Of all the forms of Poetry, the Epic has the widest compass; not only is verse unessential, but there are varieties of story, genuinely poetical in their interest, and yet expressly suited for prose. Such is the Novel.

The Epic is also the longest of all poetical compositions. Its many alternations and windings allow it to be protracted without exhausting the interest.

134. The leading forms of Epic Poetry are these :(1.) The Great Epic.

This is the Epic, in which supernatural agency is permitted, with a view of controlling the events according to the highest moral government of the world. It is mixed up therefore with Religion, or else with the great personified abstractions called Destiny, Fate, Justice, Right, the Evil Principle, which are supposed to take events out of mere human hands.

The division into Sacred and Heroic is scarcely tenable; the Greek Heroic Epic was thoroughly religious. The only important difference in this respect is between the Pagan and the Christian, and between these and the kinds that eliminate more and more the supernatural control.

The conditions imposed upon the Epic in respect of subject, place, and time, are resolvable into the necessities of the story or plot, which must be intelligibly started, and conducted to a definite termination. The plot being for the most part, although not necessarily or universally, the element of highest interest, it must govern everything else; or, at all events, be in harmony with the scenes, the characters, the sentiments, and the diction. Thus, the Trojan War was a subject for History; the wrath of Achilles was selected and treated as an Epic.

The high Epic demands a metre, of a less marked kind than the Lyric, although more marked than the Drama. Such was the Greek hexameter, and such are our English Epic metres, as, for example, the blank verse of Milton.

The usual examples of the Great Epic are:—

The Iliad and Odyssey.

The Encid.

THE ROMANCE. THE TALE.

279

The Niebelungen Lied.

The Divina Comedia.

The Lusiad.

Jerusalem Delivered.

Paradise Lost.

The Pharsalia of Lucan is held up by critics as a warning beacon against the tendency of the Great Epic to degenerate into bombast, mere oratorical display, and prosaic feebleness.

Pollok's Course of Time is an Epic of the high class.

The real or serious Epic has a counterpart or parody in the Mock Epic, as "The battle of the Frogs and Mice," "The Rape of the Lock," &c.

(2.) The Romance, or Narrative of Adventure, under a more purely human control. Supernatural personages are still occasionally admitted, but with a lower function. The element of love, repressed in the Great Epic, is now allowed greater scope. The metre is of a lighter cast.

As examples, we have the poetry of the Troubadours; with which we may compare, as modern instances, Scott's Marmion and Lady of the Lake. The Faerie Queen, in its narrative handling, abstracted from the didactic purpose, is a Romance, retaining the modified supernatural machinery of the Middle Ages. To the same class belong Hudibras and Don Juan; their peculiarity consisting in the addition of satire.

(3.) The Tale, with complete story and dénouement, love being predominant. Many of Chaucer's Tales (the Knight's, &c.) might be cited. Also the Rape of Lucrece; Byron's Corsair, Giaour, &c.; Wordsworth's White Doe of Rylstone; Keats' Lamia and Eve of St. Agnes; the Tales of Crabbe, distinguished by his realistic manner; Enoch Arden; Longfellow's Wayside Inn. In the light and humorous vein, we have examples likewise in Chaucer. The presence of intense humor dispenses with the love-interest, as in Tam o' Shanter; a remark of still wider application.

(4.) The Ballad, generally made short and simple, by rapidity in the succession of incidents, and by leaving many things merely suggested; hence less discursive than the Tale. The

examples are Chevy Chase; the Heir of Linne; Wordsworth's Ruth; Hood's Eugene Aram; Lord Ullin's Daughter; Macaulay's Lay of Horatius; Burial of Sir John Moore; Loss of the Royal George; Bayard Taylor's Paso del Mar; Schiller's Diver; Goethe's Bride of Corinth. In a lighter vein, we have the otherwise-designated Comic Song; Thackeray's Ballads; Hood's comic pieces; Horace and James Smith's parodies; the Mock Heroic-Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogen. In American literature, the comic poems of Saxe and Oliver Wendell Holmes are worthy of mention in this department.

(5.) The Historical Poem, or Metrical History, might be called a Narrative Poem, with a didactic purpose: Barbour's Bruce; Blind Harry's Wallace. The Annus Mirabilis of Dryden contains much that is properly Lyrical.

(6.) The Mixed Epic: having a slight epic character, with a mixture of sentiment, satire, moralizing, and other reflections. Childe Harold is destitute of plot, and consists of a string of descriptions, reflections, and lyrical outbursts of the author's personality. Shelley's Revolt of Islam contains an unbroken. narrative, of the nature of the Romance, but with a superabundance of Lyrical effusion.

We

(7.) The Pastoral, Idyll, &c. These have just sufficient traces of narrative to bring them under the Epic division; but they are distinguished by the prominence of poetic description, and this, either of external nature or of manners. In some, the narrative is still supreme. In the Endymion of Keats, a mythical story connects a series of descriptions of nature. may add Beattie's Minstrel, the Cotter's Saturday Night, the Gardener's Daughter, the Idylls of the King. In others, there is still continuous narrative, but only to furnish subjects for the description; as, the Excursion and the Princess. We might perhaps place the Minstrel here. A third class contain narrative only by way of episode to the description, and that often in a small and vanishing quantity. Such are L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. In Thomson's Seasons, the course of the year is the only succession of events. Cowper's Task is composite in its nature; description alternates with didactic and satirical strokes.

THE PROSE FICTION.

281

It might seem requisite to devote a distinct head to Descriptive Poetry; in which case, we should have to trace its subdivisions according to the varying connection with Narrative. But this would only give the previous classification in an inverted order; and, moreover, for reasons more than once given, there can be no poetry of continued Description in the strict sense of the word. Action and succession must predominate; and it is, therefore, the only proper course to make Narrative the genus, and Description the specific difference. The Task and the Night Thoughts contain much description, and little narrative, but it would not bring out their distinctive character to term them Descriptive poems.

(8.) The Prose Fiction. This is a prose version of all the previous kinds, except the Great Epic, which, from its nature, is rarely attempted, and demands the metrical adjunct.

From the exceeding variety of the Prose Fiction, it is diffi cult to assign well-marked types. The Religious Allegory of Bunyan is a distinct kind. Other species are the Pastoral Novel (Sidney's Arcadia), the Sentimental Novel (Richardson, &c.), the Satirical Novel (Swift), the Comic and also Satirical (Fielding, Smollet, Thackeray), the Historical Novel (Scott, Bulwer). But each writer of Fiction usually embodies all the kinds of interest suited to his genius, with slight reference to a type. There is a real difference made in choosing the subject from the present or from the past; the one tends to imitation and reality, the other to ideality. A didactic purpose, also, gives a character to the novel. The Supernatural is rare in prose fiction, and, when attempted, is considered a doubtful experiment.

DRAMATIC POETRY.

135. The Drama is so constructed as to admit of its being acted on the Stage. There is a story as in the Epic, but the author does not narrate, nor appear in his own person. He appoints and groups the characters, lays the scenes, and provides the dialogue; and, in the

dialogue, aided only by stage directions, the whole action of the piece is contained.

An epic poet like Homer, who reduces his narrative to the smallest dimensions, and gives a large space to the dialogue, brings the epic close upon the drama; while the placing of an explanatory prologue, at the beginning of each act (as in Henry V.), makes the drama approach to the epic.

The peculiarly dramatic interest consists in watching the turns of the dialogue, the action and reaction of the speakers. The merits of the composition lie in the vividness of the impression that one personage appears to make upon another. Soliloquy is irrelevant, unless it grows out of the action or prepares for it.

There is no kind of poetic ornament or effect that the Drama does not admit of, in proportions suited to its nature.

136. The division of the Drama into Tragedy and Comedy, is much more marked than the subdivisions of the Lyric or the Epic.

(1.) Tragedy. This, according to Aristotle's definition, was the representation (as opposed to the narration) of a completed action, commanding or illustrious in its character; the language being poetically pleasing; and with the moral effect of purifying the passions generally, by means of the two special passions-Pity and Fear.

The action in Tragedy was originally taken from those calamitous incidents of human life, which are attended with a degree of suffering wholly or in part undeserved by the actors. The painful effect of this spectacle was redeemed, in Tragedy, by poetic arts; by theological explanations; by the displays of human nobleness in enduring calamity; by inspiring pity; by the moral lesson of fear, circumspection, and submission; and by selecting incidents not too horrible to be so redeemed. In commenting on the definition of Aristotle, Kames remarks, that the happiest subject of a tragedy would be a man of integrity falling into a great misfortune by the committal of some inno