crisis he can present as if the personified parties were speaking." The Henry the Eighth of Froude (as we have seen3) is not a free creation like the Henry the Eighth of Shakespeare; neither is it the residuary minimum of what can be positively asserted of that original English monarch. It is a creative personality offered as a scientific hypothesis for explaining the perplexing facts of record. Like the use of historical novels as an adjunct to the study of history, such devices bring in the imagination as an ally to the analytic faculty. And with such an historian as Carlyle the creative element can go much farther, and we have a blend of history and epic.

But the differentiation of poetry and prose is not yet complete. So far, the suggestion is that the observation which is the foundation of modern thought must be extended over the whole field of what there is to be observed, and that as it is extended it will map itself out in several provinces, each with its own medium of technical expression. But there is one province of thought-perhaps the most important of all— which steadily refuses to be specialized. Where is there to be found the special science or art of human life? Many sciences touch life, but they deal only with particular aspects of it: biology treats the physical basis of life, sociology treats human life in aggregations, psychology and ethics are concerned with only single elements of life. The question is of LIFE as a concrete whole, of what we mean when we speak of "seeing life." It is literature in the most miscellaneous sense of the word, alike poetry and prose-that stands as the only organ for the science and practical art of LIFE; in this one case general literature has to perform the function of specialized thought. And this is

1 Compare his History of England, chapter ix (passage on changing Tory opinion under James II).

the meaning of Matthew Arnold, when he uses his favorite word and tells us that literature is the 'criticism of life."

To literature of this type belongs, in the first place, the wisdom literature of the Bible, archetype of the philosophy that is the contemplation rather than the analysis of life; in such philosophy there is no distinction of poetry and prose. Of the same spirit is the wisdom of the Orient: so far as it is wisdom, and not formal philosophy, it is readily assimilated by the western mind. Classical literature has its wisdom: particularly in the philosophy of Seneca, and the sayings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. There is, again, a modern wisdom literature. Perhaps the most characteristic example of it is the lyric poem In Memoriam; and it will include the largest part of the poetry of Wordsworth and Browning. The poems of Martin Tupperas much undervalued now as they were overestimated at one time are an obvious revival of Biblical wisdom. And the vitality of wisdom in modern literature was shown when the original genius of Walt Whitman began an entirely new departure, under new inspirations. There is, again, the whole literature of personality—a master-interest to modern thought -and this takes in various kinds of biography, lyrics, essaysalike essays in prose, and the verse essays of Pope or of Young's Night Thoughts. Satire, both ancient and modern, comes into the same category: though the satirist may attack individual personages or incidents, the appeal is always to the bearing of these on our conceptions of life. The vast literature which the modern world calls fiction has its affiliations with this science and art of human life: a later chapter3 of this work will claim that fiction is simply the experimental side of the science of humanity. The popular magazine, though it may serve many

1 Compare Matthew Arnold's Introduction to Ward's English Poets (Macmillan), page xix.

A fuller treatment of this is given below, chapter xix.

3 Chapter xviii, pages 342 ff.

purposes, yet obtains its vogue largely because it is the floating literature of current life.

The Fifth Book of the present work will deal more in detail with this special function of literature as the philosophy of life. Meanwhile, we may sum up the present chapter by remarking how the evolution we have been tracing reaches a culmination which is in correspondence with its starting-point. At the beginning of literature poetry includes science. As discussion becomes important enough to stand distinct from creation, the medium of prose is revealed. As discussion specializes, it throws off distinct sciences, with a medium of literary expression as different from other prose as prose is different from poetry. Finally, we reach a single special science which demands a universal medium of expression: in the criticism of LIFE poetry and prose are as one.

CHAPTER VII

EVOLUTION IN EPIC POETRY

Epic poetry, as the term is used in this work, covers the whole of creative literature that takes a narrative form, from Homer to the latest novel. The more limited conceptions of epic, that have hardly yet ceased to be orthodox, belong really to the critical confusion which, at the Renaissance, received works of Greek poets, not as revealing masterpieces, but as limiting definitions of literary types: the same spirit of criticism felt that Shakespeare's plays could not be dramas because they did not conform to the unities of Attic tragedy. We are not to mistake between one important type of epic poetry and epic poetry itself. Of course, the distinction is not to be ignored between narration in verse and narration in prose and a third mode of narration which, with William Morris,' alternates between prose and verse: but, whatever may be the value of this distinction, it cannot override the fundamental conception of epic as narrative creation.

If for a moment, before descending to particulars, we survey our epic poetry as a whole, four considerations stand prominently out.

1. The foundation of epic in our world literature is, of course, Homer: and from the morphological point of view the Homeric poems (we shall see) are the evolution of the organic epic out of floating epic material. This Homeric principle, if it may be so called, maintains itself as a leading interest of epic poetry through its whole course.

2. The Middle Ages-not to speak of the later ages of Greek literature-bring a vast amount of epic material, of all kinds and from all sources, and this follows largely the Homeric prinIn his Roots of the Mountains, House of the Wolfings, and other novels.

ciple of crystallization. Thus a second interest of literary evolution is to observe the aggregation of accumulating epic material into organic plot, and the types of plot form that thus arise.

3. Meanwhile, differentiation-the most elementary form taken by evolution-is at work here as everywhere: a third subject of interest is to watch, side by side with aggregation into organic plot, epic differentiation into free variety of types.

4. The later part of our world literature brings a new point of departure for epic poetry. It feels the influence of or, if an astronomical phrase may be permitted, suffers perturbation from-the literature of prose. Prose, as the organ of discussion, has developed a literary medium of prose rhythm that can stand on equal terms with the medium of verse. And the progress of thought underlying all kinds of literature has tended to lay special emphasis upon the observation of human life. Thus we get the modern Epic of Life, in which the distinguishing accent is laid not on plot but on subject-matter, and which is free to express itself in verse or prose, with a tendency to prefer prose. In the morphological evolution of epic poetry the modern novel bulks as large at the end as Homer at the beginning.

I

Our first topic has to a large extent been anticipated in a previous chapter. On page 134 the Evolution of the Organic Epic is summarized in tabular form (Chart XI). It involves the transition from the floating poetry of minstrel recitation, in a state of constant change, to the age of fixed or book poetry, that brings with it individual authorship. We begin with the

' Chapter i, pages 28-30. A fuller discussion of the matter of this first section, including plot analysis of the Iliad and Odyssey, will be found in chapter ii of World Literature.