something to do with this; but the presence of Homer among the "authentic" epics has probably still more to do with it. For Homer is the poet who is usually chosen to stand for "authentic" epic; and, by a facile association of ideas, the conspicuous characteristics of Homer seem to be the marks of "authentic" epic as a species. It is, of course, quite true, that, for sustained grandeur and splendour, no poet can be put beside Homer except Dante and Milton; but it is also quite clear that in Homer, as in Dante, and Milton, such conspicuous characteristics are simply the marks of peculiar poetic genius. If we leave Homer out, and consider poetic greatness only (the only important thing to consider), there is no "authentic" epic which can stand against Paradise Lost or the Aeneid. Then there is the curious modern feeling—which is sometimes but dressed up by erroneous aesthetic theory (the worship of a quite national "lyricism," for instance) but which is really nothing but a sign of covert barbarism—that lengthy poetic composition is somehow undesirable; and Homer is thought to have had a better excuse for composing a long poem than Milton.

But doubtless the real reason for the hard division of epic poetry into two classes, and for the presumed inferiority of "literary" to "authentic," lies in the application of that curiosity among false ideas, the belief in a "folk-spirit." This notion that such a thing as a "folk-spirit" can create art, and that the art which it does create must be somehow better than other art, is, I suppose, the offspring of democratic ideas in politics. The chief objection to it is that there never has been and never can be anything in actuality corresponding to the "folk-spirit" which this notion supposes. Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind. We may, if we like, think that poetry would be more "natural" if it were composed by the folk as the folk, and not by persons peculiarly endowed; and to think so is doubtless agreeable to the notion that the folk is more important than the individual. But there is nothing gained by thinking in this way, except a very illusory kind of pleasure; since it is impossible that the folk should ever be a poet. This indisputable axiom has been ignored more in theories about ballads—about epic material—than in theories about the epics themselves. But the belief in a real folk-origin for ballads, untenable though it be in a little examination, has had a decided effect on the common opinion of the authentic epics. In the first place, a poem constructed out of ballads composed, somehow or other, by the folk, ought to be more "natural" than a work of deliberate art—a "literary" epic; that is to say, these Rousseau-ish notions will admire it for being further from civilization and nearer to the noble savage; civilization being held, by some mysterious argument, to be deficient in "naturalness." In the second place, this belief has made it credible that the plain corruption of authentic epic by oral transmission, or very limited transmission through script, might be the sign of multiple authorship; for if you believe that a whole folk can compose a ballad, you may easily believe that a dozen poets can compose an epic.

But all this rests on simple ignoring of the nature of poetic composition. The folk-origin of ballads and the multiple authorship of epics are heresies worse than the futilities of the Baconians; at any rate, they are based on the same resolute omission, and build on it a wilder fantasy. They omit to consider what poetry is. Those who think Bacon wrote Hamlet, and those who think several poets wrote the Iliad, can make out a deal of ingenious evidence for their doctrines. But it is all useless, because the first assumption in each case is unthinkable. It is psychologically impossible that the mind of Bacon should have produced Hamlet; but the impossibility is even more clamant when it comes to supposing that several poets, not in collaboration, but in haphazard succession, could produce a poem of vast sweeping unity and superbly consistent splendour of style. So far as mere authorship goes, then, we cannot make any real difference between "authentic" and "literary" epic. We cannot say that, while this is written by an individual genius, that is the work of a community. Individual genius, of whatever quality, is responsible for both. The folk, however, cannot be ruled out. Genius does the work; but the folk is the condition in which genius does it. And here we may find a genuine difference between "literary" and "authentic"; not so much in the nature of the condition as in its closeness and insistence.

The kind of folk-spirit behind the poet is, indeed, different in the Iliad and Beowulf and the Song of Roland from what it is in Milton and Tasso and Virgil. But there is also as much difference here between the members of each class as between the two classes themselves. You cannot read much of Beowulf with Homer in your mind, without becoming conscious that the difference in individual genius is by no means the whole difference. Both poets maintain a similar ideal in life; but they maintain it within conditions altogether unlike. The folk-spirit behind Beowulf is cloudy and tumultuous, finding grandeur in storm and gloom and mere mass—in the misty lack of shape. Behind Homer it is, on the contrary, radiant and, however vehement, always delighting in measure, finding grandeur in brightness and clarity and shining outline. So, again, we may very easily see how Tasso's poetry implies the Italy of his time, and Milton's the England of his time. But where Homer and Beowulf together differ from Tasso and Milton is in the way the surrounding folk-spirit contains the poet's mind. It would be a very idle piece of work, to choose between the potency of Homer's genius and of Milton's; but it is clear that the immediate circumstance of the poet's life presses much more insistently on the Iliad and the Odyssey than on Paradise Lost. It is the difference between the contracted, precise, but vigorous tradition of an heroic age, and the diffused, eclectic, complicated culture of a civilization. And if it may be said that the insistence of racial circumstance in Homer gives him a greater intensity of cordial, human inspiration, it must also be said that the larger, less exacting conditions of Milton's mental life allow his art to go into greater scope and more subtle complexity of significance. Great epic poetry will always frankly accept the social conditions within which it is composed; but the conditions contract and intensify the conduct of the poem, or allow it to dilate and absorb larger matter, according as the narrow primitive torrents of man's spirit broaden into the greater but slower volume of civilized life. The change is neither desirable nor undesirable; it is merely inevitable. It means that epic poetry has kept up with the development of human life.

It is because of all this that we have heard a good deal about the "authentic" epic getting "closer to its subject" than "literary" epic. It seems, on the face of it, very improbable that there should be any real difference here. No great poetry, of whatever kind, is conceivable unless the subject has become integrated with the poet's mind and mood. Milton is as close to his subject, Virgil to his, as Homer to Achilles or the Saxon poet to Beowulf. What is really meant can be nothing but the greater insistence of racial tradition in the "authentic" epics. The subject of the Iliad is the fighting of heroes, with all its implications and consequences; the subject of the Odyssey is adventure and its opposite, the longing for safety and home; in Beowulf it is kingship—the ability to show man how to conquer the monstrous forces of his world; and so on. Such were the subjects which an imperious racial tradition pressed on the early epic poet, who delighted to be so governed. These