall of Troy. The movement in Quintus is more historical than it is in Homer. His poem might be called the second part of Quintus and the siege of Troy, told in heroic verse a la Homer Homer. The story of Homer is more com- pact than that of his continuator, has a more discernible clue, and is timed and dominated by one individual. There is not the same unityjn-discersity in the poemof C 34 EPIC POETRY the lesser Smyrnsean. In the Iliad Achilles is always in or near our thoughts, as he frowns from the background, or works in the foreground. Neoptolemus dominates only the last part of Quintus' poem. The Posthomerica has not so good a story for epical purposes as the Iliad, and its poet had for predecessor one whom it was hope- less to equal, and to whom, even if the successor had been able to approximate to his master, there had been secured the homage of centuries with its nee ifiget quic- quam simile aut secundum prejudices. Quintus copies Homer and copies him to some purpose, and to copy Homer well is to be a good poet. He sometimes appears to me to out-homer Homer, a fault that is sure to be laid to the charge of an imitator. We, however, require an epic poet to be more than the possessor of poetic ability. We exact from him initiative, and architectonics in general. I might quote many passages from the poet illustrative of his homei'ic vigour and simplicity, and, it must be admitted, of his independent power. I shall give some quotations and make a reference or two. The Achilles who weeps over the fair face of the un- iiiustrations helmeted Penthesilea has some affinity to from the poem the Achilles who wept before Priam : — M^a S' EyyvTa IIi;Wos uWs Koiipijs el' h-apoio wdpos IlaTpdk\oi,o SojK^ctos.* Posthora. i, 718, The poet, with fine discernment and an exquisite sense of situation, makes Hecuba, on hearing of the death of the son who had brought woe on herself and his country —though Hector is present to her remembrance— weep for Paris, her unforgettable boy. Priam, the while, un- * And the son of Peleus groaned mightily, as he sees in the dust the sweet strength of the maid ; gnawing pains devoured his heart there- for, as much as erewhile for the slaying of his mate Patroclus. ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 35 conscious of the wailing, is made to shed tears at Hector's tomb to the memory of his manly son. It is a fine scene in the ninth book, when, after the speech of Deiphobus, the spouse brings a bundle of arms to her husband ; the children fetch their father's weapons ; and an old man, buckling on his son's armour, exhorts him with words and display of his scars : — Kai trripva rervfi/i^va Selicvve imiSl Top0^a aiiimT Sxopra 7ra\aiT)s Sijiot-^tos." Posthom. ix, 123. Machaon, alive, bloomed on earth, and, dead, lay under it. So said Nestor, and the requiem is as pretty as tender. Earth to earth. He sprang from its bosom, and to its bosom he returned. The earth-born becomes the earth-embraced : — Afirws S', lbs &vi67JKe, koX ^(pBiro.f Posthom. vii, 44. As regards length and variety the story in Ossian's Fingal cannot be called satisfactory. The fable of the Ossian's poem is fragmentary and rambling, and has Pingai a very shadowy portrayal of character. Such of it as relates to Fingal is empty of narrative interest. It is simply the account of a sojourn of Fingal in Ireland, and has not as much real matter as is to be found in one book of a full-bodied epic. As far as the manner and scope of the telling go, the story appears a spun-out incident of the king's life, and an epic must be something more than the account of an incident. It must contain story, a goodly assemblage of the facts of human life that are of human interest, in particular, those that concern man militant. Fingal is little more * And showed his son his smitten breast, with the scars of former fights running together. + Just so died he, as he flowered. 36 EPIC POETRY than a record of moods of exaltation with a little narra- tive thrown in. The record of the struggleiand the fights against the kings of the world would have furnished suitable material for an epic. If the Ossianic style had been wedded to a suitable story such as might have been furnished by some parts of the war against Rome, we might have had an additional epic of moving story, of bold figures, and of lyrical and tender, but not enervating pathos. The difference between national and historical, in the narrow sense of the latter, is that between antiquity, or rather the storied past, and a time of docu- between ments, of authenticity. Whenever the national and national, by the fact of its being compara- tively recent, passes into the historical of dated fact and obtrusive detail, it is unsuitable for epic purposes. When we leave the men of doughty deeds or the men of nation-making and chivalrous exploits, and come to civilised men of action whose life is stripped of all wonder, we have left the region of the heroic and are in that of the prosaical. In the expression ' national hero ' the adjective really connotes a long bygone past, and always has a reference to nation-making times. When the national, by reason of an actual greatness, or the magnitude and reverberation of a shock with the external world, becomes the property of all peoples rather than of one, then national, and historical in the noble sense of the word coincide in their application. History, as history, is quite unsuitable as epic matter, and it is only when a poet in his verse commends it to History as US — providing much else at the same time epic mattef — as the cult of hero- or patriot-worship, as did Camoens, that he is likely to produce the epic illusion. The Lusiads, indeed, is historical epic of a special sort. A poet who chooses a definitely historical subject for epic ITS DE VELOPMENT AND NA TURE 37 treatment may or may not be acting wisely. Much will depend on the capabilities of the subject for such treat- ment. If it can be made to appear in a sort of historical twilight, then the choice has much to commend it. In any case the supposed poet will, ere he earn success, have to draw heavily on his poetic resources. If a person from a definitely historical epoch be made the hero of an epic, he can only be treated epically by one who has lived long enough after the events, to allow them to become faint in men's memories, and only then, with success, by one who has great poetic gifts, and a measure of the epic afflatus. Imagination will else be impeded, and galvanised vitality and ludicrous masquerading be the results obtained. The writer of a historic epic will always labour under disadvantages. Witness Lucan. It is easy to find fault Difficulty of with this poet, but the difficulties in his bistoric epic, way were serious, and it would not be true Lucan ^^ ^^^ x!a.2X his poem is not a successful essay in epic. Lucan did not live long after the time he celebrates, and yet, by force of poetic genius, he has pro- duced an original and living poem. Now, if Lucan had not been a genuine poet, for, pace Quintilian, he was certainly this, he would never have produced a poem of outstanding worth and epic cast, but would, like Silius Italicus, have unintelligently written his poem from a recipe, and produced an unoriginal and therefore lifeless product. It is easy, as I say, to rate Lucan for unepical characteristics, but the fact remains that he is the most original epic writer of the post-Virgilians. He put his originality and its distinguishing mark, namely, poetic bravery, into his Pharsalia, and produced a positively great poem. It is difficult to poetise on recent, or, indeed, any history. Clio is not Calliope. She is diiFuse, voluble, unimaginative ; she cannot versify herself into her sister. She unrolls events rather than arranges them. 38 EPIC POETR Y Her movement is too lineal. She builds no solid rounded poetical fabric, but projects mere specimen scaffoldings. Events in epic are not simply recorded, more or less critically, but are illustrative of character conceived and planned beforehand, are hinges of a story. Epic is not history, and should be mingled with pleasing fable, and imaginative matter generally, and, now at least, lyrical outbursts. History, not as history, but as a magnificent setting and halo-giver, lends distinction to an epic, paint- ing round it a glorious horizon, and shooting over it vivid lights of reality. Does not the Iliad, a poem that treats a historic subject epically, shed an after-glow on the heroico-epic Odyssey ? The Araucana of Don Alonso de Ercilla is an epic with a historical subject. Its writer preferred to be historical The Araucana. above all things. It has the defects of Its subject such a poetic ideal, namely, lack-lustre style and ungrouped content. Its subject is the fight- ing of the Spaniards to overcome the rebels of Arauco, a small state among the mountains in the east of Chili. To relieve the sameness of the narrative, the author has introduced much matter and many devices in his second and third parts. He tells of the contemporaneous siege of San Quintin and of the battle of Lepanto. Ladies, the daughters of caciques, with long stories, are brought into the poem. The cave of the magician Fiton is described. It is here that Ercilla sees the battle of Lepanto in a magic sphere. The poet on being asked by his soldiers tells them the true story of Dido. In this the well-known legend is rationalised and emptied of all poetry. We meet with some good speeches in the poem, and there is some fine hurtling rhetoric in the sixteenth book, where Caupolican, Peteguelen, and Tucapel har- angue the meeting of caciques. Our author knows the art of writing a fairly engrossing narrative. It has rapidity, ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 39 even if it be fitful, and animation of incident, and it lays a grasp on the attention of the reader. Arauco is a small subject at best, and the poet has to supply episodes, and even to decline upon padding. At the end of his work he brings in matter quite extraneous to his subject, and that savours of personal touting. The subject is small, as regards amount of epical stuff, but viewed as history, and written in the order of chronology, it furnishes material for thirty-seven cantos. The narrative decidedly lacks distinction and stoops to commonplace incident, or it is the lack of distinction that throws into relief the commonplaceness. Ercilla has vigour, and the dash and facility of the born narrator. His narrative reveals qualities of soul. It cannot, con- sidering the aim of the author, be free from the prosiness of a chronicle. It is, indeed, a rhymed history. It is not at all likely that a man who begins a poetical story with the intention of producing history, and scrupulously correct history, will end by producing, in spite of himself, a poem of epic concentration and high poetic worth. The battle-pieces in the poem are such as we should expect from one who, like Tasso, could wield the sword as well as the pen, and whose right arm had contributed material for his epic. Ercilla has not his countryman Lucan's swelling style. He cannot sing himself and his readers into enthusiasm, as can Lucan. At the same time he has Its style ^^^ j^.^ exaggeration and his frantic attempts at sensation-picturing. Though Ercilla expected an ac- knowledgement for his poem that he never got, yet he was modest in purpose. He sent his book forth, like a servitor in humble garb, como criada en tanpobres panales. He has lyrical outbursts, pathetic snatches, but nothing like that pervading touch of power that ought to belong to a narrative poet of epic mould. 40 EPIC POETRY, I should like to give just one or two specimens o: sentiment from Ercilla. He thus eulogises Citations j^^^^ meaning, by the term, the passior that inspires as well as inflames : — s Que cosa puede haber sin amor buena ? ,: Que verso sin amor dara contento ? I Donde jamAs se ha visto rica vena Que no tenga de amor el nacimiento ? No se puede Ilamar materia Uena La que de amor no tiene el fundamento ; Los contentos, los gustos, los cuidados, Son, si no son de amor, como pintados.* Arauc. xv, i. This is his version of 'Call no man happy till h« die ' :— Nadie puede Uaraarse venturoso Hasta ver de la vida el fin incierto : Ni esta libre de mar tempestuoso Quien surto no se ve dentro del puerto : Venir un bien tras otro es muy dudoso, Y un mal tras otro mal es siempre cierto ; Jam4s prospero tiempo fue durable, Ni dejo de durar el miserable.! Arauc. xxvi, I. It is placidly tame. Life means toil and sourinj change : — I Oh vida miserable y trabajosa A tantas desventuras sometida ! i Prosperidad humana sospechosa, Pues nunca hubo ninguna sin caida ! * What thing can be good without love ? What verse will giv pleasure without love? Wherever has been seen rich vein that doe not have its birth from love ? No matter can be called complete tha has not its base in love ; pleasures, delights, passions are but pictured i they be not of love. t No one can be called happy till he see the end of life, so uncertair nor is he rid of stormy waves who is not anchored within the harboui It is very doubtful if one good follow on another, and it is always certai that one ill comes after another. Never was happy time lasting, nc ever did luckless time cease to be. ITS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 41 i Qu^ cosa habri tan dulce y tan sabrosa Que no sea amarga al cabo y desabrida ? No hay gusto, no hay placer sin su descuento, Que el dejo del deleite es el tormento.* Arauc. xxxiv, i. In estimating Ercilla's position, perhaps we ought not to overlook Cervantes' opinion on the Araucana, to wit, Cervantes on that it and two Other poems are the. best the Araucana heroics written in Castilian, and able to compete with the most famous of Italy, son los mejores que in verso heroico en lengua castillana estdn escritos,y pueden competir con los mas famosos de Italia. I do not know anything of the other poems. The critics say they are of little value. This will the more redound to the credit of the Araucana, or possibly throw doubt on the judgment of Cervantes. The Portuguese have an historic epic called the Henri- queida. It recounts incidents in the life of Henry of The Henrio Burgundy, the founder of the Portuguese queida monarchy, ending with the capture of Lisbon, and is written by Francisco Xavier de Menezes, Conde da Ericeira. It has the orthodox twelve books. Its author was an admirer of Boileau, and a man who had paid much attention to epic poetics, as is evidenced by his Advertencias Preliminares. He has not written a successful and capturing epic. The pupil of Boileau was not likely to do so. He advertises too much his rule of thumb. , He writes, as it were, from a recipe, which he would fain make into a theory. His poem is, notwith- standing, a good deal better than the French poem of the same name. Its illusion is pleasing and fairly credible, and, its style being mild-mannered, it is devoid of that * O miserable and toilsome life, subject to so many misfortunes 1 O human prosperity, a thing suspect, for never was there any without fall ! What thing will be so sweet and so savoury as not at last to become bitter and sour? There is no delight, there is no pleasure without its alloy, for stoppage of delight is torture. 42 EPIC POETR Y pretentious exaltation, which, in Voltaire's poem, throws incongruities into relief, and predisposes the reader to derisive laughter. De Menezes did not take his argument into his soul. He writes epic with a map of the route spread out before him. His poem is too manufactured and eclectic. He has copied so many that he has left no room for himself. He imitates largely, even down to an aposiopesis. He is rich in references, alluding, among others, to Archimedes, Galileo, Clorinda, Protesilaus, Cloelia, Camilla, Tomyris, Penthesilea, and the wife of Mithridates. He can insert an allusion to Herostratus, but has not vitalised his poem into an impressive and duly subordinated whole. He has invention, technic, a quantum of general poetic power, but positively no inspiration from the Muses. The contrary is his own opinion, for, at the beginning of his twelfth book, he both exhorts the heavenly Muse to possess him, and declares his consciousness of her inspiration. He ends his poem thus : — O espirito fogindo ao vituperio Parece que ainda teme ao vara6 forte : Na6 voa ao Ceo no cego parasismo Mas dece a escurecer o negro Abismo.* Compare this with Ast illi solvuntur frigore membra, Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras.t iEn. xii, 952. The poet brings relatives into his work — his mother Joana, noticing the anagram Aonia that her name gives, and his wife, another Joana. He also mentions his father, and does not altogether repudiate for the Menezes a connection with Menoitiades. After reading in the _ * It appears that the spirit fleeing disgrace still fears the sturdy hero : in Its blmd perturbation it does not take flight to the sky but goes down to darken the black abyss. t But the other's limbs are relaxed with cold, and his spirit flies down to the shades, groanmg and reluctant. . TS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 43 Henriqueida, one feels strongly the force of the contention that an epic must have original treatment, that is, that, granted the necessity of a certain resemblance to specimens of the same class, the manipulation and presentation of incident must be original. Even a belated epic must have, if not the freshness of literary types just arrived at maturity, yet a creative art directed by imagination and intellectuality. A national theme has a stiffening effect on a poetical narrator. After every lyrical or imaginative flight his HP.. « .. « story will bring him back to solid earth. The effect of tt -n 1 1 • , • , . a national ".Q vifill be too much interested m the theme on its exposition of definite action to stop long to preach. Such preaching as he indulges in will not be formal preaching, but rather an invitation to contemplate the excellence of the actors, or a eulogy of worth that assumes, but does not mention an imitative instinct on the part of the reader. He will be under no ternptation to spin a whole canto of dolorous lament over an accident of life, or a fact in the human lot, but will content him with a pathetic aside of more or less length, passing into elegy by following out a suggestion got from his story. The poet of art-epic does well now and then to supply with the aid of imagination the universal aspect of a particular event, he does well now and then to chant the lyrical moment in an objective fact, he even does well sometimes to delay his story by an interlude of personal import, but of more than personal validity. It was a strong savour of nationality that helped to give the ^neid its popularity, and that still to us foreigners lends it much of its preciousness. national: not The poem IS the retrospective poetisation so the Argo- of the doings of the nation, with notes of nautica swelling prophecy thrown in. It has its value as the high poetical record of a patriotic poet. 44 EPIC POETR V It is, to be sure, national, and has supreme national value in another regard, in regard, namely, that it is a sort of crowning mercy of Roman literary effort. The Argo- nautica of Apollonius is, on the other hand, not a national poem. It is an epic that no nation has appro- priated or patronised, a poem of the cabinet. No patriot pulse ever beat harder at its perusal, no man ever rose from reading it with finer intuitions of national character. The Argonautica is a poem of pale intellectuality and blank vigour. We may be curious, but are hardly inter- The Argo- estcd readers of it. I do not see how, nautica when recited, it could have secured for long the attention of an audience, even of an audience of erudites. To the reader it has the objectivity of a reflection in a mirror, an outwardness that is manufac- tured and passing, that is not felt by the thoughts,, or deposited in the memory. Jason is not an Achilles. He feels fear. It is true that his surroundings are odder and weirder than those of the flamboyant Pelides, but none the less is it true that these did not help the Alexandrian to set down and describe genuine heroic action. Jason's prowess, if in part a natural ferment, is also the calm and calculating virtue that is shown by a heart fortified by a belief in the offensive science adopted, in this case, that of witchcraft. Beowulf, though a moody man, fights the fire-drake without pre-arrangements or safeguardings. It is in the depicting of Medea's passion that the poet shines. This is a passionate, detailed, and psychological The depicting account of the development of love in of Medea woman, and of its symptoms, one of the most charming love-studies ever written. Medea's heart, at the thought of Jason, leapt in her breast as leaps a ray reflected in perturbed water : — 'Heklov lis ris re S6/io« imiriWeTai atyKri TTS DEVELOPMENT AND NATURE 45 'TSaros i^aviovca, t6 dii viov iik Xi^trri, 'H^ vov iv 7ouX%r K^xvrai- ij S" ivBa Kal lv$a 'ilKelji (XTpoipiXiyyi Tai6.ull over him.') THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 107 historical record does not justify the distinction. But this mention would soothe a tyrant's vanity. In the eighth, ninth, and tenth books the poet tells of the death of Pompey, of Cato's march to Leptis, and of The Eighth CsBsar's doings in Egypt. After the battle Book of Pharsalia, Pompey, completely de- moralised, fled to the sea-coast, and took ship at the mouth of the Peneus for Lesbos, whither he had sent his wife Cornelia. Thence he made for Cilicia, and thence, by advice of Lentulus, he sailed to Egypt, where he was murdered off Pelusium by order of Ptolemy, moved thereto by Pothinus. It would appear that the courage with which Pompey bore up against misfortunes in the hour of unsuccessful battle deserted him during his flight. At any rate, Lucan, who described him in the seventh book as of constant mind in adversity, speaks of him in the eighth as frightened at the rustling of a leaf. The favourite of fortune was completely cast down by her ruthless desertion of him. He probably felt how hopeless any further effort of his would be, after the failure of the supreme one he had just made. He must, taught by recent events, have realised how unlikely Caesar was to tolerate the existence in the world of any power at all co-equal with his own, and have discerned clearly enough that Caesar, however much he might be disposed to deal leniently by himself, could not, unless he were to forfeit all claim to prudence, make any terms with the party to which he was indissolubly fettered, and which was as yet only in a tottering condition and not ruined. He had before him a high wall, and behind him his enemy. The poet is melancholy all through the book. Cornelia receives her husband at Lesbos, in a lachrymose, ranting, and hysterical manner. She even wishes that she had been Caesar's wife, so that the misfortune she was doomed to bring as a dowry might have missed her io8 EPIC POETRY husband. The Lesbians are too profuse in their pro- testations of goodwill. Pompey ceases to be moody, only to be boastful. In his instructions to Deiotarus, he drags in a bit of self-glorification, and speaks as if he had imitated Alexander in his eastmost march. At the council in Cilicia, Pompey recommends that application for aid be made to Parthia. The speech is grandiose in tone, but declines on this humiliating re- commendation. Lentulus' reply, if not devoid of Lucan's vices, is manly and Roman : — Juvat ire per orbem Ducentem sEevas Romana in moenia gentes, Signaque ab Euphrate cum Crassis capta sequentera ?* P. viii, 356. Pompey's death seems to supervene in the narrative rather abruptly. Lucan is indignant over the con- ception of such an audacious deed on the part of effeminate Egyptians, and over its execution with the assistance of a degenerate legionary in the .service oi Egypt. Towards the end of the eighth book there is a fine statement of the gesta of Pompey, which the poet proffers as an inscription for a tombstone. It is effective as a whole, and has a pleasing movement of metre and thought. The exploits are well grouped, and the ending has due spaciousness and consummation : — Die semper ab armis Civilem repetisse togam ; ter curribus actis Contentum patriae multos donasse triumphos.f P. viii, 813. After Pompey's death Lucan concentrates his attention *ls it thy delight to pass over the world leading savage nations against the walls of Rome, and following standards that were cap- tured along with the Crassi near the Euphrates ? t Say that after war he aye resumed the civic gown, and that content himself with three courses of the conqueroi's chariot, he bestowed many triumphs on his country. THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 109 on Cato. From the Stoic heaven into which the poet The Ninth translates him, Pompey breathes his spirit Book into Brutus and Cato. Cato had hitherto been a lukewarm Pompeian. It was pious hope, and not enthusiastic partisanship, that had made him take this side of the quarrel. Henceforth, if we are to believe the poet, he was animated by more zeal on behalf of his party. He had always been devoted to republicanism, but his greatest motive to persist in this devotion is now the memory of Pompey. As a matter of fact, Cato was a single-minded man of indomit- able purpose who had embraced Pompey's cause because, in the circumstances, he could not act otherwise, and whose determination and legitimate distrust of Caesar's aims pushed him into the action that would best check- mate or harass his opponent. Cato, following the movements of his chief, had repaired to Africa. He was there joined by Cornelia and Sextus Pompey. Cneus was already with Cato. Cornelia exhibits wild hysteria over her husband's death. She is troubled by her inconsistency in surviving him. The two sons of Pompey give vent to insane expressions, the one of grief, the other of vengeance. With Lucan enthusiasm and hyperbole are almost identical. At the make-shift obsequies performed by Cornelia in honour of Pompey, Cato pronounced a eulogy. This eulogy has received much notice and is worthy of it. It does not represent the speaker's real opinion of Pompey, but it suits his lofty and statuesque character. It has many well-pointed and happily - chosen anti- theses : — Nil belli jure poposcit : Quseque dari voluit, voluit sibi posse negari. Immodicas possedit opes ; sed plura retentis Intulit : invasit ferrum, sed ponere norat.* P. ix, 195. * He demanded nothing by right of war, and, what he wished men no EPIC POETRY It is couched in moderate language, and yet is as rhetorical as the occasion and the speaker demand. Macaulay says of this eulogy that it is a ' pure gem of rhetoric,' and ' not very far from historical truth.' It is not quite easy to acquiesce in the latter description. Pompey was a man whose reputation was probably greater than his merit. Cato, after quelling a mutiny with words that do not accord with the sentiments of the eulogy of Pompey — he says that the second tyrannical triumvir is dead, and that only one is left (unum Forhma reliqnitjam trihus e dominis) — embarked to join Juba. Impatient of the delay caused by a sea voyage, he determined to dis- embark, and journey to his destination overland. At this point of the story we come across striking exhibitions of Cato's character, such as his truthful exposition to his soldiers of the dangers they were to incur on their march — he refuses to hide facts, tectogue metu perducere vulgus — his chivalric, if somewhat ferocious, Sidneyism in refusing the present of a draught of water, and his manly and stoical reply to Labienus, when the latter bade him consult the oracle : — Estne dei sedes, nisi terra, et pontus, et aer, Et cselum, et virtus. Superos quid quserimus ultra ? Juppiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunque moveris. Sortilegis egeant dubii, semperque futuris Casibus ancipites : me non oracula certum, Sed mors certa facit : pavido fortique cadendum est, Hoc satis est dixisse Jovem.* P. ix, 578. to give him, he wished them to have power to refuse. He possessed boundless wealth, but he brought into the city more than he kept ; he laid hold on the sword, but he knew when to lay it aside. * What abode of Deity is there, unless the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, and virtue ? Why seek we the gods elsewhere ? Jupiter is whatever you see, whatever thought you are stirred by. Let waverers seek divina- tion, those who are always afraid of future mishaps. 'Tis not oracles that give me certitude, but certain death. The coward and the hero must die ; let it be enough for Jove to have said this. THE LA TER ROMAN EPIC 1 1 1 Cato was a man who, in spite of fortune's buffets, perse- vered in a preconceived and prescribed line of conduct. The march across the desert infested by the Gorgon- born serpents has a hundred lines devoted to it. The hardships of the soldiers are described, and their deaths, some of which are ludicrous in the extreme. One poor wretch, bitten by a virulent species of serpent, swelled so frightfully that his increasing bulk absorbed his limbs and, as it were, his identity, producing a huge mass that his comrades were afraid to touch, and that they left unburied in its ever-increasing inflation.* With the assistance of the Psylli, a tribe of serpent-charmers, the soldiers of Cato managed to complete their march. The poet returns to Caesar towards the close of the ninth book, and does not leave him again. In his pursuit Caesar at of Pompey, Caesar arrived at Asia Minor, Troy and visited the ruins of Troy. The poet has a finely imaginative description of this scene, enough, I think, to make any poet's reputation. The proper names are finely introduced. The allusions are ap- propriate and the whole matter very poetical : — Sigeasque petit famse mirator arenas, Et Simoentis aquas, et Graio nobilebusto ; Rhoetion et multum debentes vatibus umbras. Circuit exustae nomen memorabile Troise, Magnaque Phcebei quasrit vestigia muri. Jam silvse steriles, et putres robore trunci Assaraci pressere domos, et templa deorum Jam lassa radice tenent : ac tota teguntur Pergama dumetis : etiara periere ruinas. Adspicit Hesiones scopulos, silvasque latentes, Anchisse thalamos ; quo judex sederit antro : Unde puer raptus caelo : quo vertice Nais Luserit CEnone : nullum est sine nomine saxum. * This soldier's name was Nasidius. His death, and that of his fellow-soldier Sabellus, are referred to by Dante, Inf. xxv, 95. 112 EPIC POETRY Inscius in sicco serpentem pulvere rivum Transierat, qui Xanthus erat : securus in alto Gramine ponebat gressus ; Phryx incola manes Hectoreos calcare vetat. Discussa jacebant Saxa, nee uUius faciem servantia sacri ; Herceas, monstrator ait, non respicis aras ? * P. ix, 961. Hard on this description we have a presage of immor- tality on the part of the poet : — Nam si quid Latiis fas est promittere Musis, Quantum Smyrnasi durabunt vatis honores, Venturi me teque legent : Pharsalia nostra Vivet, et a nuUo tenebris damnabimur sevo.t P.ix,983. Caesar is shamefully slandered by the poet, in that the latter declares that the sorrow Caesar manifested on * Impelled by wonderment o'er ancient song, He seeks Sigeum's shores and Simois' stream, And that Rhoetean tomb ennobling all, And shades of heroes silent save in song. All round him lay the memory of Troy, Now sunk in ashes. Phosbus' mighty walls He traces. Barren woods and sapless trunks Conceal the palace of Assaracus, And with their time-worn roots begird the fanes Of Gods. In thickets Pergamos is lost ; Its very ruins are no more. The rock Where hung Hesione now met his gaze, And covert woods that saw Anchises' troth And spousals. Next, the cave where Paris judged, The spot from whence the youth was reft to heaven. The mount on which the nymph CEnone played. Each rock bore storied name. Unwares he crossed The stream of Xanthus creeping o'er the sand. The grass was tall, and thoughtless marched he on, Till Phrygian native dared him to profane Dead Hector's dust. " Why, know you not," he said, 1 hese loosened stones that look not now divine. Here stood the altar of Hercean Jove ? " t For, if one may promise aught to a Latian Muse, during such time as the honour of the bard of Smyrna shall endure, so long shall future ages read of you (Caesar) in my lines. My Pharsalia shall live, and by no generation shall I be condemned to oblivion "" ' " , THE LA TER ROMAN EPIC 1 1 3 the reception of Pompey's head was feigned and not real. This is one of Lucan's most rancorous allusions to Caesar, and is a most wanton perversion of truth. He continues in depreciatory mood into his tenth book, where he vilifies Alexander the Great, calling him Pellcei proles vesana Philippic and felix prcedo. Cleo- patra comes in for her own share of passionate invective. She is called Dishonour of Egypt, Destroying Fury of Latium {dedecus ^gypti^ Latii feralis Erinys). Caesar espouses the cause of Cleopatra, and reconciles her to Ptolemy. He is entertained at a splendid banquet, where he asks information about the sources of the Nile. The royal officials plot against Caesar, who is besieged in the palace. The poet makes Caesar gain possession of Pharos, and soon after the mention of this event the poem abruptly ends. I have considered Lucan's poem at some length, it may be thought at too great length, but this poet's qualities are best brought out by a detailed examination of his narrative, for the Pharsalia has not a plan that one can outline in a few paragraphs, or broad features that need discussion under but few heads. It is a compilation of rhetorical eiibrts gathered round a spun-out story. Lucan's subject is a historic subject, and a historic subject of the near past. No more unpromising theme for lengthy treatment can be offered to a poet than the treatment of near past. He may make it the occasion of his historic some lyrical outburst, but to weave its *" '* matter imaginatively into an objective poem that will, as such, earn real and lasting renown is, I fear, beyond accomplishment. If he give full freedom to his imagination, his lying will be evident to every one's memory ; if he curb his imagination, or stay it by a drag, his poem will lack ideality. Our poet had to deal with untransmutable matter, and too little of it. He painted his patches of epic stuff H 114 EPIC POETRY in high colours, he doubled, tripled, and quadrupled their number. To entertain the reader he dissipated his attention over a multitude of points that did not deserve diffuse treatment, and ransacked the purlieus of the sub- ject for the wherewithal to amuse. The men of his poem have no field for heroic action, as a substitute for this action he makes them speechify and vapour. This leads to a sameness in the presentation that is- distinctly tedious. The large life of a genuine epical subject lends variety to its treatment. A multi- plicity of action is presented to the poet, and from this he picks and chooses what suits his taste, and imposes on it a variety that follows the movements of his own sane intelligence. Even if Lucan had had abundance of epical stuff to work with, he could not have made an epic, for he was unable to adopt the sympathetic attitude to tradition and antique fancies that success in such a work implies, nor had he any feeling for the heroic in action, for which his substitute was tempestuous activity. The poets of that age had lost the art of depicting men. They placed puppets on the scene, and, making up their minds to be terribly in earnest, they neglected calm action, and described a rapid action that had febrile rather than natural qualities. Human activity was disendowed of its major share in epical narrative, and description substiliuted in its place. The lost art referred to, dearth of matter, rlc used uC™ scription, as and the desire to open a new vein, had all was then the to do with the Substitution. This descrip- custom . . , , , , ^ tion appeals to the eye rather than to the feelings. It does not by the mere touch of an epithet set off a salient feature and leave the imagination to fill up the suggestion, but it lavishes store of petty details. It does not connect a landscape with gods or men, but it is an effort in minute observation. It does not merely THE LA TER ROMAN EPIC 1 1 5 tint an emotional description with the colour that learning adds, but it makes a point of manifesting its erudition. With Lucan, however, erudition was not pushed into the display of pure pedantry, as it afterwards was. And in all his description, whether of pleasing or revolting details — for the devotees of description painted the ugly as well as the beautiful — there is always some ripple of style to entertain us. Lucan is strong in declamation. He even mistakes it for truth. This was to be expected. The age was one Lucan de- ^^ declamation, and the poet, by training ciamatory and as well as by birth, was the child of his oratorical ^g^^ T^q Pharsalia irresistibly suggests to us the recitation-room, and it is from this standpoint that we can most easily understand some of its demerits, and best appreciate its exalted style and trumpet-tongued earnestness. Quintilian says that Lucan was rather an orator than a poet. This opinion is intelligible enough, and the rhetorical side of Lucan's poetry would predispose a student of oratory, like Quintilian, to its adoption. The surroundings amid which our poet made poetry must have endowed him with many of the attributes of an orator. But, while his poetry exhibits some of the qualities of oratory, namely, a love of brilliance, a seeking after effect, and a pervading pompous storm and stress, it is conspicuously lacking in many of the characteristic qualities of this art, such as logic, pro- portion, judgment. These latter virtues, are, indeed, in their poetic equivalents, as necessary to the narrative poet as to the orator. And Lucan has no method, no sense of fitness, no wise discrimination ; his poem has not epic, still less dramatic unity. But he was poetical. His feeling was much too deep to be only oratorical, and he had intuitions of beauty in nature and conduct that are not those of an orator as such ; his expression has an ii6 EPIC POETRY 'art for art's sake' ring about it that oratorical talent could not of itself have communicated ; and, generally, he swings himself with far too great frequency and facility off the plane of the actual into that of the ideal to have had genius that would have responded with docility to the curb of the orator. Although we miss in Lucan the chaste restraint, the sanity, and completeness of Virgil's genius, we are yet „. . j..^ drawn to him by many admirable qualities and inteiiec of heart and mind. He is animated, how- tuahty gygj. overdriven its expression in words may sometimes be, by a fine sincerity, the pulsations of which we feel everywhere, now throbbing out regrets for a day that is gone and a liberty that is lost, now beating to the vehemence of a young man's assertion of the nobility of virtue. His poetry sparkles with intellectu- ality. It exhibits vigour, originality, and novelty of expression and metre, although the repeated manifesta- tion of these qualities in verse that swells on the same tone grows monotonous both to mind and ear. His words crowd appositely on one another, and his phrases convey here a conceit and there a positive beauty that make us pause and retaste our pleasures. These are momentary pleasures, I dare say, not to be remembered when the occasion is past, neither suggesting new out- looks on life, nor surprising the deep thoughts of the mind itself, being more an affair of verbal arrangement than of ideas. AU the same, a style that gives such pleasure is an evidence of genuine power, and Lucan can be read for the charm of his own literary individu- ality. One must admit, however, that he is led about by words. They suggest to him developments of thought His subjection and tricks of narration. He relies on them to words for variety, shifting his vocabulary merely to secure an effect. He makes words and phrases take THE LA TER ROMAN EPIC 1 1 7 the place of ideas, but, more than that, he wills to deviate from the beaten track, and, for the mere sake of novelty, torments his language into queerness. Often he succeeds in making a telling phrase, but often only perpetrates an oddity, using, as he frequently does, metaphorical language that puzzles the understanding. The subject of the Thebaid is the events of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes. (Edipus, after The Thebaid ^^^ self-inflicted punishment, gave place as of statins: king to Eteocles and Polynices, his two Its subject sons. By arrangement, each of these was to rule alternately, and for a year at a time. Polynices, during his brother's tenure of royal power, wanders through the waste places of Aonia. He suddenly bethinks him of visiting the court of Adrastus, king of Argos. There he meets and quarrels with Tydeus in the vestibule of the royal palace. Adrastus makes peace between them, and afterwards recognises in them his sons-in-law sent by fate. Tydeus and Polynices, now fast friends, marry, the one, Deipyle, the other, Argia, the daughters of Adrastus. But Polynices becomes un- quiet. He wishes to reign at Thebes. The year of his brother's rule has all but elapsed, but there is no sign on Eteocles' part of a desire to quit the throne. Tydeus undertakes an embassy to Thebes to expostulate with Eteocles on his retention of the kingship beyond the prescribed terra, but his mission is fruitless. On his journey back Eteocles tries, by means of an ambush, to get him assassinated. An army is mustered to place Polynices on the throne of Thebes. Its leaders are these seven champions — Adrastus, Tydeus, Polynices, Amphi- afaus, Hippomedon, Capaneus, and Parthenopseus. All are killed in the war save Adrastus. Eteocles and Poly- nices are killed in a duel. Creon succeeds to the throne, banishes CEdipus, denies the last rites to Polynices and ii8 EPIC POETRY the Argives. Jocasta commits suicide. Antigone and Argia burn Polynices' body on the pyre of Eteocles. The Argive matrons who had followed Argia to Thebes request the interference of Theseus, who marches against Thebes and captures it. Creon is killed. Such is, briefly, the story told in the Thebaid. The action is much delayed by digressions, but is taken up and hurriedly finished in the last two books. A large portion of the second book is occupied with the story of the vaHant deeds by which Tydeus defeated Eteocles' attempt to assassinate him. It *"* is a good example of Statins' manner. After a tempestuous speech, in which he denounced the conduct of the king, Tydeus forced his way through the royal bodyguard, gnashing his teeth and throwing terror into the souls of the female onlookers. He was followed by the fifty men of the ambush, who overtook him at the place most suitable for the accomplishment of their cowardly purpose, a gorge between two hills, wooded, and threaded by a difficult path that was dominated by a perpendicular crag, where the sphinx used to perch when it puzzled men to their doom. Tydeus, advancing along the path through the forest, saw in the moonlight the sheen of the armour of the ambushed warriors. His few words of defiance were interrupted by the flight of an arrow that grazed his shoulder. Impelled by a sudden in- spiration, he hastily scaled the sphinx's crag, and became, for the time being, master of his fate. Thence he reft a huge rock, too large for a team of bullocks to move, and hurled it on his foes, killing four and frightening away the others. Emboldened by the success of his act he leapt on to the plain, and with the alertness and reach ol the hundred-handed Briareus, to whom he is compared, dealt death on all sides. There is much of Statins in this piece. The sphinji THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 119 has fifteen lines of descriptive digression to itself. There are exhibited facility in narration and readiness of phrase ; the flow of verse is unrestrained. Tydeus swells both in word and deed all through the contest. He is passionate to the verge of the bombastic. We have epical strokes, epical war-whoops, epical retorts, and whimsical deaths: Tydeus, after killing his last man, says with pointed bravado : Ite sub umbras O timidi paucique.* Theb. ii, 667. Too few, and this after the despatch of forty-nine, for one was spared to carry Tydeus' denunciation to Eteocles. Statius seems to have felt that he had exaggerated Tydeus' prowess, for he makes Minerva appear at the close of the combat and remind Tydeus that it was not in his own strength that he had accomplished his deliverance. The second book has many similes. I shall notice one, remarkable for its vigour. Eteocles has been visited Two similes °^^'" night by the phantom of Laius, from the wearing, for realistic and reassuring effect, second book ^j^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ Tiresias. The phantom warns him of his brother's preparations, and encourages him to resist all overtures. The king awakes with a start and, Qualis ubi audito venantum murmure tigris Horruit in maculas somnosque excussit inertes, Bella cupit, laxatque genas, et temperat ungues, Mox ruit in turmas, natisque alimenta cruentis Spirantem fert ore virum : sic excitus ira Ductor in absentem consumit proslia fratrem.f Theb. ii, 128. * Go to the shades, ye cowards, all too few in number, t Just as when a tigress, on hearing the cries of the huntsmen, has bristled up her dappled hide and shaken off the drowsiness of sleep, I20 . EPIC POETRY Another simile may here be noticed, and for an opposite quality, that of tenderness. Hypsipyle, the ex-queen of Lemnos, who had become nurse in the family of Lycurgus and Eurydice, king and queen of Nemea, while she led the Argives to the water,* of which they stood so badly in need, left Opheltes, her infant charge, on the ground. In her absence the child was killed by a serpent. His mother, Eurydice, was frenzied with grief : — Non secus ac primo fraudatum lacte juvencum, Cui trepidas vires, et solus ab ubere sanguis, Seu fera, seu duras avexit pastor ad aras ; Nunc vallem spoliata parens, nunc flumina questu, Nunc armenta movet, vacuosque interrogat agros ; Tunc piget ire domum, masstoque novissima campo Exit, et oppositas impasta avertitur herbas.f Theb. vi, i86. Capaneus, the giant, another of the seven heroes, is the object of some vigorous description on the part of the poet. He was a despiser of the gods. His valour and his sword were his deities : — Virtus mihi numen, et ensis Quem teneo.J Theb. iii, 615. He upbraided Amphiaraus for his credulity, and to his end scoffed at oracles and divine portents. He was just as she longs for war, and opens her jaws, and whets her talons, and anon rushes on the band, and bears off, to feed her blood-stained cubs, a man still breathing, even so the king, goaded by his passion, wastes his strength in imaginary fighting with his absent brother. * The name of the fountain (or river) is -Langia. Hypsipyle is with Dante ' she that shewed Langia ' (quella che mostro Langia. Purg xxii 112). o 1 6 1 t Thus, when a young bull of unsteady limbs, whose only blood is his mother s milk, is torn from the teat and carried off, be it by wild beast or by shepherd for the cruel altar, his bereaved dam stirs with her wailing now the vale, now the river, now the herds, and puts questions to the lonely fields, and loathes to go home, and is the last to leave the fatal plain, and, though famished, rejects the offered food. ...,7 1 ■ ^ , , (Q^ Lucret. ii, sctV If Valour IS my God, valour, and the sword I grasp. THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 121 smitten with a thunderbolt after scaling the ramparts of Thebes,* flouting and about to flout the thunderer. Amphiaraus, the seer just mentioned, had refused to partake in the proposed war, foreseeing its fatal result, but the persuasion and reproaches of his Amphiaraus , '^ , , ^, . .^ „ . , , comrades, the treachery of his wife Eriphyle, who coveted on any terms the possession of the bracelet of Harmonia, now owned by Argia, and the compulsion of heaven, forced hini to yield. The earth opened and swallowed him up before the eyes of the Thebans {agli occhi de' Teban, Inf. xx, 32), after a wasting aristeia on his part, described by Statins with much animation, and some ridiculous traits. Statius' characters have not much individuality. They somehow all get mixed in the rhapsodising. In the tenth book there is a fine description of the The Hall of Hall' of Sleep, rich in allegorical imagery. Sleep and almost exhaling drowsy effluence : — Ipse autem, vacuus curis, humentia subter Antra, soporifero stipatus flore, tapetas Incubat ; exhalant vestes, et corpore pigro Strata calent, supraque torum niger e£Sat anhelo Ore vapor ; manus haec fusos a tempore Isevo Sustentat crines, haec cornu oblita remisit. Adsunt innumero circum vaga Somnia vultu, Vera simul falsis, permixtaque tristia blandis, Noctis opaca cohors, trabibusque, aut postibus heerent, Aut tellure jacent. Tenuis, qui circuit aulam, Invalidusque nitor, primosque hortantia somnos Languida succiduis exspirant lumina flammis.f Theb. X, 106. * ' He that fell at Thebes down from the walls ' (^quel che cadde a Tebe giii de' mtiri), says Dante, Inf. xxv, 15. + The god himself, free from care, reclines on a carpet in the dank cave, surrounded by drowsy flowers ; his garments give out perfume, and his lazy limbs warm his couch, above which rises, as he breathes, a black vapour ; one hand presses the scattered locks of his left temple, the other has carelessly let fall his horn. There flutter round him 122 EPIC POETRY One almost gets reconciled to Statius' exalted style, prone as he is to pass into the inflated and the ludicrous. The poet sounds his pompous notes to the style and revelation of much more than mere noise. diction jjg could coruscate to some purpose. If the language has lost in real force since it was wielded by Virgil, it is, at any rate, to say nothing of its easy flow, always entertaining, not seldom graceful, and, on occasion, powerful. Statius was endowed with enough poetic diction and sentiment to set agoing half-a-dozen mere writers of lyrics, and, in speaking of Statius' faults, we must remember that they were the faults of his virtues. Statius was a highly-gifted poet, of brilliant imagination and genuine sentiment, who alone of his fellows was able to evoke from the lyre sounds that re- called the glories of the past. One of the first things that attracts one's notice in reading the Thebaid is the surcharge of mythological allusion. Statius can call a man himself in ever so many different ways. It is not only 'an excessive use of ordi- nary names that is to be met with, but the frequent bestowal of recherche appellations. In fact, the nomen- clature in general is so recondite as to lead to obscurity. One cannot recognise the object indicated under its mythological or geographical metamorphosis. No fact is allowed to stand barely, or only with that which strictly belongs to it ; there is always a bit of embroidery, always a long train of circumstance. We have in this poet animation pushed into declama- tion, expression tormented into turgidity. The vocabu- lary is large, and the writer in full command of it. All the poets of this epoch are the slaves of words. They are whirled along by words ; what they write is not dreams of countless aspect, true and false, cruel and kind commingled ; these, Night's sable attendants, cling to the beams, to the door-posts, or lie on the ground. A dim and feeble light fills the hall, and languid torches with failing flame, as they expire, counsel the first sleep. THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 123 informed with ideas, but is often merely highly-coloured word-play, dashed with sentiment, emotional, mytholo- gical, or pictorial. Lucan and Statins had more imagi- nation and more distinction in style than the others. Lucan, at any rate, had genius. But both had the faults of their brother-poets. They dealt in gross exag- geration. Statins was a man of warm heart and tender feelings, but the choice of the same walk in poetry as that of predecessors or of a similar — and the matter to be poetised on was restricted not only by personal inclination, but by tradition and the poetical discernment of the time — a distinct dearth of ideas, and a very natural desire to strike out into some novelty, have forced him into many marked displays of exaggerated and pseudo-pathetic sentiment. Statins' diction is not only allusive and florid, not only overcrowded with words and inflated with big A imii from sentiment, but sown with similes, some of the eleventh which are quite worthy of the masters of '""''' metaphoric language. I have quoted already two examples of the poet's similes. I shall now quote another, to be noted for its illustrative exactness. Not that complete parallelism in all details is necessary in an epical simile. Virgil and Homer, at least, often use similes which afford one common feature for comparison, after which the poet goes off at a tangent, and embellishes his similes without regard to discrepancies that may be noticed between the comparison and the thing compared. But to the simile. It is from the eleventh book. Eteocles has just furiously replied to Creon, who had taunted him for his supineness in accepting the challenge of Polynices. The king at last consents to walk the way along which he is being pushed, and swallows for the time being his resentment : — Ictus ut incerto pastoris vulnere serpens Erigitur gyro, longumque e corpore toto 124 EPIC POETRY Virus in ora legit ; paullum si devius hostis Torsit iter, cecidere minae, tumefactaque frustra Colla sedent, irasque sui bibit ipse veneni.* Theb. xij 310. Statius was a born versifier. The numbers came trip- ping at his command. He wrote with more ease than statius' Virgil. His art had in lavish measure every workmanship requisite that a poet-versifier needs, be it constantly or casually, except ideas. Such as he had were not those of a separate individuality, of a thinking unit, but were either borrowed or the common property of clever writers, or were, it may be, chafed into indepen- dent existence. Whatever capacity Statius had for the acquisition of ideas, or for that solitary communing and independence without which no high poetical work can be accomplished, must have deteriorated under the in- fluence and exactions of the recitation-rooms. The atmosphere of such places was conducive to point-making, to mere sonorous phrasing, to disregard of personal in- tuitions, to neglect of breadth and the wooing of sustained inspiration, in fine, to the production of efforts in little. And it is in the execution of such miniature work that Statius excels. He can set down a description or hit ofi^ a situation most pleasingly, he has in his poem many snatches of true pathos, he can dress up a conceit in the daintiest of manners and with most polished phrase. Statius was enslaved by traditionalism and fashion, he was depressingly overshadowed by predecessors whom he could not hope to excel or even equal. A pleasing trait in the last few lines of the Thebaid is * Just so a serpent, struck a wild blow by a shepherd, rises aloft above its coils, and gathers into its mouth from its whole body the diffused poison ; let, however, its adversary turn aside a little from the path, straightway its towering height is lowered, the neck vainly swollen con- tracts, and the reptile swallows its wrathful venom. THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 125 the poet's consciousness of personal fame, and modest His reverence ^nd graceful acknowledgment of Virgil's for Virgil superiority :— Durabisne procul, dominoque legere superstes, O mihi bissenos multum vigilata per annos Thebai? jam certe prsesens tibi faraa benignum Stravit iter, ccepitque novam monstrare futuris. Jam te magnaniraus dignatur noscere Cassar, Itala jam studio discit, memoratque juventus. Vive, precor ; nee tu divinam Oneida tenta, Sed longe sequere, et vestigia semper adora.* Theb. xii, 810. Statins wrote two books of another epic poem called the Achilleid.t This was to enshrine all the gesta of TU A u=,. .J Achilles except those mentioned by Homer. The Achilleid 1 ■ , , , it IS hard to see how this work, if it had * Thou wilt live far into the future, thou wilt survive thy lord, and be read, O Thebaid, over which for twice six years I have kept many a vigil ? Already, indeed, in our day, Fame has graciously prepared a path for thee; already she begins to show thee all fresh to future times; already high-souled Ceesar deigns to make thy acquaintance ; already the Italian youths eagerly learn and repeat thee. Live — such is my prayer : seek not to reach the glory of the divine ^neid, but follow it from afar, and worship alway its traces. Compare what Dante makes Statins say of the MaeSA : — La qual mamma Fummi, e fummi nutrice poetando ; Sanz' essa non fermai peso di dramma.* Purg. xxi, 97. Dante repays with interest the honour done to Virgil by Statins, when he permits him to be invited (donnescamenie, ' as a gentle lady would') by Beatrice to drink after the poet of the river Eunoe. t Dante makes him say : — Cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille ; Ma caddi in via con la seconda soma.f Purg. xxi, 92. * Which (the ^neid) was ray mother, and was my nurse in poetising, without which I did not suspend a dram's weight. t I sang of Thebes, and then of the great Achilles, but fell on the way with the second load. 126 EPIC POETRY been finished, would have added to the poet's reputa- tion. Such incident-picking, as the avowed purpose of the poem points to, could hardly have resulted in a good argument, or in even a passable unity. Now, the argu- ment of the Thebaid, however prolix it may sometimes be, is intact, and its unity is unimpaired. Certain it is that in his second epic the poet, as regards workmanship, has lost none of his vigour, none of his art. The parts of Achilles' life described to us are his boyhood and early manhood under Chiron's guardianship, and his removal to and concealment in Scyros by his anxious mother. Statins still purveys the pictorial with pedantry and geography combined ; he still supplies similes after requisite intervals, and he still pleases by the power of lukewarm intellectual effort rather than by the fiery flight of genius. The scene of Achilles' discovery by Ulysses is finely managed, and has some most effective touches. Achilles shows to advantage in the fragment. At sight of the buckler and lance among Ulysses' wares, Achilles Infremuit, torsitque genas, et fronte relicta Surrexere comae : nusquam mandata parentis, Nusquam occultus amor, totoque in pectore Troja est.* Achill. ii, i8i. Poor Deidameia got none of the gifts her youthful lover promised her when he set out for the war : — Irrita ventosse rapiebant verba procellae.f Achill. ii, 286. Valerius Flaccus wrote the Argonautica, as we know * Acliilles uttered a wild cry, and rolled his eyes ; his hair left his brow and stood erect ; there is no place more for his mother's commands, no place more for his stolen love : Troy fills his whole heart. t The wild winds bore away his useless words. THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 127 from the dedication, in the reign of the emperor Ves- TheArgonau- pasian. Briefly, this is the argument : — tica of Valerius Pelias, having usurped the throne of ^son, Brief argu. ruled in lolcos. Jason the son of ^son ment and Alcimede, on growing to manhood, was an inconvenient presence at the court of Pelias, and was sent to fetch from Colchis the golden fleece that King ^etes, by murdering Phrixus, had possessed himself of. All the heroes of the age accompanied him. He took with him, as a hostage, Acastus the son of Pelias. The king in revenge plotted the death of Jason's parents, who, forewarned, committed suicide. Tiphys is the pilot of the Argo. The voyage is event- ful. They dally some time at Lemnos detained by the Lemnian women. Hercules delivers the daughter of Laomedon. Cyzicus is accidentally slain. Hylas is lost and Hercules abandoned. Pollux kills Amycus in a boxing-match. Phineus is delivered from the harpies. The Cyanean Rocks are passed. Colchis is reached. Medea assists Jason to accomplish his tasks, and flees with him. Absyrtus her brother, and Styrus her lover, pursue them. Styrus is drowned in a storm raised by Juno. The Argonauts blame Medea for their troubles. She complains to Jason, who had inwardly sided with his companions. Here the poem abruptly ends. The epic treats of the same story that is treated of in the epic of the same name of ApoUonius Rhodius. But there are distinct and considerable differ- and Greeit ences, both in the story and in the manner treatment of of telling it. There are much more life and picturesqueness in the Roman poet. There is a placid calm in the narrative of the Greek that forbids all excitement. One has, in reading the latter, rather the sensation of looking on a series of heroic pictures with appropriate delineation and appurtenance, than of realising in imagination, through the act of 128 EPIC POETRY reading, the verity of the acts and scenes described. In the former state the eye is always alert enough to be conscious of the dead material, the visible unreality of the show ; in the latter, it is in the power of a skilful writer to produce all but complete illusion. And Valerius Flaccus can produce a not ill-satisfying illusion. We have in the Argonautica taking bits of scenic description. The poet had a real feeling for natural Description beauty, and an ability to translate this in Valerius feeling into words. The panorama of the Flaccus shore on leaving lolcos Colchiswards is pleasingly described, more so than in Apollonius. In the wake of the voyagers the ash-clad summits of Pelion first sink into the sea, while on the left the temple of Tissean Diana still tops the waves ; presently the isle of Sciathus disappears from view, and the promontory of Sepias flies to the horizon ; now the Magnesian plain, with its grazing steeds, heaves in sight ; away in the distance they seem to see the tomb of Dolops, and the river Amyrus winding into the sea. Here a breeze drives them towards land, but, rising to their oars, they just pass within hailing distance of Eurymenae, and, under the impulsion of Auster, sail over the open sea by Pallene, where is the site of the Phlegrsean plain, the battlefield of the gods and giants, lying on the left bow. This neighbourhood at once suggests to the poet an irrelevant reference to the interment of the giants, and the uprise of their mountainous tumuli : — Quos scopulis, trabibusque, parens miserata, jugisque Induit, et versos exstruxit in sethera montes.* Arg. ii, 19. There are many not unpleasing descriptions, or notices, of places and natural scenery, strewn through the poem. Just a little further on in the same book there occurs * And them a pitying mother covered with cliffs, and beams, and hill- sides, and reared upwards into the sky the mound she had piled. THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 129 a noticeable description of the down-coming of night at sea, with its accompanying appearances, expressing admir- ably, I think, the vague obsession of fear that must some- times have threatened to master the daring Argonauts : — Ipsa quies rerum, mundique silentia terrent, Astraque, et effusis stellatus crinibus aether.* Arg. ii, 41. Other attractive, and sometimes felicitojis descriptions of sunrise and sunset and concomitant events, either natural or mythological, are elsewhere to be found. There are several battle-scenes in the Argonautica. That one in Book VI, which presents to us the combat of the Argonauts with the enemies of King JK&t&i, is the most animated. First we are told of the allies that mustered to the help of Perses against his brother. The enumeration of the muster reads like a gazetteer of nations, every one with its little patch of description. The geography of the delineation is cumbersome and no detail is foreign to the poet's purpose, be it a trumpery bit of folk-lore, a tribal practice, or a climatic characteristic. The reader gets quite tired of the describing mania. The actual fighting is a bustling business ; it is of the single-combat, homeric type. But the thing is overdone ; duels crowd on one another in confused juxtaposition. Many redoubtable strokes and valorous onslaughts are mentioned, not with- out, now and then, a little virgilian phrasing and pathos Thus Gesander, in his contest with Canthus, vaunts— the complete vaunt is too lengthy, I fear, virgiiianisms ^.^^ .^.^ general quality— his patriotism and the hardiness of his tribesmen :— Nunquam has hiemes, hsec saxa relinquam, Martis agros, ubi tam ssevo duravimus amne * The very stillness of nature awes them, and the silence of space, and the stars, and the sky all bespangled with comet-like lights. I I30 EPIC POETRY Progeniem, natosque rudes, ubi copia leti Tanta viris.* Arg. vi, 335. This language bears a strong resemblance to Durum ab stirpe genus natos ad flumina primutn Deferimus, ssevoque gelu duramus et undis.f Mxt. ix, 603. And Tages, on whose outfit had been lavished the care of women, must die as doomed, in spite of his descent, and dearness to others : — Tenuia non ilium candentis carbasa lini, Non auro depicta chlarays, non flava galeri Caesaries, pictoque juvant subtegmine bracaj.J. Arg. vi, 225. Colaxes, the son of Jove himself, must yield him to destiny, his father being unable to save him : — Quin habeat sua quemque dies, cunctisque negabo, Quae mihi,§ Arg. vi, 628. The haling of the dead Canthus is closely copied, even to the peculiar simile, from the Iliad (xvii, 389), where Patroclus' body is stretched, as is stretched, for a definite purpose, the oiled hide of a bull. Did it serve any purpose, I might further instance places where the poet copies Virgil, and translates, sometimes literally. Homer. In the above contest the Argonauts had need of all their strength and valour, if we are to believe the poet's iterations of the numberlessness of Perses' allies. The poet's similes are often ornamental and traditional, * I shall never leave this wintry clime, these rocks, the land of Mars, where in the cold stream we have hardened our children, our sturdy sons, where death presents so many fronts to men. t We, a people of sturdy stock, carry our sons to the streams, as soon as we may, and harden them in the cold freezing water. X His fine raiment of pure white linen avails him naught, nor his chlamys figured with gold, nor the tawny plume of his helmet, no, nor his trousers of brocaded stuff. §Nay, then (Jupiter speaks), let his own doomsday capture each, and I will refuse to all what I refuse to myself. THE LATER ROMAN EPIC 131 but sometimes not inapt. They are certainly numerous Similes and enough in some places. The metre is metre technically correct, and, what is more, conveys to the ear a good imitation of Virgil's rhythm, though it lacks the metrical thought, if such a descrip- tion of metre is permissible, that sounds in Virgil's verse. The expression is large, and displays decorative art enough, if it somewhat lack in smoothness. Deities interfere vigorously in the action of the poem, „ . . . and this interference is often quite direct. Points ma ^ comparison of It seems to me, however, that the Fi^^'u^'and L^tin poet's deities retain more divinity Apoiionius than those of the Greek poet, who are Rhodius often too diplomatic to be Olympian. The love of Medea for Jason is more rationally spoken of in Valerius Flaccus, and with more regard to woman's ways, than in Apoiionius. In Apoiionius it is all the doing of Cypris and her boy, while, in the Roman poet, although Medea is assisted into her passion by Juno, disguised as her sister Chalciope and aided by the borrowed necklace of Venus, which the maid unwittingly puts on, still in the Roman poem the passion is rather communicated by suggestion, being then almost free to run its natural course, than, as in the Greek poem, inflicted by divine act on a helpless victim. It is a pretty enough picture, that of the love-sick maid drinking in love as she gazes from the ramparts, whither she had been hurried, half-unwilling, by the disguised goddess, on the hero battling in her father's service. The Argonautica, as an epic of adventure, is, as it seems to me, a much more successful production than the critics will allow, displaying considerable naturalness and story-telling power. The plot of the poem is not finished, but what of it there is displays more design than we find in the plot of Apoiionius' poem, and, with the Roman 132 EPIC POETRY poet, Jason better maintains his position as hero of the story. I Hke Mr Morris's account of the upgrowth of Mr Morris's Medea's passion. It is so poetical and so Jason human : — Therewith she made an end ; but while she spoke Came Love unseen, and cast his golden yoke About them both, and sweeter her voice grew, And softer ever, as betwixt them flew, With fluttering wings, the new-born strong desire ; And when her eyes met his grey eyes, on fire With that which burned her, then with sweet new shame Her fair face reddened, and there went and came Delicious tremors through her. Life and Death of Jason vii, 85. This, if not so detailed and meltingly pretty, is more powerful than the corresponding passage of the Greek poet : — Toios aTrd ^avdoLO KapijaTOS Alcopidao Sr/jdiTTec "Bpus r)5e1av airb ipXbya' rrji S' afiapvykt ' OcjiBakiiMiv lipiraiev lalvero Si (fypivas rfffw l-qKOfxivT), otov re irepl jtoiirfaLV iipirii l-flKirai. ■Iji^oKjai laLVOixivq !J>aieacLV. "Aiujxa S' fiXXoTe p-iv re kut oOdeos Sfi/mr' Ipudov MSbpxvoL, brk d' aSns iirl a(plemi-penitential sadness, of his half-instinctive and lalf-involuntary admiration of innocence ; the shadow jf his hopeless ruin, of his desperate denials of all virtuous influence, of his awful and inevitable access of criminality. The description of the preliminaries, of the progress, md of the circumstances of the battle in the empyrean is vorthy of the epic poet and his art. It is a narrative ;trong in its situations, in its actors, and in its acts. The flight to the North, the insinuating address,of Satan, he at first pleading and then defiant defection of Abdiel, :arry us on in expectant mood to the coming conflict. The battle-morn in colours of empyreal gold introduces is to the successive scenes of that momentous day — the nassing of the mighty quadrate of celestial warriors, its wift and straight passage through space, the battailous ispect of the horizon bounded by the distant host ot THE ENGLISH EPIC 167 rebels, the initial encounter between Abdiel and Satan on the rough edge of battle, the fierce hosting of the adverse ranks, the homeric duels of the chief combatants, Satan ranging victorious through the ranks of the seraphim, and Michael brandishing his wide-wasting sword. In the first day's strife Satan's pride was humbled by Michael's sharing blow, and his army taught meaner thoughts in their rout. Michael and his angels remained as masters on the foughten field. Milton's imagination rather runs riot in the description of the second day's fighting. The rebel artillery was silenced by the super- imposition of the seated hills, and whole legions of rebels were buried under main promontories. On the third day Messiah militant drove his chariot across the empyrean, thundering amain, and the Satanic host, for- getting how to resist, were driven in bestial terror to the limits of heaven and shot over its crystal battlements, heaven ruining from heaven adown the deep descent of hell. It is not surprising that there should be doubt as to Milton's conception of the part allotted to Satan in this epic of varied aspect and real duality of authorship. Milton would certainly never have advisedly chosen tHii" being as the hero of the poem. To attribute such an intention to Milton is to falsify the whole history and theory of the poet's choice of a subject. I should not even care to say that he slipped unawares into such a frame of mind as would make him take this view of Satan. The ter m 'epic -hgng^LinggSg.- ^o'^^thi ng mo re than a ch aractSLiiLout- standing_actiyity,_aud rarn>..s.. with it assnoiatinns .o£- "straightforwardness, honour, and rectitude relative if no t abso lute. ^ 'In the theology of the poem — which is inconsistent, and reflects this defect on the presentation — the arch- i68 EPIC POETRY fiend is at one time the goad, at another time the tool, and at another time the butt of the deity. His function in its epic action is an organic one. He is, in a measure, what Sainte Beuve would call the cheville ouvriere of the action, as Juno was of that of the .^neid, but he is also a doer of deeds, as well as the mainspring of the action and a marplot. The grandeur with which he is invested is due to, among other things, the working of the epical instinct of the poet. A prime character is a desideratum in an epic. The poet, knowing this, and conscious at the same time of the paucity of characters, of whom, too, some are too unsketchable, or too inactive in their parts, to be referred to continuously, concentrated his attention on Satan. We may be sure, too, that Milton discerned all the possibilities of characterisation in the case of this character, and it is just possible that the pity he felt for the estate of the ex-archangel dignified his conception of the same. To say, however, as has been said, that Milton's devil is in morality superior to his God seems to me sheer contradictoriness. It is true that Milton wrote as a poet, though he chose as a puritan, but not to the extent of mistaking villainy for virtue. After all is said that can be said, and it is much, of Satan's part in the poem, we have to remember that in him Milton sketched a being whose rapid and self- inflicted moral declension is most marked. We feel that some excuse may possibly be made for his rebellion against the tyrannical nepotism of the father, and, even after the hideous ruin that overtook his daring defiance of Omnipotence, Satan is still a being to be respected. But all this grand assertiveness, prompted by a not alto- gether unjustifiable pride, declines upon an attack on the puny inhabitants of the newly created earth. True, the inmates of hell were not sure of the status and strength of the beings whom they deemed exposed to successful attack. They knew that they were to be little inferior THE ENGLISH EPIC 169 to the angels. They did not know their numbers. Hearing, too, that they were to be highly favoured, they might easily have inferred that they would not be left to their own resources. To the end Satan was cautious, and even fearful, of a possible encounter with Adam, and this after he had learned the numbers of the human race and its vulnerability. This feeling, however, was pro- bably produced by the debasing and enfeebling effects of evil. The enterprise against man, then, could not have appeared devoid of danger, even to archangelic daring, and, indeed, hesitancy to undertake it was manifested by the Satanic peers ; but Satan's part in the epic, and Milton's suggestive and powerful delineation of this, have so heightened expectation, that a feeling of wonder is provoked over the falling oiF between his words and his actions. The devil himself seems to have been half- conscious that he was pursuing an undignified course. When Satan approached the actual inception of his task, he hesitated, and had to reinforce his purpose by high reasons of state and the promptings of private revenge. He was not conscience-smitten, for he parted with his conscience on Mount Niphates ; but he experi- enced the compunctious visitings of a compassionate nature. The means taken to accomplish his end — the parting with the last remnant of nobility that the foul descent into the serpent involved — completes the obscuration of the glory of the ruined archangel. On his reappearance in the garden, after his expulsion by Gabriel, the^devil has no compunctions, but is dominated by envy and spite. For a moment, and for the last time, the sight of Eve's attractive grace bereft him of hate, and staggered his hellish purpose. How can Satan be the hero of the epic, a being whose deterioration is so swift and so progressively ugly all the poem through ? When he raised himself from off the ^o ' EPIC POETRY )ool he was heroic, and possessed of a modicum of mselfishness. He wrestled through space on a voyage )f discovery. He sought the New World. His purpose lardened as his knowledge of the World and Man )ecame more definite, and it hardened in the direction )f evil. The tempestuous struggle on Mount Niphates, nduced by his solitary retrospect, was an important itage in Satan's moral declension. " Evil be thou my jood," he said, and forthwith he was self-consecrated to obdurate impenitence. Dogged resistance and lofty opposition gave place to spiteful annoyance and con- :emptible trickery. The opponent of Deity — leaving Dut of view the necessities of the story — condescended :o notice, and was base enough to inveigle, innocent 'rail man. His physical aspect took after his changing moral nature. The angel of the intrenched scars could don the aspect of an angel of light before Uriel. The ingel of that sinful resolve on Mount Niphates, what- 3ver of ' regal port, but faded splendour wan ' his proper person might retain, could afterwards effect no higher metamorphosis than that which made him into a toad Dr a serpent. In his first speech in hell Satan wept over tiis comrades, but gradually came to think that they existed to do him reverence. If Satan had been the hero of the poem, it would have jnded with the tenth book. Those who make Messiah :he hero have a strong case, if Paradise Regained be considered as the complement, or as in any way explana- ;ory of Paradise Lost. The quest after epic heroes is not always a successful jne. For example, Who is tHe hero of the Nibelung- 3nlied ? Is it Siegfried or Hagen ? Or is the chief character in this poem a woman, and is she Kriemhild ? Tan we definitely say who are the respective heroes of ;he Jerusalem Delivered and the Lusiads ? THE EISTGLISH EPIC 171 It is idle to call Paradise Regained an epic. It is obviously not an epic in the sense that the great epic Paradise Re- poems of the world are such. The usual gained: it is externals are absent. It has no action neither in n i x^. , matter nor in properly SO Called. Dialogue interspersed form an epic ^j^h description takes the place of action. There are, for the most part, only two persons placed before us. One baits a proposal with tempting allure- ments, the other rejects it in language that is now severely dignified, now expansively persuasive, now narrowly biblical, and now curtly denunciatory ? There is no other sense in which the poem can be called epical. In form it is simply the denial j, with reasons annexedj of certain requests. Such matter as it has is not set forth storywise, and on being looked into, is found to be mere projected reflexion. The objectivity is fictitious, but, accepted as objectivity and valued at its worth, it presents no full story of sequence and develop- ment. This is the argument : — Two persons meet, one in straits ; an escape from the straits is offered and rejected. The persons disagree. The one tries to con- vince the other, but is refuted, which happens several times. This is a meagre story, and it is, as regards narrative interest, thinly told. Such is what the epical quality of the matter of Paradise Regained comes to, when the poem is put forward as an epic and tested as this. An epic largeness of utterance, and a more than skilful accumulation of allusion, will not convert a duel between clever sophistry, and the pure vision of sinless simplicity into interesting and impersonal narrative of the epic order. The poem describes great issues, but so do many mystery-plays, and yet no one would ever dream of including these among epical products. It is true that, considered as recording the last effort of Satan's struggle against the Almighty's purposes, the 172 EPIC POETRY facts of the poem can find a place in an epic action, Its story and form its closing moments. In no might furnish other way can the matter of Paradise Re- * to™'epic"° gained be made to put on epical quality. action Its incidents, stripped of dramatic dress, arranged as narrative, and presented as vision, might conceivably have furnished a better ending to Paradise Lost than the historical, genealogical, theological narra- tion of the twelfth book of that poem. One might, how- ever, as well take the closing scenes of an epic action, say — Odyssey XXII, or /^neid XII, and, after extending the fighting over several days and propping it up with additional circumstance, and supplying a proem and ending, claim separate epic status for the enlargement, as call the dramatic setting and scenic enlargement — for the show of the specular mount imparts spaciousness — of the incidents of the Temptation an epic. Nay, the prior procedure would have the superior justifica- tion of being able to point to a narrative of real objec- tivity. In Paradise Regained Milton has given scope and grandeur to the facts of the Temptation, he has adorned t with the glamour of that magnificent style of his, that :s all. The original story has few incidents, and Milton :ould not invent incident without encroaching on ground le had already occupied. Besides, he severely repressed my surviving inclination to poetical dreaming, and set orth his facts in naked simplicity, using only such ;xhibition and embellishment as would best express tnd illustrate their intrinsic truth. In spite of its shortness, there is more of the world as f& know it in Paradise Regained than in the great epic. The char= A.S regards the supernatural characters, we acters are too conscious, I think, of set speech, in he portions of the dialogue delivered by the ' glorious remite.' The language of an alleged sacred epic ought THE ENGLISH EPIC 173 not to be so much a poetical paraphrase and adaptation of biblical phraseology, however finely the phraseology — its simplicity being only ennobled, not lost— is turned and adapted. The language of Paradise Lost is not biblical. Freshness of language, however, would have needed as a prerequisite fresh incident, and Milton meant to add npt one jot or tittle to the biblical text. The Tempter, sophisti- cal, and not that bold spirit who ' attempted the father's throne,' is not really so despicable as when he played the part of ' thief of paradise.' Then he was a betrayer, now he is a sophist. Then he attacked innocence, now he is matched by the divine instrument of his chastisement. A touch of pathos is not wanting in his delineation. Witness Though to that gentle brow Willingly I could fly. P. R. iii, 215. Unless Milton meant this as a feature of the Tempter's wiles. I do not think so. It is somewhat akin to the Is there no place Left for repentance, none for pardon left ? P. L. iv, 79. of the Paradise Lost. The devil is made the mouthpiece of some of Milton's finest flights, and borrows, doubtless, a little dignity therefrom. It is fine imaginative play, that of the fourth book, round the names, and all that these connote, of Rome The Fourth and Athens. What a pen-portrait of Book Roman topography, pomp, and power ! And Athens too. How the city stands out before us ! What an evocation of clustering memories ! What brilliant heraldic emblazonry I The Faery Queen is the nearest approach in English 174 EPIC POETRY literature to the romantic epos on a large scale. Spenser Spenser's is the representative of Ariosto in our Faery Queen literature. The two poets are, it is need- less to say, separated by most pronounced differences. The most patent difference, involving most of the others, is one of character. Spenser was too serious a man and 1 poet to produce the matter of the Italian poem, which, however rich in imagination and delightful to read, may not incorrectly be described as mere literary fool- ing. The romantic epos is a genre- by itself, and not every specimen of it has a good or even plausible title to the name epic. On several grounds the Faery Queen cannot be included in the number of genuine epics. The poem has really no story, either in point of strong interest or pervading sequence. This is largely due to the charac- ter of the plot. A co-ordination of stories among them- selves and a subordination to a main argument are not "eatures likely to help to a narrative strong in situations ind of marked development in the manner of the telling. These stories, we know, were not meant to be, as it were, simple beads on a straight wire, but were meant to form 3y pre-established arrangement the pattern of an argu- nent. This pattern the poet did not exhibit in a ;ompleted poem, but only explained it to Raleigh in a jrefatory epistle. It is not only the character of the plot, but its matter, hat is inimical to the success of the poem as a narrative. This has too much abstractness. Putting aside its [orgeous colouring and noble poetry, one feels in pres- ince of its characters almost as one would feel in •resence of the symbolical personages of a morality-play, lalf-humanised and not wholly comprehensible as agents, ['here is an air of unreality about Spenser's poem, and his no one but a fanatical Spenserian will deny. The llegory obtrudes itself to the detriment of the story. THE ENGLISH EPIC 175 In the first book, certainly, the story is strong enough to make us forget the allegory. The Faery Queen has been called an allegorical epic. This is a contradiction in terms. Allegory is only a possible ornamentation of an epic poem, and not its natural and abiding dress. Our poem has an indefeasible claim to be considered one of the world's great literary products, but when status is claimed for it as a specimen of epic narrative, it must be judged according to the traditions and rules of such composition. The poem is not merely an allegory but a didactic allegory. It has lessons to teach, an ethical end to accomplish, to wit, ' the fashioning a gentleman or noble person in virtuous or gentle discipline.' Now, the epic poet is no preacher. He has no rousing message for loiterers in virtue, no theorem in ethics to demon- strate, no vision of the beauty of holiness to set before his readers. This poet tells a story, a story such as his data permit, adorned by traits of humanity, and embel- lished by art and the thought of his own poetic soul. His characters have had pre-existence, they have had the objectivity of tradition or history. He cannot, then, remake these ; any remaking that he engages in must be a process that is pursued on lines cognate to and con- sistent with tradition or history. To 'justify the ways of God to men ' has a didactic ring about it, but the didactic element of Milton's argument is only a concomi- tant to the universal element. The didactics lie latent in Paradise Lost, and they only lie there at all because the religious and the didactic are supposed to be inseparable. Ariosto's poem has far more variety than that of Spenser, who holds to his theme, while Ariosto roams, and has really no theme except the amusement of the reader, and variety is needed in the romantic epos, especially if it be of the type that lacks the concentration 176 EPIC POETRY given by the presence of an overshadowing hero. Neither of the poems can boast of unity and continuity, but Ariosto's has more of these quahties than Spenser's. It has some share of finished-ofF roundness, and there are a few pivotal points in its narrative. The Italian was also a better story-teller and had more brilliance than the Englishman. He had no such serious strands in the fibre of his nature as had Spenser. He was a better story-teller, not merely by his variety, a variety that can hardly be staled, but by the possession of the worldly qualities of gayness, humour, and lightness. And over all there is the charm of chivalric romance with no ethical intention. There is an air of reality about Ariosto's chivalry. Its members are human in their virtues, human in their frailties ; they are not paragons, now militant, and now lapsing, but conceivable specimens of heroic humanity. Even the wonderful in the Orlando Furioso is so quasi- real as to find the reader in a state of preparedness, while that of the Faery Queen, if it be detachable from a real that exists in the poem, is sensibly factitious, unless to the initiated reader. Our poem, then, cannot be classed as a specimen of the romantic epos. This species of epic poetry requires a capturing and fairly engrossing story, exhibiting pro- gress and consummation of some sort, and a lightness of touch in the treatment of that story. The poet of the Faery Queen presents to us neither of these require- ments. In fact, so far as literary qualities go, he has more affinity to the great epic poets than to the minor poets of the romantic epic. But his work is too stately and unbending to be compared to that of the former, and he really did not look at the life of the world, but at its idealised counterpart in a supramundane region of the imagination. It was a poem celebrating the praise of a full and religious manhood that Spenser wrote. THE ENGLISH EPIC 177 The poetry of the Faery Queen has got movement and flow. It reveals a rare feeling for beauty, actual and ideal, and a matchless skill in the expression thereof; it sings out a melody of voluptuous sweetness that only cloys as nature cloys, to be desired again and enjoyed anew after a short interval of disuse ; but there are two prime defects that prevent it ranking as an epic, in any true sense of the term, and these may be correctly indicated by saying that it has~ no story and much ethics. Southey's narrative poem, Roderick, The Last of the Goths, may be brought forward as a specimen of the Southey's poet's putative epic handiwork. It is the Roderick story of the repentance and atonement of Roderick, the last of the Visigothic kings. Count Julian, a powerful Gothic baron, maddened by the wrong done to his daughter Florinda by the king, joined the Moors with his following. These, largely owing to this acces- sion, were able to defeat the Goths in a great and decisive battle. Roderick disappeared from the field of battle, was thought dead, but, after ten years, convinced of his new mission, returned — his name was now Macca- bee — in time to help in the rebellion against the Moors that resulted in the establishment of the kingship of Pelayo, a scion of the royal Gothic house, who had some family connection with the native Spanish race. Roderick's retired and ascetic life had given him the aspect of an anchorite, and he remained unrecognised save by his mother and his dog Theron, until his purpose of self-effacing service to Spain had been nearly completed. In the battle against the Moors, where his valour was most helpful and contagious, he inadvertently shouted his war-cry, and was generally recognised and enthusiasti- cally greeted, but, after the victory had been won, again disappeared. M 178 EPIC POETRY The story is finely conceived, cleverly spaced, and adorned with much pictorial art. Some of the incidents are exceedingly pathetic. The scene in which Florinda, making the disguised and saint-like Roderick her con- fessor, incriminates herself and exculpates the king, has a pathos that tugs at the heart-strings. It is, however, rather a story with a thesis, namely, the purification of the spirit by disaster, than a bit of narra- tive fitted to give the high pleasure of the animated story -telling called epos. It is a one character story, for, though there are other characters, as many as its limited action requires, and these well-marked, there is too little circumstantiality to give scope for and necessitate their portrayal. The area is too narrow and the action too confined. We have not the broad expanse of epic narrative with its scene-shifting, its variety of incident, and its bustling activity either in suspense or in realisa- tion. There is too much concentration round one fast- approaching denouement, to which the whole action hurriedly marches. The movement is too quick for epic. The poem appeals to too few sympathies of the reader. An epic hero is a many-sided man, and commands not merely the pityj but the admiration of his observers. The Roderick is too abidingly sombre, and performs the end of tragedy rather than the end of epic. And the grounds for one's interest in the poem rest on too fanciful a basis. It has too little real outwardness, for the outwardness that is found in it is only a medium for exhibiting the abounding inwardness of the principal character. One feels that the poet works strongly towards the effects of the poem, that these are emotional, in fact, full of tragic fervour, and that they do not occur naturally in an even- running story. I say this with reference to general epic characteristics, for, in its own manner, the story is naturally and facilely told. THE ENGLISH EPIC 179 The poem is a romantic tale with some strong situa- tions and of great pathos, but not large enough, and, as a consequence, not sufficiently packed with action and actors to merit the name epic. It is too much shot through with the one predominant gloomy tint, and has got nothing like the appearance of the multi-coloured epic poem. Its ending, too, is peculiarly romantic. As to Southey's other epics, , it has to be said that, before a poet can write epic, he must choose a subject that has human interest and human probability, and that permits of an energising that is not foreign to heroic humanity. If a subject has romantic bearings and no human interest, an epic poem is an impossibility. Joan of Arc displays the defects of historical epics. Besides, the story of the Maid presents too narrow a stage for epic treatment, and too little individual action and predominance to produce the illusion of the heroic. The manner in which the Idylls of the King appeared argues the absence of the qualities that characterise an Tennyson's ^P^*^ poem. Such a poem has a self-con- idyiis of the scious continuity, a through and through "^'"^ treatment, and an artery' of passed -on interest that postulate a simultaneous review of its parts as constituents of a completed whole, in other words, an appearance en bloc. Even the epic of growth, the epic of lays, had a kernel consisting of a whole formed of parts that had seen the world simultaneously. If one would shrink from calling each of the Idylls a miniature epic, how can the whole of them form an epic poem in any real sense of the term ? The aim of the so-called Tennysonian epic, namely, to ' shadow sense at war with soul,' is such as to justify a pre- sumptive inference as to the non-epical character of the medium of such portraiture. It is not the function of the epopee to record the working-out of moral problems. i8o EPIC POETRY The characters of the poem appear in detachments that have no visible united action. We have a sort of solar system of greater and lesser lights, with concentric orbits of large or little compass that do not intersect or touch one another. The chord of connection of the parts has to be supplied in the main by the reader. It is a pattern-weaving business. The pattern can be woven after we have mastered its plan. The characters are certainly real and life-like. They are distinct enough, but the fact that the principal actors do not appear on the scene together and contribute each a different share in a common action lends itself to a certain sameness or monotony in the presentation. They are idealised, no doubt, but a certain amount of ideahsation is permitted in an epic poem. It must be practised within certain limits, and, if there are no other violations of the epical rule of procedure, it will do small harm to the poem. The unity of the Idylls of the King is subjective and intellectual, to be discerned by reflection. Essays in knight-errantry that are at the same time experiments in self-discipline have to be considered in themselves, and in their reference to the group. A dramatic poem has a unity that deploys itself in the plot, and is only fully realised and grasped after that is wrought out. The coherence of an epic poem is not the unity that belongs to the solution of a problem in ethics, but an all-pervading . quality that environs us, that we do not seek for, because it is in the atmosphere of the poem. The aspect of our poem that best confers on it the title to the name epic is that which leads us to call it the story of the life and death of king Arthur. The poem gives the reader the story of king Arthur, if we supply the gaps. He must string the beads, he must piece out the plan. No doubt its parts are speakingly present, they lie before us dovetailed and waiting to be joined, but it is we who effect the junction, and not the poet. An THE ENGLISH EPIC i8i epic poem should secrete, as it were, its own unity, and its poet should supply any linking the story needs. The epical quality of the Idylls of the King is to be found in its manner — and the adjective marks out only one quality of the exquisite magnificence of this manner — for barring the fact that it is a narrative poem I see in it no other prescriptive epical characteristics. One may, I think, without being called a stickler for conven- tional and dispensable requisites in this sort of poetry, say that the matter of the poem has neither the arrange- ment nor the interrelation of the epic poem. The poem is not an epic poem, and Tennyson did not call it such. Such a poem as Mr Morris's Life and Death of Jason is too exclusively romantic to be included, as it is by Morris's some, among epics. In it one breathes the Jason very air of romance, and to me its languor- ous verse sounds like the very dirge of the old epic manner. It has the beauty, the sadness, and the mystery of romanticism. Its ending is romantic, for Jason 'died strangely,' and the story, which commemorates the different stations in a drifting series of adventures, could not have been treated so finely, as it has been, unless from the point of view of romance. Its adventure, its ornament, and its poetisation are more prominent than any character-drawing of individuals. There really is no pivot in the story of the poem, no centripetal trend of action, no emphatic though long- deferred home-coming to unify and crown a pilgrimage of adventure. The movement is not to a terminus, but shifts from point to point with no causal nexus or pro- gressive realisation. If a poem has the epic manner and the epic machinery, one is almost constrained to call it an epic for form's sake, in spite of deficiencies in the fable. In this case the appellation conveys no compH- ment. But the Jason needs no commendation beyond 1 82 EPIC POETRY the recognition of the thing that it is, namely, a romantic poem of rare sensuous and pensive beauty. The romantic elements are the strength of the poem. Its progress is not epical, and it has not much of a con- summation of any sort. There are present much elabora- tion and decorative detail. The manner of the telling is too ornate and has too little projecting power to be that of an epic poem. The poem has the scope and breadth of an epic, and it is not an isolated event that it treats romantically, but a considerable grouping of incident. There is a temptation to enrol anything big in the way of narrative and of high literary quality as a claimant for epical honours. Perhaps the epic manner is now outworn, and we slow to admit the fact. CHAPTER III THE FRENCH EPIC Charlks, King of the Franks, by invitation of a Saracen prince in straits, or for conquest, had made an inroad into Spain and had besieged Spanish towns. Roland. The Pampeluna he had captured, but before historical In Saragossa he had been foiled. By pact, or by poUcy, he began a homeward march into France. The main body of the army reached French soil in safety, but the rearguard was attacked By Basques, and massacred in the mountain-passes. On this occasion was slain, among other prominent warriors, Roland, warden of the marches of Brittany — Hruodlandus Britannia limitis prcefectus, to quote the words of Eginhard. This is what history has veritably transmitted to us regarding the hero of a thousand tales. This is the historical seed that has so grown, that has so flowered, that has shot up into so many and such rare corymbs, the kernel of fact behind the idealisations of legend, the expansions of story-tellers, and the embellish- ments of poetic and pious imaginations. In the Song of Roland the real facts are coloured, The colouring added to, and perverted. Not by border and ampiifi- tribesmen, it was argued, could such a "hUtoricar defeat have been inflicted on the monarch facts that played the greatest part in early mediaeval Christendom. Never would this puissant 1 84 EPIC POETRY prince have allowed a defeat of such magnitude to pass by unavenged, and almost unnoticed. It was impossible that soldiers officered by peers of the great Karl should have been hurled down a mountain side, huddled into a narrow space, and massacred to a man. And so a passing foray was converted into a miniature crusade, and the obscure Basques gave place to the mighty Moslems. It would not have suited the poet's plan to have tampered with the tradition of the defeat. He turned the tradition to account. With him the defeat is a defeat only in name. The dying Roland is left in possession of the field. It was a worse than Pyrrhic victory that th,e Moslems gained. It was gained by traitor's • aid and at awful cost. The emperor's retaliation was terrible. Recalled by the belated blast of Roland's horn — Cumpainz Rollanz, I'olifant kar sunez ; Si I'orrat Carles, fera Post returner — * (So vainly advised Olivier) C. de R. 1059. he rudely routed the troops of Marsil the Moslem king, annihilated the army of his ally, the Emir of Babylon, seized Saragossa, sacked its shrines, forced thousands to abjure their faith, and led Queen Bramimonde into captivity. The details of the story as magnified, idealised, and embellished by the poet, form a subject worthy of epic song. We have a great theme^the patriotic fight for national honour against fearful odds ; they are worthy foemen — Karl's soldiers and the Saracen pay- nims. Symmetrical, too, is the action, granting that, in comparison with the action of certain other epics, it is narrow and bald. The poet has been able by setting and circumstance to make his catastrophe epically attrac- * Comrade Roland, come, sound your horn ; (thus) Charles will hear it, he will make the host return. THE FRENCH EPIC 185 tive and satisfying. The nature of this catastrophe perhaps required a sequel containing poetic justice. At any rate one has been supplied. The poet of the Chanson created out of his materials a noble argument, and he has treated this argument not unworthily. He has power, he has fire, he has pathos, he can enlist the sympathies, fire the feelings, and pierce the hearts of his readers. He excels in descriptions of fighting. He paints combats most realistically, and in so doing, displays much epical verisimilitude, in spite ' of of the poet, features, which, even from an epical stand- His battle. point, are decided exaggerations.. Our poet has all a warrior's joy in battle. His verse grows warm over the straight spear-thrust, the strong sword-stab, and the slashing sword-stroke. His heroes inflict fearful wounds ; they hack, cut, and strike with elemental vigour ; the might of their sword-arm is something titanic. By sheer strength, and weight of vertical down-stroke, Roland could on occasion cut horse and rider in two, beginning from the rider's helmet downwards through the horse's chine, as easily as we can slice a lemon. His battle is a scene of feverish animation. Duel follows duel in rapid succession. Homer devotes a rhapsody to each aristeia ; in this poem we have several aristeiai to less than the space of one rhapsody. It may be thought that, even for a fighting canto, the fighting business is too obtrusive. But no. The circumstances are such that much fight- ing is a necessity, and the poet has known by bits of character drawing, by picturesque detail, by tem- porary shifting of scene, and by an occasional brooding note of woe, to forestall tedium. What with smash- ing of helmets, shattering of shields, and resounding blows on hauberk, metallic thuds, on mail, and ring- ing cries of Montjoie, we may form to ourselves a highly 1 86 EPIC POETRY coloured sound-picture of the mellay. Olivier cried out : — Gente est nostre bataille.* C. de R. 1274. It is natural that savagery should have some place in such fighting. We have not, as in Homer, minute anatomical details of the wounding, but precise mention is certainly made of its gruesome effects. The com- batants were truculent and their deeds cruel. They dashed out eyes, they spilt brains. There never was such fighting, there never were such fighters, except, perhaps, in that wild schlachtgetummel of blows and blood in Etzel's hall. Were the poet's claim on our appreciation confined to the skilful word-painting of single combats, we should pay His tender- ^im but qualified homage. But he is more ness and than a poet of fighting. He is as tender, patriotism chivalrous, and true as his own Roland. From his pages breathes the very spirit of refined and chivalrous patriotism. His patriotism shines through the patriotism of his characters. France is for him ' duke France^ ' tere majur,^ and he every now and then invokes for her heaven's protection. He is the poet of feudal loyalty. Over and over again phrases in- culcating on vassals the performance of duty are met with. There is not a base thought in the whole poem. Faith, valour, and brotherliness are the virtues the poet presents to us. Roland is one of the most taking characters that epic Roland's poet has ever drawn. Of open and smiling qualities countenance and of stout port — Cors ad gaillart, le vis cler et riant — t C. de R. 1 1 59. * A fine battle is ours. t He has a powerful frame, an open and smiling countenance. THE FRENCH EPIC 187 he is the pride and sunshine of his men. His fame as a doughty and ' dauntless warrior, as Charlemagne's right hand, was world-wide, and at Roncesvalles he did not belie his reputation. There, as nowhere else, were con- spicuous the resistless dash of his onset, and the keen and massive vigour of his blows. The paladins are all, as regards these qualities, made more or less in the same mould (I by no means speak of a sameness that surfeits), they are all accessible to attacks of the battle frenzy — with more or less of Gallic swashbucklerism — and their swords are always swift to deal death. But Roland, pre-eminent as he is in physical qualities, is no less so in the softer qualities of the heart. His love to Olivier, a love passing the love of women, his brotherliness to his comrades-in-arms, his tenderness to the Prankish soldiers, not to speak of his devotion to Charlemagne, make a Bellona's bridegroom into something like the mirror of chivalry. That dogged obstinacy which pre- vented him winding his horn, which the poet as craftsman has known how to utilise, but which, as man, he, by the mouth of Olivier, censures in the line — Kar vasselage par sens nen est folie — * C. de R. 1724. is redeemed by the inspiriting daring with which, as heir of his family's honour, and peer of the puissant Karl, he prolonged the struggle till family and personal pride yielded to the compassion felt for his comrades for- done with fighting and wounds. There are few more melting episodes than that which tells of the passage of Roland on his horse Veillantif oiivier's to the succour of Olivier hard pressed and death mortally wounded. Roland, with friendly haste, rides to the relief of his comrade, but Olivier, * Assuredly courage with reason is not folly. 1 88 EPIC POETRY blinded by his own blood, taking him for a paynim, strikes at him with Halteclere, and hits his helm. There follows a surprised and sorrowful query on the part of Roland, and the quavering reply of one who is too near death to do more than plead his blindness, mention the name of God, and ask to be forgiven. Then, says the poet, they bent lovingly towards one another, embraced, and parted. Almost immediately Olivier died, praying God to bless Roland, above all others. Roland, with the weeping outburst — Ne m'fesis mal, ne jo ne I'te forsfis — * C. de R. 2029. swooned on his charger, but mastered his swoon, and pressed to another part of the battle-field to assist the last remnant of his army. To my mind this is one of the most piercingly pathetic incidents in literature. It almost excels in pathos — and this is saying much — the bitter entreaty of Priam in the tent of Achilles, the death of Clorinda by the weapon and in the embrace of Tancredi, and the forced and fatal fight of Margrave Rudiger against the friends of his own escorting in that dread hall of Hunland. The last scene of an aristeia that is only measured by the length of the poem makes the moribund Roland, Roland's o" the flight of the Saracens at the sound death of the clarions of the approaching Charle- magne, cross the Spanish border, and, in token of victory, possess himself of a mound containing four flights of marble steps with a tree on either side. A mortal faintness, the herald of coming death, caused him to sink on the sward at the base of the mound. There, a Saracen who had feigned death, watching his oppor- tunity, attempted to wrest from Roland his sword Durendal, but, in the attempt, roused Roland, who, * Thou hast not done me ill, nor I, have I done thee wrong in aught. THE FRENCH EPIC 189 summoning all his strength for a last effort, brained him with his ivory horn. The action of the Saracen caused Roland to take means to prevent any possible abstraction of his good sword. He approached the mound, and smote the weapon strongly ten times on a brown rock, then on the marble steps, and again on the mound. He rasped and partially damaged, but neither broke, nor even notched the sword, which, on the cessation of the smiting, always regained its former shape and elasticity. Foiled by the temper of the blade, and already in the grip of death, he fell on the sward, his sword and horn beneath him, and his face towards Spain. Before passing from earth, this christian fighter of a genuine fight, thought at once resignedly and wist- fully of France, and friends, and Charlemagne, and the busy battling of his past life, and, as the last act of one, who, though a hero, was oppressed by a sense of failure, raised his glove aloft to heaven as a sign of penitence. God, by his messenger Gabriel, received and removed the offering. After the count's death his soul, under convoy of two angels, was taken to paradise : — L'anrae de I'Cunte portent en pareis.* C. de R. 2396. It is not difficult for us, who, though reading the poem under many obvious disadvantages of time, nationality, and fellow-feeling, are yet touched to the quick by its perusal, to understand the power of the jongleur who with its story could draw tears down the cheeks of his hearers and send them sobbing home. If, and the pur port of tradition does not forbid the possibility, it was snatches from this poem that Taillefer sang to the embattled soldiers of the Norman foreigner, then the victors of Senlac fought under most favourable auspices. * They carry the soul of the Count to paradise. 190 EPIC POETRY Roland was in a sense responsible for the disaster at Roncesvalles. It was he, who, by treating his step- father Ganelon floutingly, had engendered Qaneion .^ j^.^ ^^^^^ ^^^ thought of treason. In particular, by mischievously, or, it may be, without con- scious motive (though he laughed at the peer's quandary), counselling the employment of Ganelon on an impor- tant and risky embassy to Marsil at Saragossa, he turned Ganelon's fugitive thoughts into steady resolve. But Ganelon — li fels, li parjurez — is no ordinary traitor. He is never disloyal in thought to Charlemagne, he even acknowledges the brilliance and superiority of Roland. He seems to have taken the initial and irrevocable step, while smarting under the sting of wounded personal vanity. True, after the first traitorous step, he is rapidly besmirched with all the foulness of treason and ends by swallowing bribes rich in number and variety. We must needs accord to Roland the same prerogative of untarnishable manliness that we accord to Achilles. If Achilles in wrath is never less than demigod obscured, so Roland in flouting mood can never have been less than hero at play. Next to Roland, Olivier and Turpin are the promi- nent characters. Olivier has a position subordinate Olivier and to that of Roland, and is the meeker of Turpin (.j^g ^^Q_ jjg jg modelled on the same lines as Roland, fights equally well, but has not his fiery personal pride, or fierce pertinacity. He plays Patroclus to Roland's Achilles. Turpin, warrior priest and prelate militant, is as pugnacious as any of the peers. His religious creed has two aspects, a negative and a positive, the negative refusing paradise to the poltroon, the posi- tive enjoining penance by action of one's sword on the persons of the enemy. In his exhortations to the soldiers he has the advantage of his brother peers. He can kindle valour, not by example only, but also by his THE FRENCH EPIC 191 benison, and by the promise of bliss and communion with the saints : — Mais d'une chose vus sui jo bien guarant : Seinz Pareis vus iert abandunant ; As Innocenz vus en serez seant.* C. de R. 1479. Very fine is that scene in the Chanson, where Roland, himself wounded to death, collected the bodies of the dead paladins, and laid them at the feet of the battered bishop for benediction. And that benediction, how terse it reads : — Tutes vos anmes ait Deus li glorius ; En pareis les metet en seintes flurs ; La meie mort me rent si anguissus : Ja ne verrai le riche Empereiir.t C. de R. 2196. Roland and Turpin were sole survivors, and of these, Turpin was the first to die, while vainly attempt- ing to bring a draught of water to Roland, who had swooned on seeing the line of dead peers and among them the body of Olivier. Charlemagne's part in the poem is somewhat orna- mental, and quite paternal. He is biddable, irascible and somewhat exacting. He has reached the Nestor stage — Carles livielz, a la barbe flurie — both in age and action. Nestor, however, was not so emotional. Charlemagne, in trouble, weeps, and tears his hair and beard. The Franks of the poem are given to these manifestations. They are an emotional race ; they swoon in groups of a hundred thousand. Everywhere in the poem we have manifested burning scorn for cowardice, and chivalrous contempt for The spirit of dastardy. The poet's patriotism and sense the poem of the tearful in human things are im- * But for one thing I am indeed warranty to you : " To you Holy Paradise will be free, you will sit beside the Saints." + May the God of glory take all your souls ; may He place them as holy flowers in paradise ; my death makes me so full of anguish ; never shall I see the glorious Emperor. 192 EPIC POETRY pressive and omnipresent. He has even enough manli- ness and generosity to do justice by Saracen courage, never suffering, it is true, the prowess of paladin to pale before the heroism of paynim. Roland's, or Olivier's, or Turpin's wearied virtue is mightier far than the vigilant valour of any paynim peer whatsoever. The overdone might of Karl's paladins is due, partly to national vanity, partly to epic conventionalities, partly, also, it is the reflex of fanatical religious fervour, which required Christian barons to be as superior to Moslem champions, as Christ was superior to Mahound. France has reason to be proud of her epic. If any one has a desire to read something of virginal freshness. Its place to drink for a season of the integrifontes of among epics jj^^ nobly simple and the intensely human, to such a one I commend a perusal of the Chanson de Roland. As a whole, it is indeed vastly inferior to the great epics of the world. These have accustomed us to noble rhythm — to the organ-toned sonority of Milton, to the languishing cadence of Tasso, to the stately harmony of Virgil, or to the many-voiced music of Homer. The metre of the Chanson — ten-syllabled line, written in leashes or stanzas, with assonant rhyme of the last accented vowel — has in it nothing of this soul- satisfying rhythm. Its diction, too, is naive and without figure. But if the poet has not the os magna sona- turiim he has certainly something of ingenium and mens divinior. We have it on the authority of Voltaire, that the France he knew was not capable of producing an epic. Certainly his banal and bastard performance does not supply the imagined want. The Henriade proves, if proof were necessary, that not even a superlatively clever man can write an epic poem. Luckily for France, her epic was produced in a far-away pre- Voltairian time, when this assumed incapacity of the brilliant Gallic THE FRENCH EPIC 193 genius was not yet discernible, for the Song of Roland has much of the matter and store of the spirit of genuine epic. The argument of the Henriade is taken from history, and many of us have made a pleasant acquaintance with The Henriade. it in Dumas. It records directly, or by Its argument episode, the struggles between Catholics and Protestants, the efforts of the party of the Duke of Guise to displace Henry III, the murder of the latter, and the progress of Henry of Navarre to the throne. An epic poet does well to go far back in time for his subject. Not every person whom we call a national The documen- hero can be an epic hero. The evidence tary heroic about him may be too documentary, a fatal check to imaginative handling in an objective poem. It is very difficult to invest historic personages with the epic illusion, unless they can be surrounded with the halo of legend, or, at anyrate, hallowed by the consecration of the past. It is plain that if epic poetry, with a fairly modern subject, is to continue to be written, it must be because „ the application and operation of its charac- some adapt- teristic machinery can be modified. Subjects ability in the belonging tO times of old-fashioned super- matter and °.°,, ,. r ,, , , manner of stitions and beliefs are pretty well exhausted, ^P'" and poets impelled to write by an epical afflatus, will perforce have to choose their subjects from an epoch less credulous of the supernatural. But it is not merely the conditions of their subject that will be less favourable to the employment of the supernatural. The minds of readers are, perhaps, now less tolerant, in all subjects, save those of great remoteness, of the presence of divine agencies, even though these have the sanction of belief. They would like the epic modernised. The hypothetical epic poet is not, therefore, as it seems N 194 EPIC POETRY to me, gravelled for lack of matter, or hopelessly hampered by the disparagement of the old mode. He must indeed choose his subject well, must choose one that has a pull on our feelings of veneration. He has the romantic to fall back on, and this, employed in due measure, ought to be a powerful coadjutor to him in his efforts to adapt and temper the miraculous. Good poetry with the essentials of the epic manner, will, I take it, most readily reconcile us to the absence of what may be called the idiosyncrasies of the epic poet, the eidola of his craft. Instead of suiting his epic to its surroundings and writing a historico-heroic poem, which might have ap- Voitaire's proximated to an epic, Voltaire tried to be elaborate epic epical to his finger-tips. He imported all ex er or ^^ epical machinery. Lucan's method of writing an historic epic was better than Voltaire's. He discarded all the apparatus of divine intervention, re- taining only a pale substitute — witchcraft. With all his faults he produced a great poem. Voltaire travestied the epic manner, stole epic machines, and produced merely a tour-de-force in verse. He did not succeed in the task he imposed on himself, nor would he have succeeded had he been less anxious to have the externals of epic poetry. Apart from the difficulties of the subject he chose, and the bad instrument he had in the conventional metre — I should think it an extremely difficult task to attain to epic dignity with French alexandrines, or the English heroic couplet, for that terrible tinkle-tinkle at the end of each pair of lines is dragging and Ukely to be tawdry — there were other obstacles to success. Voltaire was essentially an unpoetical spirit, and his enthusiasm over this poem was volitional, and not of the temperament. He had some intuition of the heroic in action, but none of the heroic in sentiment. With Camoens, the historic epic meant an epic of the whole history of Portugal, and unity was secured by THE FRENCH EPIC 19S personifying Portugal, as it were, in the person of Vasco Camoens and ^^ Gama. He thus avoided in his poem his historical the pettiness that attends an attempt to subject write an epic on the events of a short stretch of time. Camoens had also the wit to choose for his epic an excellent framework, namely, the Portuguese discovery of India, and he had a poetical talent that enabled him to write with dignity and embellish with effect. And this, though he recorded events that were much less distant from his time than were those of the Henriade from Voltaire's. Tsvo main reasons for Voltaire's failure to write an epic were his natural unsuitability for the task imposed, and the lavish use he made of epical machines. Voltaire's His subject, moreover, had more than its failure. Henri share of the drawbacks of historical subjects. Parts of the story are earthy, and even squalid. Henry IV was a politician rather than a hero, a man of practical instincts rather than a man all soul, and with no faults but those of human nature. An epic hero is not a balancer in religion. He is religious, very much as he is brave, because it is his nature to be so. If he belong to an old-time period he will have more or less the religion of his fellows, sublimated by a consciousness of the religious quality of activity on behalf of his nation,* and a conviction of the transitoriness of passing human life ; if he belong to a more modern period he must still have a consciousness of the nobility of action, and an intuition of the brevity of life, but, in addition, he must have intellectual steadiness and tenacity of belief. Henry of Navarre made merchandise of his belief, he temporised with occasion to secure a stable throne, he sank manliness under policy. It is true that the perfidy * Hector says : — Efs oluvbs dptiTTos, 6.fiiveusitanians set sail for India with pilots and provisions. 3acchus now attempts to rouse the sea-gods against the lated nation, and for this purpose descends to the palace )f Neptune, in the depths of the sea, which palace is iescribed by the poet. He succeeds in arranging a itorm for the torment of the voyagers. The poet makes IT'elloso tell the story of the Twelve of England, twelve Portuguese nobles who championed the honour of twelve English dames. Venus and the sea-nymphs calm the 300 EPIC POETR Y storm that has now broken loose, and after a little the ships approach Calicut. The admiral sends a messenger to the shore, where he meets Monsaide, a Mahometan, and a native of Barbary, who could speak Spanish. This person proves most useful to the Portuguese. Da Gama is invited to land by the king, and is placed under the guidance of a catual, or ruler of the kingdom. He visits the king, or samorim, as he is called, and makes on him a favourable impression. The catual, in quest of infor- mation, boards the admiral's ship, and while there, asks Paulo da Gama to describe the pictures and figures to be seen on silken banners. Then are introduced the names of leading Portuguese with little bits of recital. Some of these names have had mention and celebration already. Bacchus stirs up the Mahometans, and these poison the minds of the natives and their king. Da Gama and his companions run some risk, but finally are able to set sail on the return voyage, taking with them Monsaide, who becomes a Christian. Venus prepares for their recep- tion and refreshment the Isle of Loves. In the tenth and last canto, at the banquet given by Tethys to Da Gama, a nymph sings of the future exploits of the Portu- guese in the East. After the banquet Tethys takes the admiral up a mountain, and shows him, suspended in the air, a wondrous globe of several orbs. Some astronomy and much geography are then given, and an account is also furnished of the martyrdom of St. Thomas. The Portuguese leave the Isle of Loves, and renewing the return voyage, arrive at Lisbon. Camoens has many asides. He has an address to Dora Sebastiam at the beginning of the poem, and an exhorta- tion at the close. He has personal notes — elegiac song, indignation in verse, philosophical reflection, and horta- tory ethic. These personal notes contain some of the most fascinating work of the poem. Virgil's Venus is in heaven already. The description THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 301 if her flight thither adds much to the attractiveness of 'he plaint and Camoens' digression. Her upward passage intercession impassions all space. The heaven, the stars, ° *""* and the air — the great things of space — lo homage to her beauty. With a bold but fine exag- geration in the manner of the romantic poets, her eyes ire said to have fired the poles, and to have instilled iesire into the frigid zone. Virgil's Venus merges the voman in the goddess, and it is a goddess, though a earful one, that reasons with the thunderer ; Camoens' s more of a woman than a goddess, and in addition Dossesses the allurements and potency of the mother of •eproduction, hominum divomque voluptas^ who entangled Mars and dazzled the eyes of the Phrygian shepherd. Camoens paints with the warm sensuousness of Spenser md Milton, painting, too, not the meretriciousness of mere repose, but an animated and aggressive beauty. Virgil's Venus is less astiite than the Venus of Camoens, and more reproachful, being indeed a trifle censorious. The Roman is stifFer than the Portuguese, and does not see so many possibilities in the theme. The latter fills in the picture, and colours all its parts. The strength of the portraiture of the former is in its reserve, a reserve of greA expressiveness, suggesting tenfold- more than mere words convey. The tender grace of tristior et lacri- mis oculos suffusa nitentes and the severe chastity of oscula libavit natce are, if not so sensuously pleasing, far more eloquent than honied descriptions of the amorous coquetry and corporal charms of the Camoensian Venus. The Jupiter of the Venus episode has with Virgil the Olympian manner ; the Jupiter of the same portion of the Lusiads has the air of a celestial roue. The dignity he has is the dignity of Virgilian reminiscence. What in Virgil is suggestion, and with him properly so, is in Camoens expanded and elaborated. The one manner is as legitimate as the other, and Camoens, the child of 302 EPIC POETR V romance, was perforce — to say nothing of the constraints of natural propulsion — compelled to write romantically, It is thus that Camoens' treatment of this incident exhibits far more developed art than Virgil's. To exercise this art, he gives us, in addition to his filling-up of the Virgilian outline, the passage of Venus to heaven, and her offer of vicarious sacrifice with its fine weeping aposiopesis. Jupiter's consolatory forecast in the .(Eneid is better than that in the Lusiads. It is more compact and con- tinuous and has more scenic suggestiveness. It is graver, and better dressed, and has decidedly better phraseology, and a better feeling for national ideas and aspirations. Virgil is a better national mouthpiece than Camoens, and has a more penetrating vision of historic verity. He has better, because more ideal, historic portraits, and more historic distinctness. The Virgilian forecast covers a longer time, and consequently has more per- spective. As a whole it is much finer, because possessing more unity, and the details are more impressive, because more poetical, and pictorial too. 'Romulus in the wolfskin,' ' Augustus laden with the spoils of the east,' ' conquered Phthia, Mycenae, and Argos,' ' hoary Faith,' and ' the Race of the Gown' are of more literary value than Camoens' heraldic announcements, and all too vain- glorious boasts about the Lusians. These announce- ments are too circumstantial and of too miraculous matter. Virgil's presentation reposes on features of great national and human import — a dynastic survival, a triumph of poetic justice, a divine reconciliation, and an empire in perpetuity. And at the close we have the fine vision of the Pax Romana. Perhaps a Portuguese is the best judge of the quality of his poet's enumeration of national achievements, but I con- fess there is to me a flavour of pettiness and mendacity THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 303 ibout the ever-victorious Portuguese, the stormless ;torm,* twice-subjugated Oriiiuz, the deadly backward light of arrows,t the two sieges of Dio, dominant Goa, ind generally the chart-like delineation of events, i^irgil has in his episode the art to deal in generals, and iphat there is of the particular has a strong symbolic /alue. Camoens, in his, deals too much in particulars, lis tone is ultra-patriotic, and his manner somewhat •ufBing. The episode of Ignez de Castro is one of the gems of :he Lusiads, and certainly one of the noblest bits of Ignez de elegiac writing in all literature. Its subject Castro is a fine one, as youth and beauty done to leath must always be. And Camoens was not a poet ikely to miss an opportunity of making capital out of he attractiveness of youth and the glamour of beauty. The old king, Alfonso, had deserved well of his coiintry. le had established her position in the Peninsula. He iras a neighbourly and politic prince. He had assisted lis son-in-law, the king of Castile, to rout theiMoor. But lis statecraft drove him into crime. The immediate settling of the episode is a strong one. lard on the victory over the Moor comes the assassination f a woman. The national hero becomes the domestic [lurderer. A noble past is sullied by a cowardly deed, n the narration the poet constantly, by suggestion or y direct allusion, brings home to us the counterpoise of lory with cruelty. The mighty falling-off of the king > not the only extraneous bit of colouring in the episode. It its very beginning, and repeatedly throughout, refer- nce is made to future punishment. The wings of the Irinyes brood over the narrative. We have an intuition * It is said that once in a dead calm the waters of the sea boiled iriously before Da Gama. t In a fight with the Persians, off Ormuz, the arrows these shot j-ainst the Portuguese were driven back against themselves by a reat wind, with fatal results. 304 EPIC POETRY of the sureness of a dogged though slow retribution. Every now and then we hear the distant but still per- fectly audible tolling of the tocsin of coming vengeance. The victim is not to be deprived, even by death, of the regal pomp that the alliance with the king's son makes her right. All this comes in well as a sort of background of poetical justice. Our pity and indignation crave this solace and gratification. Ignez de Castro was butchered in the king's presence, as the poet has it, by those assassins — algozes (hangmen), they are called — who did not wish to be governed by the offspring of a mesalliance. The deed was done in spite of impassioned appeals on the part of the victim, appeals which softened even the sternness of the worldly- wise old king. Poor Ignez, pleading that her only crime had been to love him who had known how to gain her love, entreated to have her life spared, if only for her children's sake : — 6 tu, que tens de humano o gesto e o peito, (Se de humano he matar huma donzella Fraca e sem for5a, s6 por ter sujeito O coragao a quem soube vencel-a) A estas criancinhas tem respeito, Pois o rSo tens 4 morte escura della : Mova-te a piedade, sua e minha, Pois te nSo move a culpa que nSo tinha.* Os Lusiadas iii, 127. The pathos of the last line of her entreaty reminds one of the simple pathos of the entreaty of Sejanus' daughter, who asked to be told her crime, and said that she would not commit it again. The entreaty moved the king, but not the Hyrcanian tigers of courtiers. She had wept and * O thou that hast a man's face and breast (if 'tis manlike to kill a feeble and frail girl, and all because she ruled the heart of him who knew how to conquer her), have regard to these little ones, though thou hast it not for the shameful death of the mother ; and may pity for them, and for myself, move thee, though my crime that is no crime moves thee naught. THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 305 pleaded in vain, and in vain had uplifted her eyes, for she could not uplift her bound hands, to heaven. What a really moving picture ! It is not the pretty pathetic that we find in the episode, for in it we hear, as it were, the voice of Nature weeping for her children. The poet has known how, by allusiveness, to lend association and scope to his verses. Ignez was done to death, as was done Polyxena at the tomb of Achilles, for the benefit of others, and not for her own crime. The sun well-nigh veiled his face, as he once did, at sight of the awful meal purveyed by Thyestes. Nature is enlisted as judge, as chorus. The sun threatened to withdraw his light, the hollow valleys retained and re-echoed the victim's last cry, the waters of the Mondego are feigned to have been swollen by her tears, and to have murmured the name of her lover to the mountains and the tiny flowers. The precise localisation of the poet gives local , colour and additional reality to the story. Mondego suggests Ignez, and Ignez, Mondego. And the Fountain of Loves, whose waters are the tears wept over Ignez by the daughters of Mondego, gives a local habitation to the story. It is not so much the beauty of the daisy stanza in itself that commends it, as its prominent place in a lengthy piece of fine poetry, whose merit consists in the long-sustained^kch of literary excellence. The wording of the stanza is not superior to the wording of the verses that tell of the deaths of Euryalus and Pallas, the former falling like a flower uprooted by the plough, or drooping like a drenched poppy with neck aweary of its head, the latter laid on his bier like a delicate violet or a drooping hyacinth plucked by a maiden's hand, still lovely and bright, but dissevered from nurturing and strength-giving earth. The words of the stanza are these : — Assi como a bonina, que cortada Antes do tempo foi, Candida e bella, U 3o6 EPIC POETRY Sendo das m^os lascivas maltratada Da menina que a trouxe na capella, O cheiro traz perdido e a cor murchada ; Tal esta morta a pallida donzella, Seccas do rosto as rosas, e perdida A branca e viva cor co'a doce vida.* Os Lusiadas iii, 134. The fate of Ignez was due, says the poet, to imperious and ruthless Love. His reproachful address to Love has not the pseudo-scolding tone of lighter compositions couched in the orthodox erotic vein. These half-serious, half-conventional apostrophes to tyrant Love and cruel Cypris, do sometimes, however, suggest things of tragic and deadly earnestness, and the fictitiousness of the manner enhances by contrast the terror of the facts. This is the case with Camoens' address. Just before dawn there appeared to Dom Manoel, as he reclined on his golden bed, the river-gods Ganges and The Dream of Indus. In his dream the king had been Dom Manoel rapt in Spirit to the first sphere, whence he looked eastwards, over various worlds and thronging peoples, on a vista of mountains, down the sides of two of which there flowed two mighty streams. Hard on this sight followed the apparition of the river-gods. These twain, of reverend and yet rugged aspect, crowned by a coronal of branches and herbs, their hair-tips emblemati- cally exuding the watery element, and their colour tawny, as is the colour of a river, addressed themselves to the king, and, the Ganges being spokesman, invited him, as the head and representative of his nation to enter into posses- sion of all he had in view. * Just as the daisy that is plucked before its time, the daisy bright and beauteous, on being maltreated by the wanton hands of the little maid who put it in her chaplet, has lost its fragrance and wears a faded colour, even so lies dead the pallid dame, all withered the roses of her cheeks, all gone with sweet life the lilies and the brightness of her hue. THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 307 The portent of the river-gods exalts the imagination of the reader, subHmates the narrative, and publishes at fitting time the sanction of Fate that is written over the projects of the Portuguese. An experiment in this sort of writing is not more highly poetical than it is venture- some, and its successful accomplishment argues the pos- session of lofty inspiration. Camoens' Dream of Dom Manoel is no unworthy adaptation of the dream of /Eneas at the beginning of the eighth book of the .^Eneid. It is more swelling, and more brightly painted no doubt, but equally effective, and how finely dismissed. The dream disappeared with the morning light, when Phoebus spread abroad his bright mantle, and morning painted the sky with colours of purple and rose : — Estendeo nisto Phebo o claro manto Pelo escuro Hemispherio somnolento ; Veio a manh^a no ceo pintando as cores De pudibunda rosa e roxas flores. * Os Lusiadas iv, 75. The Old Man of Belem voices the feelings of the practical and unemotional citizen, who may support his The Old Man grumblings and buttress his reasonings of Belem by considerations that possess validity and sometimes repose on high sanctions. Rash enterprise has indeed cast down crowds of men, and reckless adventure has ruined many states. Consolidation and conservation, however, are not always best attained by the respective acts of consolidating and conserving, but, on occasion, by extension and dash. It doubtless requires a high intelligence, or, it may be, deemonic instinct, to recognise or intuitively discern that the acts of consoli- dating and extending do not, in a special instance, neu- tralise or nullify one another, but, by distribution, insure * Meantime Phoebus spread his bright mantle over the dark hemi- sphere sunk in sleep, and the morning came painting in the sky purple flowers and the blushing rose's hue. 3o8 EPIC POETRY an increase of activity that will give a resultant force of surpassing power and sweep. The old men of Belem have not this intelligence or instinct. They invariably hark back, expressly or uncon- sciously, to a bygone time of betterne.=is, and reinforce their retrospective reasonings with the wise saws of a life- time, which have general but not particular infallibility. Such men do not always restrict themselves to exclama- tory indignation and damping prophecy. The original old man of Belem pointed to the Moors. " Gain," said he, " the glory of daring and the reward of piety by exploits accomplished at your very gates. There is a false brilliancy and a grain of cowardice in your present action. You seek too far afield, the Ishmaelite is an approved antagonist, and his conquest will bring you not only fame but lands and wealth." The presentation of this alternative on the part of such grumblers is a dishonest proceeding. They would have equally objected to the alternative as an adopted course of action. Contempla- tive inaction is their dearest employment, and humdrum activity, which least interferes with this bestowal of time, is therefore to be properly and piously recommended to others. Their exhortation to exhibit the prime wisdom of attention to the daily duties of life has not much virtue about it, and is not due to an etherealised conception of what are usually called the minor concerns of life. Camoens' Old Man of Belem is not, however, the mere exponent of senile hesitancy and mistrust of novelty tempered by Philistinism. It is matter of history that Da Gama's voyage was regarded with disfavour by a con- siderable section of the populace. The poet meant to record and dress up for us this view of the voyage. It is incumbent on the staid portion of society to give ex- pression to its legitimate dislike of foolhardy adventure, and Camoens' own experience of the dust and ashes of human hopes, and the grains of bitterness that come with THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 309 all fruition, had been of such a nature as to make him take kindly to a little pessimistic sermonising : — Oh gloria de mandar ! Oh vSa cobi5a Desta vaidade a quem chamamos fama ! * Os Lusiadas iv, 95. In the poem the recording of the forebodings of the fearful serves a purpose. It throws into strong relief the sturdy daring of the members of the expedition. The poet has known, by this and kindred means of lend- ing colour and heightening contrasts, how to glorify his heroes. Da Gama's resolution was not unmixed with apprehension. He prepared his men, as he told the king of Melinde, for the death that always stalks before a sailor's eyes. Friends, relatives, and clergy came to speed the parting sailors. A wife says to her husband : — O doce e amado esposo, Sem quem nSo quiz amor que viver possa ; Porque is aventurar as mar iroso Essa vida que he minha e nSo he vossa ? t Os Lusiadas iv, 91. Sadness, and not joyful anticipation, was the dominant feeling. Camoens has historical and poetical justification for his Old Man of Belem. He is at once the mouthpiece of the formal opposition to the voyage, and a sort of spectators' chorus. The poet himself, in persor^ often performs the duties of this chorus. But the creation is utilised in another way. It is made a vehicle for reminiscence, the means for a serving up of old Horatian fare (Od. i, 3, 10) : — Oh maldito o primeiro que no mundo Nas ondas vela poz em secco lenho ! J Os Lusiadas iv, 102. * Oh glory of commanding ! Oh empty craving of the vanity that we call fame ! f Oh dear and loved spouse, without whom Love hath not willed that I can live, why dost thou go adventuring on the angry sea the life that is mine and is not thine ? J Cursed be thou that first in the world placed sail over a floating tree-trunk ! 3IO EPIC POETRY The following lines from the same stanza sound familiar to our northern ears : — Nunca juizo algum alto e profundo, Nem cithara sonora ou vivo engenho, Te de por isso faraa nem memoria ; Mas comtigo se acabe o nome e a gloria ! * The conception of Adamastor is a fine one, and his appearance in the poem is novel and im- Adamastor * ^ . pressive. For five suns the Portuguese had sailed the seas with fair winds, when, one night. Da Gama, as he stood on the prow watching the progress of his vessel, was con- scious of the presence right overhead of an obscuring cloud that conveyed the sense of a shock, and filled the heart with a vague terror. The admiral had only time to ejaculate a prayer to God when the cloud took shape, the shape of a robustious and tall giant, of sour and some- what ungainly aspect, with unkempt beard and sunken eyes., His mien was menacing and evil, and, it is added, his mouth was black and his teeth yellow. The colossal shape proceeded to deliver himself of multifarious pro- phetic ithreatenings directed against the Portuguese nation and individual Portuguese. Da Gama interrupted, and asked his lineage, whereupon the giant's threats melted into narrative that ended with pathos. Adamastor is not only an awe-inspiring spectre, but a spectre with a pedigree and a romance. He was of the race of the giants that warred on Jove. Just before the conflict of his brethren with Omnipotence he had become enamoured of Thetis : — Todas as deosas desprezei do ceo, S6 por amar das aguas a princeza ; _ * May no lofty and profound appraising, may no sounding lyre or living art give thee for this or fame or remembrance, but may thy name and glory end with thee ! THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 311 Hum dia a vi co'as filhas de Nereo Sahir nua na praia ; e logo preza A vontade senti de tal maneira Que inda iiao sinto cousa que mais queira.* Os Lusiadas v, 52. The wooer was aggressive, and threatened war on the domain of ocean. Doris was intimidated by his threats, but Thetis bantered the wooer and promised conditional acquiescence, meaning to serve her forceful, though in- fatuated lover a trick that would damp and demean him. On the night in which Doris had promised to consummate for him his happiness, the poor love-sick giant thought he saw far in front of him the form of the silver-footed goddess. He gave chase, reached the enticing semblance, and rained down on it, promiscuously, fond and fatuous kisses, only to find that his promised delight had evanished, and that the substance behind the shadow was a rough mountain of savage girth and with thorny brakes : — Como doudo corri de longe, abrindo Os brafos para aquella que era vida Deste corpo, e comeQO os olhos bellos A Ihe beijar, as faces e os cabellos.f Os Lusiadas v, 55. One feels a strong sympathy with the heavy lover and his intensely human lament over his disillusionment. Altogether, he is an interesting creation, Adamastor. Full of sorrowj and with a past, he cannot hear a question of personal import addressed to him, without remember- ing, and unburdening his memory of, his bygone sorrows. His story is neither too long nor too short, having just * All the goddesses of the heaven I disprized, and this for naught but love of the princess of the waves. One day I saw her advance, with her sister Nereids, without tire, to the shore, and straightway I felt my desire smitten in such wise that even now I am conscious of nothing that I more desire. t Like one demented I ran from afar, opening my arms for her that was this body's life, and began to kiss her beauteous eyes, her cheeks, and her hair. 312 EPIC POETRY enough narrative to surround sublimity with interest. The poet first impresses, then interests, and lastly, moves us to pity. Adamastor fled from the scene of his rude disenchant- ment, but had meted out to him a portion of the punish- ment that had overtaken his brethren. He was changed into, and became corporeally identical with, the Cape of Storms : — Em fim, minha grandissima estatura Neste remoto cabo converteram Os deoses : e por mais dobradas magoas Me anda Thetis cercando destas agoas.* Os Lusiadas v, 59. The ' black mouth ' and the ' yellow teeth ' abstract somewhat from the sublimity of the conception. Perhaps they are meant to be a sign of age hastened and made ugly by unrequited love and cruel deception. Camoens sometimes imports considerable circumstantiality into his descriptions. He describes Triton as having seaweed for hair, a lobster-shell for a cap, and a body covered with marine creatures. Perhaps they are meant to represent some aspect of nature, some black and yellow effect of the towering promontory. Adamastor became guardian of the cape, and a sort of nature-power. He represents, in this respect, one of the creations of the imagination of the venturesome but superstitious, and consequently timorous, sailor. Bacchus, to further his plans, seeks the home of Neptune and the Nereids. Before the assembled divinities of the The Palace of sea, he speaks of the impertinent daring of Neptune the Portuguese, of his own discomfiture in Olympus, and of the depreciation of his exploits to be produced by the success of the sons of Lusus. He con- * Finally, the gods converted my huge form into this distant cape, and to redouble my grief Thetis goes circling round me in these waters. THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 313 lescends to tears, and obtains thereby the aid he desires. \ buffeting storm of wind is sent against the Portuguese. The abode of Neptune is well described. By a wave if the enchanter's wand there rises before us on the silver ands of the ocean plain the turreted and transparent rystal palace of the god of the sea : — Desoobre fundo nuncn. descoberto As nrSas nlli de prata fina ; Torres altas se v6m no campo aberto Da transparente raassa crystallinn.* Os Lusiadas vi, 9. Vith its golden doors of pearled marquetry it stands leforo our imaginations in realistic similitude. The sculpture on the door represents chaos and the lements. Self-sustaining fire, Prometheus' gift, the source f lite to all living things, is represented ; the omni- resent air and the teeming waters are represented, 'he sculpturing that represented the earth is takingly escribed by Camoens — earth mountainous, clad with her reen mantle, and with trees in bloom, daedal earth, and Iso earth the mother of all living. The subject is doubtless a reminiscence of Ovid's chaos nd evolution of the elements. It is appropriate enough 3 serve as an embellishing sculpture for the palace of an leniental god. It is broadly conceived and satisfies the nagination of the reader. There are other sculptures n the palace front, among them the gigantomachia. The assembling of the gods to the council by blast of riton's conch is finely toKl. There are a noble circum- ance and spaced-out reality about the narration that scommend it to the reader. The whole UKUter of this fine digression and its arrange- ent satisfy our imagination ; there is a satisfactory irnering in of allusion, and the phrasing is apt. • He explores the bottom never yet explored, and the sands there of e silver j lofty towers appear on the open plain, of substance crystalline il transparent. 314 EPIC POETRY Virgil, when he describes (^neid vi, 20) the carvings on the temple of Phoebus, built by Daedalus on the Cumaean shore, has the advantage of the modern poet in the subject imagined. His subject is more human, more amenable to the art of description. It is pictorial, and becomes, in Virgil's hands, stately. It has life and story, and variety and pathos, and that virgilian touch whose rare exquisiteness is to be felt, not defined. Camoens was a great poet, but he had not the magistral art of Virgil. When Silius Italicus describes the ornamentation on the temple of Hercules at Gades, he jots down mixedly the details of his description of Hercules' labours, and sticks Mount CEta in the middle. Silius was an artist in jumbled juxtaposition. Venus, in pursuance of her intention to provide a period of rest and enjoyment for the Portuguese mariners. The Isle ot determined to enlist as aid her son Cupid. Loves. Her chariot, drawn by billing doves, passed the help ot o^er the Idalian mountains in quest of the Cupid boy-god. Him she found preparing an expedition to punish and reform mankind, who had over- stepped the limits of liberty in their abuse of certain things that were given not for indulgence but for use. He was to punish the Actasons of humanity who preferred field sports to domestic duties, the devotees of Philautia, dangling and flattering courtiers, false and greedy churchmen, and all varieties of evil-disposed trans- gressors. The poet thus created an occasion for anim- adverting on the faults of his day and generation. Round about the god his brother Cupids were pre- paring the avenging artillery — darts, pointed by flames of desire over fuel of human hearts, and tempered by the waters of the tears of wretched lovers. This pretty anacreontic conceit is very pleasing and of positive pro- priety. Its legitimate effect reminds me of a big effect THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 315 tatius tries to produce by his outrageous conceit in the latter of Harmonia's necklace. This ornament [Har- lonies dotale decus, Theb. ii, 272), had for constituents right emeralds, diamonds carved with sinister figures, orgons' eyes, ashes of thunderbolts, gleaming hairs torn om the brow of green dragons, tears of the Hesperides, iteful gold from the golden fleece, one of Tisiphone's jrpents, and witchery from the cestus of Venus.* Cupid the reformer is more than the son of the lyprian. He symbolises some punitive and guardian Cupid the aspect of the divine love. His function as reformer reformer seems to be marred by the com- lingled exercise of some of his tricksy attributes. The od's wounds are healed by nymphs, some plain and ome pretty, and both, the wounds and the nymphs, are ailed antidotes (triaga — drjpMKd.). Nymphs, in ordi- lary thought, inflict the wound, but, I daresay, may be Doked on as Cupid's balm for Cupid's wounds. Spenser ays of a similar wound : — Which to recure no skill of leaches art Mote him avail, but to returne againe To his wounds worker, that with lovely dart Dinting his brest had bred his restlesse paine. F. Q. vi, 10, 31. Cupid is addressed by his mother, almost in Virgil's vords, as her bulwark, her arm of offence, and the :upid helps despiser of the Typhoean bolts, instructed his mother of her intent, and taken into her chariot. 3e advises his mother to take Fame as an ally. Fame s to run on before the chariot, sound the praises of the /■oyagers, and thus prepare the hearts of the impression- ible fair ones for their approaching lovers. Statius, of vhom I have just made mention, has a similar use of Fame in the second Thebaid, feigning her to fly before * Compare what is said of Armida's girdle, G. L. xvi, 25. 3i6 EPIC POETRY the chariot of Mars, uttering facta and infecta^ just as Camoens' Fame utters truths and glozings that have the sound of truths. Tethys and her nymphs are wounded and quite for- done by the darts of Cupid. They are then led by Venus in dancing clusters to the floating Isle, and instructed in amorous usage. The Isle is then driven athwart the path of the approaching vessels and fixed Delos-wise to the bottom of the sea. The nymphs discern the advent of the healing Venus in the shape of the white bellying sails of the fleet. The crew sighted the island just at the time that Memnon's fair mother rose into the sky. The island itself was a veritable paradise of the senses. All the natural delights of eye, ear, and tongue were to The aspect of ^^ found in it, with the addition of facile the Isle nymphs not all sisters of Phoebus. Trees of noblest kind, flowers of all hue, choirs of singing birds, fruits of delicious taste, all were there. The colours of the sky were to be seen on earth, and the colours of the earth in the sky, so much so that it was hard for an imagination, so disposed, to determine which was borrower, and which lender : — Para julgar difEcil cousa fSra, No ceo vendo e na terra as mesmas cores, Se dava is, flores c6r a bella Aurora, Ou se Iha dSo a ella as bellas flores.* Os Lusiadas ix, 6i. This is a pretty conceit, and Camoens' use of it is not the first. Such was the Isle of Venus, with its beach of ruby shells, and its tapestried sward, and its three mountain peaks with down-running streams uniting in the valley into a * Seeing in sky and earth the same colours, it had been a difficult thing to judge whether fair Aurora was giving colour to the flowers, or whether the fair flowers give it to her. THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 317 ■ater that reflected the circumjacent loveliness. The 'ortuguese mariners, on seeing the island, landed to btain water. Some of them took guns and cross-bows, leaning to shoot down the wild game of the island, 'hey found quarry they little dreamt of. Velloso and is mates caught sight of bright colours moving among hie trees, and gave chase. And then animate nature )llowed the example of inanimate, and went a- laying. Velloso is a forward, rattle-brained sort of youth, with o undue modesty or pensiveness about him. Leonardo ,. , , . has not Velloso's sparkling effervescence ; he faring in , '^ ° ' le Isle of two he has been unfortunate, has perhaps re- ypes of Por- quired from life a more thorough, a more complex happiness than his fellow, and been orrespondingly disappointed and disheartened. Such atures are not buoyant enough to be boisterous, and too lanly to sink into blank despair. They anticipate, and repare themselves for, misfortune, but reason themselves ito hopefulness, and this hopefulness, thank God, does ot always cheat them. Velloso found his affinity among he nymphs without overmuch trouble. Leonardo's base had like to have proved a baflSing quest. Ephyre, rho practised the sweet reluctant amorous delay recom- lended by Venus, was taken too seriously by her philo- ophical moody lover, who with self-conscious gloom lurmured, as he ran, mild aspersions of fate and melan- holy forebodings of failure. A final outburst of fatal- itic tenderness and resignation that reached the ears of be fleeting fair determined her to abandon her attitude f feigned reluctance, and gratify her panting and namoured lover : — P6es-te da parte da desdita minha ? Fraqueza he dar ajuda ao mais potente. Levas-me hum cora9So que livre tinha ? Solta-mo, e correras mais levemente. 31 8 EPIC POETRY Nao te carrega essa alma tJo mesquinha, Que nesses fios de ouro reluzente Atada levas ? * Os Lusiadas ix, 80. When a righteous power dispenses rewards it is not merely happy-go-lucky individuals like Velloso that ought to partake of such, but thoughtful and disappointed seekers after an ideal, like Leonardo and Camoens. Venus meant the navigators to receive refreshment and reward in the Isle of Loves. In this land they were to The meanin? ^'-'°'^ back with self-satisfaction and self- oi the isle gratulation on their past toiling and moil- ''•>'*'«* ingj and their pleasure was to have all the sweetness of pleasure after pain. Here they were to be regaled with all the happiness in the gift of boon Nature and kindly Venus. Such is the goddess' own account of her proposed feast of delights. The poet says that the whole of the island episode is in allegory. Its delights and diversions symbolise and prefigure the rewards that our fellows, and posterity, and providence, will confer on virtue. On virtue there waits an exceeding great recom- pense — the applause of the good, the self-consciousness of high desert, some outward regalia of lordly office or noble aspect, and an embalmed.memory. Nay, more, its fame is immortality, and its goodness is godhead. For the nymphs of ocean, so fair as they are, Tethys, and the painted Isle angelical are nothing but the honours that exalt our lives and confer undying repute. Noble high eminence, triumphs, a brow crowned with palm and laurel, glory and wonder-rousing state are the delights of this Isle, and ought to be the reward of merit. The heroes of old got them immortality by merit, and the gods climbed to heaven by the pathway of virtue. The * Dost place thyself on the side of my ill-fortune? It is cowardice to give help to the stronger. Dost talce from me a heart that was free ? Pray loose it, and thou wilt run more lightly. Doth it not o'er- weight thee, this so trifling soul that thou takest away entangled in these tresses of bright gold. THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 319 iland of Venus is the paradise of a euhemerist, and le entry to it is obtained by self-repression, by general irtuous activity, and by philanthropy. So far as the events of the Isle of Venus form a part f the story of the poem, they represent not a fixed state, ut one temporary and recreative, after lofty and vigorous (Fort. So far as they symbolise a sort of worldly Ely- um, they imply that men who have dared and done jmething deserve to have dispensed to them some big Lvour. Camoens in his Isle foreshadows and antedates lis dispensation, meaning, too, in his royal way to antici- ate any perversity of fortune. Virgil's Elysium is in le other world, but even in this life he would never ave given heroes such rewards as Camoens gives. He eld out to his heroes a settled habitation, a home for leir penates, but he never, even in allegory, uplifted oni off their heads impending doom. There is in their 'ay as much difference between a Mahometan paradise nd the paradise around the throne of God as between be Isle of Venus and Virgil's Elysium. Camoens' bliss ; earthly, largely of the ' youth on the j)row and pleasure t the helm ' order, and yet all is meant to be within the ounds of decorum. He expresses in language of snsuous exuberance the human right to fruition. The alleged indelicacy of Camoens' language in the pisode of the Isle of Loves, and elsewhere, is not a question for hasty determination. It is a ndeiicacy of matter of race and temperament on the part Camoens ^j- ^.j^g poet, and of pure-heartedness on the art of the reader. It is incontestable that the peoples f the South have warmer feelings than we Northerners, 'he quantity and quality of the erotic poetry of the outh will go far to prove this. To this warmth of jeling must answer a corresponding exuberance in its xpression. And a poet who is supposed to think more assionately than . his fellows must express himself in 320 EPIC POETRY language that is correspondingly more glowing than theirs. As a matter of fact all the great poets have exercised a large liberty with the language of passion. Tasso, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton have all done this. Who shall gainsay the purity of the Muse of John Milton ? And yet he uses language that breeds hot summer in our veins. Shall Camoens, who, in virtue of his temperament, uses language more nearly approaching that of the Book of Canticles than perhaps any of his brother-poets, shall he therefore be called indelicate, and his Isle of Venus the Garden of Cotytto ? His descriptions of the wild joys of the sensuous life do not overpass the limits of voluptuous chastity. The glory of the natural life is imperishable, and it shines quite unobscured in the imaginations of a Camoens, and we really ought not to judge of such things by the sometimes narrowing maxims of a negative morality of blank virtue and excreraental whiteness. One who is a stickler for epic technicalities will find much to object to in Camoens' poem. If a nation be Flaws in the ^^e heroic agent in a poem it must be story. Its represented by different persons at the unifying per- different periods of a long time, otherwise sonaiity the One agent of a limited period would be the hero. The transference of one's interest to the various national representatives is tedious to the mere seeker after epic qualities. One's interest is inevitably diluted by the process. The poem is deficient in forward movement. Its movement is oscillatory. A putative epic poem, it will be said, ought to stand the test of the application of epic rules. Because a poem is read with great pleasure it is not therefore an epic. One such rule is that there should be an outstanding -personality, and will any one deny, says the stickler, that the lack of such a being, on whom to concentrate one's interest, is a prominent defect of the Lusiads. The various incar- THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 321 nations of the people-hero are a trifle distracting, and we miss run in the story owing to the existence of this lack. The sensations that one has on reading the de- scriptions of the ' pictures ' are really the sensations that are impressed on the reader of the poem. No reader consciously accepts as protagonist the people-hero. The episodic character of the narrative undoubtedly gives to the poem a limping movement. Of the absence Its episodic in it of epic unity proper there can be no ciiaracter doubt. Tasso has far more unity in his poem. The Portuguese nation is the hero, and just as .^neas or Ulysses by narration supplies the events of the poem that are first in order of time, so Vasco da Gama, the proxy of Portugal, tells the story of the people-hero with historic sequence and heroic pomp. The manner of the telling is the poet's own, and the subject loses nothing thereby. As a prelude to Da Gama's recital of Portuguese history to the king of Melinde, Camoens ought to have intro- Tiie narrative duced some circumstances such as are present at Melinde in the Demodocus incident in the Odyssey, sponse to'a which would have made us believe the king request of Melinde a sympathetic listener, as sympa- thetic a listener as Alcinous or Dido. This only needed poetic art, for, as a matter of fact, the king of Melinde probably knew as much of the Portuguese as the king of Scheria or the queen of Carthage did of the warring round Troy. It may be said that the repeated harking back of the Lusiads prevents us perfecting the suture between the The piecing P^^^ of the history and the present of the of the voyage voyage. Apart from the avowed intention "tory into*a' of the poet, a Certain measure of harking whole back would have been imposed on him by the comparative scantiness of the details of the voyage proper, a scantiness which Camoens has known how to X ,322 EPIC POETRV remedy by other expedients than that of historical retro- gression, by the introduction, for example, of such episodes as that of the Old Man of Belem, and that of Adamastor. it is even said that, after the piecing of the two sundered parts has been effected after a fashion, there still remains the fault of too abrupt an ending. But the prophecies of the tenth book are meant to project, and do project a shadow in front of the voyage. The strict matter of the voyage "is rather meagre in actual incident, as a means of introduction and a medium The strict °^ presentation for the story. Such means, matter of the such media, such antedated middle or final voyage parts of a total story should themselves furnish an ample sequel of interesting and cognate incident. The ampleness of this sequel is, in Camoens' case, also detracted from, to the thought, at least, by the short space covered by the events of the voyage when compared with the centuries of historic incident. I say, to the thought, because to the consciousness of the reader the discrepancy is not so apparent, the episodic form being quite fit to convey to his mind, without unpleasing sensations of the lapse of long periods, the transactions of ages. And in the history conveyed by such devices as the description of the banners, etc., time from the manner of the conveyance forms no element. The poet in this way lightened his big episode. For my part I should say that Canto V, containing the real beginning of the story of the voyage, is dexterously fitted into the previous narrative, arid that Certain cantos r i ■ i • i by means of high poetic ornament the part of the poem devoted to Da Gama and his comrades assumes most respectable proportions. Cantos V and VI are very fine. Cantos VII and VIII are a bit prosy, but contain some fine Camoensian characteristics. Canto IX is the Isle of Venus canto. Canto X lags, and has a good deal of padding. A certain looseness of the parts is discernible in the icinnly by oIIrii rxiioilloilln lliiiii llml ol limloi iciil U'iMi- ),',MWni()l1| liy lIlO illlKMlllclidll, l(ir oxillli|)lo, nl Hllrli opiHiiiloN iiH lliMl 111 Mm ( )lil Mini (il Itrlnm, anil llml n\ AiliiiiiiiRlnr, ll i» i^vni Hitici llml, iillrr llio piiH'iiiM "I llii" I wo Sltliilrrpd piirirt ims boon olicHilril iillnr ii iHnliimi, llinir Rtill idiimliig did laiill III (no mIii'ii{iI an iiniling. I!iil Ilia |ii'o{iliO('lrf^ nl llio liintli liodlt arc iiKianl In |)i'ojVcl, iiinl ilo |ii(ijoul ii uliadow in IVoiil of llio voyiifj;r. Tlio RlricI iiialior (il llio voya^jo h ralliar nirajJio in acliiiil inriiloiil, a!i n inoaiiH ol iiilioiliii:lioii anil a nir'ilhnii Till' Alrk'l "' I'li'S'illI'llion lor Ilia hloiy. Siirli niraiis, mntlar nl (li« Kiicli inailia, Nlli'li anlrilalril inlilillr ni lllial voyiiB. |,,||.|^ ,,| ,1 |,,|,|| ^|,„,y p,||, ,1,1,1 ihciiigelvcn liiniiRJi tin ain|ili'. Moijnoi ol inlaii'r.l iii)^ anil ('.ii|{iihIc iniiiilanl, 'I'lio aiii|ilonoilll ol IIiim r-i'i|ii(il in, in (.'/anioriiR' caw;, also ilol laclcil Iroiii, lo llio llion^Jil, al Irasl, liy llio diiorl !i|)ar,c cuvricil liy Ilia avanlH ol Ilia voya/i^a wliiai conipaicil willi llio aaiiliniaf. ol liii-,loii(; inriilaiil, I Ray, to I Ik; I hoiij^Jil , hccaiiw; lo I lio ri)iiRi;ioiisn(;sp, ol I lui Uiadnr Ilia, (li'--,i;ia|)a,ncy i» Hol HO a|)|)ai(ail, llir. apisoilia loi m being qiiilc lit lo coiivay lo liif, itiinil, willionl iin|)li'asin^/ SOnHal ioim ol I lia lapsa ol long |m:i ioilR, I lia. I laiisdil jiam ol a(^ah. And in till' liiiloiy convayad by riicIi da-vicrs a ■. t lia daw a i I (I ion ol I lia, bannais, ali ., I inia lioin I lia niaiinai ol Ilia aonvcyanaa, loinift no clanianl, 'I'ba jioal inlin» way li/^lilcnad bin bi>/ ajiirtoda. Ii'oi my pail I sbonld !;iiy thai ( lanio V, aonlaining ilia raal ba,;;/innin(/ ol (ba i'.loiy (;l tba voya^,a, I* daxlaiiaitily ,, , , , lillad inio Ilia pKivioim nar/aliva, and lliat by niaans o| jn^/li poalic oinamanl Ilia pail of llic, pooni di;vol,a,d lo lia fiania and lii'-, aonnadas asHiniiaH nio'^l la-.paatabia piopoit iont;. (lanlos V and VI arc vary line. Canio* Vli and VIII arc « bil pio^,y, but. aonlain ftoinc (ina, (latiioansian aliaraalai if.t iat;. Canto IX i'-v Ilia Isle o( VcniiH aanlo, Canio X lagi, and ]i8« a good deal of padding. A acrtain loot;ancs'--. ol Ilia pail-, h di'vci nibia in Ilia THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 323 Lusiads, due to the absence of a central bond of con- The looseness nection, such as a common undertaking and the strong would Supply. There is no bond save that unity in tiie ^f nationality, and this hardly furnishes Lusiads enough coherence. A sympathetic reader of the .^neid says : — " I have followed the wanderings of .^neas with interest, I have commiserated him when buffeted by fate and suppliant of others, I have been alternately puzzled and pleased by the Dido delusion, I have been solemnised by the Descent, I have rejoiced over his welcome by Evander, I have been harassed by his varying fortunes, and I have been consoled by his crowning victory." Can a reader of the Lusiads give any such connected account of his impressions? No. His sensations have been in detached groups. His attention has been lifted and concentrated anew, over and over again. And yet there is a strong element of unity about the Lusiads. It is not got from one main action or one main actor, although the story of the voyage to India is always made to suggest to the mind of the reader that the action is the replica, if I may so speak, of the big action of generations, and that the actors are the repre- sentatives and peers of a long line of heroes. It is nationality expressed in continuous heroic activity that is the thread of unity in the theme of the Lusiads. I think, too, that the frequent obtrusion of the poet's own person contributes powerfully to the impression of unity. It is an external unity, no doubt, and makes, I suppose, the poem into a new species of the genus epic. All the same, it is a sort of tire binding together the various segments of the circular unity. Camoens was a patriotic poet, who chose the epic form as the most dignified, in which to set forth his panegyric. Th vtii -^^ chose, also, mythology as a part of this logy oi tiie form. Surely his adaptation of the epic poem manner is better than the servile and stupid literalism of Silius Italicus and Voltaire. 324 EPIC POETRY His employment of mythological machinery is a con- cession to use and wont, and is pure play of the fancy. Inasmuch as mythology introduces divine i^e''a^*wont, agents, and therefore confuses and weakens and not in- our conception of the action of the Supreme appropriate ^^^^^ ^^ ^ Christian Epic, it is in these respects a less satisfactory vehicle for supernaturalism than the angels and sorcerers of Tasso. The action of angels and sorcerers is more reconcilable with, and suggestive of, delegated power than the action of the Olympians with its associations of masterful and supreme authority. I am not sure, however, that the employment of subsidiary agents of Christian pattern would have suited Camoens' subject as it suited Tasso's. In the first place, the main scene of Tasso's epic is in the East, the land of mystery and magic, and that ought to go for something ; in the second place, a historical episode with religious bearings, as was Tasso's, round which romantic accretions had grown, is better fitted for the action of spirits and sorcerers than national history. No one finds fault with a Christian poet for addressing an invocation to Calliope or Urania, and why should we not allow ourselves to be borne by poetic illusion still further, and accept Camoens' deities in the spirit in which he employs them. Their employment has given us much fine poetic embellish- ment, many, in fact, of the finest parts of the poem, witness. The Ascent of Venus to Jove's presence. The Palace of Neptune, The Isle of Loves. Even Adamastor himself has attachments to the ancient mythology. Let us adopt the following device, and I maintain that Camoens will be justified of his mythology. Let us in A device to thought banish from the poem all Christian Justify its em- machinery and allusions — for in spite of the pioyment strong-flavoured Christian propagandism about the expedition, this may, so far as form goes be quite well done— substituting pagan equivalents in their THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 325 place, and we shall be so struck with the comparatively flawless use of the antique mythology as to cease to be unreasonably censorious. Camoens' deities are puppets used out of homage to antique form fc)r purposes of poetic art. And yet they The gods lent ^^^ "caoxsi than puppets. "We must never grace to forget that Camoens was the first modern «ie*^end'' *° write an epic on a scale, and with a pur- somethingto pose, at all corresponding to the scale and s poem purpose of the grand epics of the old world. The gods of Olympus in the hands of the proper artists are far more effective in poetry than angelic underlings of the Almighty. They bring with them the associations and the power of the old mythology, of that time when nature, in virtue of its vitalisation, borrowed some of the charms of personality ; when the world was not so lonely ; when the beautiful features of nature had not only their own compelling attractiveness, but were clustering-points for the imagination ; when life could be lived as a whole without the annihilation or dwarfing of any of its activi- ties ; when divinity itself had a variety corresponding to the recognisable and intelligible varieties of nature and humanity, and was not swathed in attributes of pompous mystery and arid tautology. We live in the cold shades of monotheism, and if, as regards the heart, and in a measure the intellect, we can reasonably satisfy our religious instincts, there can be no doubt that with the old mythology there have passed from the world many fair humanities of great import. The gods have been driven forth, and the dispeopled earth is poetically the poorer. The life of the senses, of which mythology was in many cases the expression, has been too much depre- ciated, we have banned the wild joy of living, and made life more leaden. It is Camoens' mythology that gives sky, and atmos- phere, and colour, and sensuousness to his poem. With- 326 EPIC POETRY out it the epic would be a poetised log with historical interludes. Camoens is a master-poet. There should be no question of that. He has a charmed power and style , . _ that surmount all difficulties, answering scriptive nobly to all the demands that pure imagi- power nation or descriptive ardour make on them. He can set before us old beauties, he can interpret for us hidden ones, he can originate groupings of loveliness, he can flash before us effects produced by the sunshine or storm of the feelings. Camoens has the poet's eye for the beauties of nature, and the poet's tongue for the description thereof. He sees nature in poetical fulness, and also under its traditional poetical aspects. The flavour of our poet's allusions confers on the poem a definite rank and status. These allusions in their quality, are an evidence and proof Ailuslvcncss X J I X. of its homogeneity with the great epics. Camoens' allusiveness is as frequent as that of Milton, but not, I should say, of such copious expression. It is usually apposite, or, which comes to the same thing, the poet wins us into an opinion of its appositeness. It is difficult to adjudicate on the merits of two such vendors of classical allusion as Milton and Camoens, but, speaking generally, one may say that Milton's allusions have more grandeur than those of Camoens, and exhibit a more living incorporation into the narrative. Camoens' allu- sions are ornamentation, and their extraneousness is perhaps perceptible. There are in the poet of the Lusiads an arrogation and an easy entering into possession of the grand manner. He assumes it at the outset and maintains It throughout. He had the self-conscious- ness of genius. He had also the furor poetims. His language is often largely magnificent in virtue not merely of external glitter, but of an inner content of real grandeur. THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE EPICS 327 He is a master of the sterling sublime. I daresay his thought sometimes overleaps itself and falls into the quasi-sublime. But that is only the defect of a rare and precious virtue. I should not say that Jupiter, when he harangues the gods in favour of the Lusians, and fortifies his eulogy of their merits by a reference to Viriathus and Sertorius, is guilty of bathos, for, since every hero occupies his pedestal by reason of the laudation of some sacred poet, a great creative master of song, like Camoens, has a right to name his heroes, and, in so naming, to instal them in the national pantheon. Mars' champion- ship of Venus, outspoken, and enforced by grounding his spearshaft on heaven's pavement, is quite a striking feature of the god's -council. That thud on the floor made Apollo pale his light. It would be dangerous for a lesser poet than Camoens to express himself thus. INDEX (JTo supplement Table of Contents) Achilles, 17, 46, 242, 266 Acrasia, 247 jEneas,^6, 307 ^neid,43, 314, 323 Amyclas, loi Apollonius, 127, 132 Ariosto, 76, 174, 175, 176, 241 Aristotle, 76 Beowulf, 44, 58, 266 Caesar, 94, 100, 104, 106, 112 Camoens, 36, 51, 60, 255 Cato, 109, no Claudian, 58 Curio, 91, 99 Dante, 79 Dido, 45, 247 Euryalus, 305 Hagen, 266 Hector, 95 Heroes Epic, 170 Homer, 7, 32, 75, 213, 232, 241 Hypsipyle, 120 Iliad, 14, 26, 38, 45, 156 Keats, 58 Lucan, 26, 37, 39, 48, 63, 66, 68 Lusiads, 71, 84 Milton, 24, 84, 196, 197, 220, 224, 231', 241, 284, 320, 326 Morris W., 132 Myers E., 26 Myers F., 24 Nettleship H., 23 Nibelungenlied, 74, 242 Odyssey, 8, 26, 38, 74, 156, 204 Paradise Lost, 74 Pattison M., 157 Pompey, 105 Quintus Smyrnseus, 242 Rinaldo, 197 Roland, 266 Romance, 264 Sainte Beuve, 23, 51 Scott, 57 Shield of ^neas, 139 Silius Italicus, 37, 314, 323 Southey, 58 Spenser, 79, 320 Statius, 125, 315 Tasso, 55, 62, 84, 320, 324 Tennyson, 79 Virgil, 7, 64, 302, 317 Voltaire, 12, 323 Wallace, 17 OLIVER AND BOYD, FBINTERS, EDINBURGH