DISSERTATION VII.

HOMER AS AN EPIC ARTIST.

THE general drift of the preceding discussions has been to set Homer before the modern reader as an ancient dodos, or popular minstrel, a sort of intellectual workman generically distinct from the poet of literary culture and elaborate artistic execution. But if the Iliad be one great organically articulated poem, and if all attempts to resolve it into separate independent unities, however ingeniously made, have signally failed, then the author of that poem is certainly something more than a mere ballad-singer, or even a king of ballad-singers he rises altogether into a different and a higher region, and is, in respect of the form and structure of his poetry, no less a great architect of words than Virgil or Milton. As high as an ample many-tiered and lofty-domed minster stands in point of constructive power above the single little chapel, of which it may contain a dozen in one of its aisles, so high, as a work of poetic art, does the Iliad transcend the most perfect ballad that ever was written. Homer, therefore, is in one sense an epic artist. The materials, the colour, and the spirit of his great poem belong to the genus popular ballad; but in so far as these materials. are cunningly worked up into a grandly consistent rhythmical narration, he is an epic artist. This view of his character, as it respects the mere external frame of his great work,

lies on the surface, and as such for a long time dominated exclusively over the public mind; but though on the surface, it is nevertheless a fact, and must be seriously considered before any just estimate of the true position of Homer in the history of poetic expression can be formed. We shall therefore devote a few pages here to the consideration of the problem proposed by epic art, and the success which has attended Homer's solution of that problem, as compared with the great masters whom the judgment of the world has admitted as his worthiest competitors. In other words, we shall compare Homer with Virgil, Milton, and Tasso, not as poets generally-a comparison which has led to a great deal of impertinent and unfruitful remark,--but as epic poets in respect of their story, and the skill with which they handle their materials. We shall thus refute the disorganizing and sceptical theories of Lachmann and Köchly by an argument of the most common use and acknowledged validity in all scientific researches, -the argument from analogy. If the 'Eneid,' the 'Jerusalem,' and the Paradise Lost,' works confessedly produced by intellects of the highest constructive power, are found on examination to contain certain elements of structure in common, which are the admitted signs of the presence of such constructive power; and if the Iliad of Homer exhibits these signs in an equal or a greater degree than any of those three great masterpieces of epic art, the conclusion that this great poem must have had an author belonging to the same high order of constructive intellect follows as certainly as any of which the rich annals of inductive physical science can boast. Let us inquire, therefore, in the first place, from the nature of the case, what are the great and necessary laws of epic structure, as contrasted with an aggregation or co-ordination of sepa

rate little narrative unities called ballads, or Volkssagen, and let us then endeavour to show how far these laws have been realized in the case of those most famous epic structures which we have just mentioned.

The leading laws of the style of poetry called Epic seem as follows:

1. An epic poem is the rhythmical narration of some great action of popular interest and national significance.

2. An epic poem, as distinguished from a ballad, implies a certain magnitude; but this magnitude is not definable by any exact laws. The most famous epics consist of twelve books or twenty-four, just as the most famous tragedies consist of five acts, and the most famous novels of three volumes; but these numbers seem quite conventional. Tasso's epic has twenty cantos; and we can conceive a great epic poem of not more than one-fourth the size of the Iliad. In the 'Argonautics' of Apollonius there are only four books, but they are of such size as to be equal to eight books of the Iliad, or twelve of the Odyssey. A certain magnitude, however, is as necessary to an epic as to a palace or a mountain. On the other hand, too great a magnitude is dangerous, as destroying the effect which the artist intended to produce. Every work of art must be, to use Aristotle's phrase, evσúvoπтos, that is, easily embraced by the eye; otherwise the spectator is overwhelmed and confused, and cannot intelligently admire what he does not distinctly grasp. Edinburgh, for instance, is a more beautiful city than London, for several reasons; but certainly for this, that the beauties of the Scottish metropolis can be seen at once, those of London only in detail. Edinburgh is a picture; London is an ocean. Edinburgh, if the phrase may be allowed, is an architectural landscape;

1 Puet. 7.

London is a forest of houses. But although these extremes may be distinctly felt, no human intellect can mark them tangibly off. We may say that Spenser's epic and Ariosto's are too long; but if we say that Scott's poems are not epics because they are composed of only six books, we err grossly; for these most sunny, salubrious, and in their general tone most characteristically Homeric of modern poetical productions, fall short of the epic, not because of their inferior magnitude, but because they profess to deal with personal adventure only, and do not rise to the dignity of national concern. They differ from an epic as a pipe does from a trumpet. Generally, however, the large subject brings the large form along with it, as Rome is built on the Tiber, and Tivoli on the Anio.

3. This national significance is the soul of the poet's work, and causes him to soar in a region far above the mere personal fortunes of his hero. He, along with the accessory characters in the action, is chosen only as the convenient medium or effective spokesman of the national life. The epic poet has always something in view, or, if not consciously in his mind, at least pulsing strongly in his heart, much deeper than his story. The Eneid, with Virgil, did not mean Æneas; it meant Rome. The wrath of Achilles with Homer did not mean merely a quarrel between two Achæan captains, with hot words and hard consequences, but a struggle between Greeks and Barbarians, between Europe and Asia.1

1 What is the real subject of the Iliad, the wrath of Achilles or the war of Troy, is an old dispute; the observation in the text shows how it must mean both. Keble (Præl i. 90) says well: "Iram Achillis verius dici nodum fabulæ quam totius poematis argu

This

mentum." Blair (Lect. 42) considers this double subject hurtful to the unity of the Iliad, but he is wrong. It is for. mally donble, intrinsically one. Kiene, in his fifth chapter (p. 23), der ethisch nationale Hintergrund der Ilias, takes exactly my point of view here.

rate little narrative unities called ballads, or Volkssagen, and let us then endeavour to show how far these laws have been realized in the case of those most famous epic structures which we have just mentioned.

The leading laws of the style of poetry called Epic seem as follows:

1. An epic poem is the rhythmical narration of some great action of popular interest and national significance.

2. An epic poem, as distinguished from a ballad, implies a certain magnitude; but this magnitude is not definable by any exact laws. The most famous epics consist of twelve books or twenty-four, just as the most famous tragedies consist of five acts, and the most famous novels of three volumes; but these numbers seem quite conventional. Tasso's epic has twenty cantos; and we can conceive a great epic poem of not more than one-fourth the size of the Iliad. In the 'Argonautics' of Apollonius there are only four books, but they are of such size as to be equal to eight books of the Iliad, or twelve of the Odyssey. A certain magnitude, however, is as necessary to an epic as to a palace or a mountain. On the other hand, too great a magnitude is dangerous, as destroying the effect which the artist intended to produce. Every work of art must be, to use Aristotle's phrase, evoúvoTTоs, that is, easily embraced by the eye; otherwise the spectator is overwhelmed and confused, and cannot intelligently admire what he does not distinctly grasp. Edinburgh, for instance, is a more beautiful city than London, for several reasons; but certainly for this, that the beauties of the Scottish metropolis can be seen at once, those of London only in detail. Edinburgh is a picture; London is an ocean. Edinburgh, if the phrase may be allowed, is an architectural landscape ;

1 Puet. 7.