Odyssey for models. In the first the Trojan war is placed before us as the general background of contemporary life, but only so far as it comprises the particular events connected with the wrath of Achilles.
And for this reason the poem commences without any possible confusion with situations which excite the passion of the principal hero against Agamemnon. In the Odyssey there are two classes of subject-matter which determine the content of its opening, that is to say, the wanderings of Odysseus and the domestic complications at Ithaca. Homer brings them together by giving us briefly information concerning Odysseus on his home-journey to the effect that he is detained by Calypso, and then at once passes to the sorrows of Penelope and the voyage of Telemachus. We are, consequently, able to review at one glance what obstacle stands in way of the return, and what is consequently rendered necessary for those left behind at home.
(_β_) The advance, then, of the epic poem from a commencement such as this is totally different from that of lyric or dramatic poetry.
(_αα_) In the first place we should draw attention to the possibilities of _extension_ within the range of the Epos. These are quite as much due to the form as they are to the content. We have already seen what a variety of objects may be comprised in the world of the Epic as fully elaborated, not merely in its ideal capacities, motives, and aim, but also in respect to its objective situation and environment.
Inasmuch as all these aspects assume an objective form, an appearance of reality, each one of them takes to itself a form of essentially independent ideality and externality, in which the epic poet, either in his exposition or description, is permitted freely to linger, and to disclose in its positive appearance. The lyric, on the contrary, concentrates all that it lays hold of within the ideal realm of the emotions, or refines it away in the generalized vision of reflection.
In the objective world it is the immediate complex in juxtaposition, or the varied wealth of manifold characteristics, which is presented us.
In this respect we find that in no other type of poetry is the claim to introduce episodical matter, even to the point of to all appearance absolute independence, more indisputable than in the Epos. The delight, however, in actual fact for its own sake and in its natural form must, as already observed, not be carried so far as to import into the poem circumstances and facts which have no real connection with the important action. Such episodes must assert themselves as effective in the advance of such action, whether as events which are obstructive to its course, or assistant in their mediation. Yet, despite of this, the particular portions of the epic poem will be somewhat loosely bound together. This is a necessary result of the mode of its objectivity.
For in what is objective mediation persists as the ideal essence; what in contrast to this confronts the external aspect is the independent existence of particular aspects. This defect in the direction of a stringent unity and the emphasized relation of specific portions of the epic poem, which, according to its primitive form, possesses moreover a primitive period of origination, has this result, that it lends itself more readily than lyric or dramatic compositions to subsequent additions and continuations; and, further, it is enabled to appropriate under its more recent and embracing whole even examples of the saga which have already received artistic expression of a definite, if not so exalted character.
(_ββ_)_Secondly_, if we look at the way in which epic poetry may be justified in its _motivisation_ of the progress and course of events, we shall find that it ought not either exclusively to take the ground of what happens from the individual mood, nor yet from what is purely personal character. In other words, it should not encroach upon what is the proper sphere of the lyric and drama; it must, in this respect too, adhere to the form of objectivity which constitutes the fundamental epic type. We have, in fact, seen more than once previously that external conditions were of no less importance, for an exposition that takes the form of narrative, than states of soul which revealed character. In the Epos character and the necessary rational condition coalesce completely on terms of equality, and the epic character may therefore give way to external conditions, without impairing his poetic individuality, may be, in short, in his action, the result of relations in such a way that these appear as the predominant factor rather than the exclusively effective character as we find it in the drama. We find in the Odyssey that the progress of events is almost entirely motived in this way. We find the same thing in the adventures of Ariosto and other Epopees, where the material of the song is borrowed from the the Middle Ages. The divine command, too, which induces Æneas to found Rome, no less than the varied episodes which extend its embrace over a wide field, would involve a type of motivisation wholly uncongenial to the drama. A further illustration of this is Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," in which, quite apart from the brave antagonism of the Saracens, many a natural event is opposed to the object of the Christian host. Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied from almost all the more famous Epopees. And, indeed, it is precisely material of this kind, in which an exposition of this type is possible and necessary, that the epic poet ought to select.
The same thing is effected where it is bound to appear as the result of the actual decision of individuals. Here, too, we have neither to assert nor to express that which the character in the dramatic sense of the term--that is, according to his aim and the individual passion which uniquely animates him--makes of the circumstances and relations, in order to maintain his personality against this external resistance no less than against other individuals. Rather the epic character excludes this action viewed simply in reference to its personal character, just as it excludes the tumult of purely subjective states and feelings. Instead of this it cleaves fast, on the one hand, to the circumstances and their reality; and on the other that, whereby its movement is effected, must necessarily render explicit all that is essentially valid, universal, and ethical. In Homer, as in no other writer, we shall find inexhaustible material for pertinent thought on this head. The lament of Hecuba over Hector, for instance, or of Achilles over the death of Patroclus--episodes which, so far as content is concerned, would lend themselves admirably to lyric treatment--are in Homer held throughout within the epic temper. And to quite as little extent do we find this poet handle in dramatic style situations which would primarily adapt themselves to dramatic exposition, such as the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles in the council of the chiefs, or the parting of Hector and Andromache. Only to glance at the last-mentioned scene, this belongs unquestionably to one of the finest conceivable efforts of epic poetry. Even in Schiller's dialogue between Amalia and Carl in "The Robbers," where the same subject ought to be treated in the lyric vein throughout, we distinctly hear an epic reverberation from the Iliad. How consummately epic in its effect, however, is Homer's description in the sixth book of the Iliad of the way in which Hector vainly seeks for Andromache at home, then at last meets her on the way to the Scæan gate, how she hurries toward him, and when close to him, as he looks with a peaceful smile on his little boy lying on the arm of his nurse, exclaims: "Amazing man, thy courage will destroy thee, and thou compassionest neither thy infant boy nor me, hapless wight, who will soon be widowed of thee. Ay, for soon the Achaeans will slay thee, storming against thee together. And if I lose thee it were better for myself to pass beneath the earth. No other comfort is left for me, but only sorrow, if thou art stricken by fate! Neither have I my father any more, nor yet my lady mother." After which she narrates at length all the story about her father and the death of her seven brothers, all of whom Achilles had slain, also the captivity, ransom, and decease of her mother. Then at length she turns with earnest plea to Hector, who is henceforward to her father and mother, brothers, and spouse in the bloom of life, and implores him to remain on the walls, and not to make his son an orphan and his wife a widow. Hector replies in much the same spirit: "All this is also a care to me, wife; but I fear too much the Trojans, if I avoid the battle here, like a coward; the eddy, too, of the moment worries me not, who am wont to be ever dauntless, and to fight in the foremost ranks of the Trojans, protecting the high fame of my father and mine own. Ay, well indeed I wot, both in mind and soul, that the day will come in which sacred Troy shall fall, as also Priam and the folk of the king cunning with the spear. But I sorrow not so much for the Trojans, nor yet for Hecuba herself and Priam, nor the brothers of my flesh, who shall fall beneath the foe, as for thee, when some bronze-greaved Achæan shall bear thee away, robbing thee of thy day of freedom, and thou shalt spin from the flax of another in Argos, or wearily draw water, loth indeed, but the might of necessity will be upon thee; and I doubt not there will be someone who will say, as he sees thee weeping: 'See yonder Hector's wife, the bravest of all who fought among the Trojans when the fight was over Ilium.' Thus perchance shall someone speak; and woe will come upon thee, that thou hast no longer such a husband, to fend thee from such serfdom. As for myself, may the earth cover me, or ever I hear thy bitter cry and thy carrying off." All that Hector says here is full of feeling, pathetic enough, yet not merely expressed in a lyrical or dramatic manner, but in the epic vein, inasmuch as the picture which he outlines of suffering, and which brings pain to himself, in the first place depicts circumstantially objective conditions as such, and in the second place because all that affects and moves him does not appear as personal volition, or individual resolve, but rather as a necessity which is not at the same time his own aim and will. Of much the same epic effect are the pleas with which the vanquished plead, as they may on various grounds, for their life with their victors; for a movement of the soul, which proceeds merely from circumstances, and only attempts to affect us through the causative effect of objective relations and situations, is not dramatic, although modern tragedians from time to time also make use of such a type of effect. The scene, for example, in Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," on the battle-field between the English knight Montgomery and Joan,[23] is, as others have already justly observed, rather epic than dramatic. In the moment of danger all courage forsakes the knight; yet, for all that, when pressed by the fierce Talbot, who punishes cowardice with death, and the Maid, who conquers even the bravest, he is unable to have recourse to flight, and exclaims: O, wär ich nimmer über Meer hieher geschifft, Ich unglücksel'ger! Eitler Wahn bethörte mich, Wohlfeilen Ruhm zu suchen in dem Frankenkrieg, Und jetzo führt mich das verderbliche Geschick In diese blut'ge Mordschlacht. Wär ich weit von hier Daheim noch an der Savern' bluhendem Gestad Im sichern Vaterhause, we die Mutter mir.
In Gram zurückblieb und die zarte süsse Braut.[24] Expressions such as these are unmanly, and make the figure of this knight neither fit for the genuine Epos nor the tragic drama, are in fact rather suggestive of comedy. And when Joan, after exclaiming, Du bist des Todes! Eine britt'sche Mutter zeugte dich![25] advances towards him, he throws away sword and shield and pleads at her feet for his life. The reasons he gives at length in order to arouse her sympathy: his defencelessness; the wealth of his father, who would ransom him with gold; the gentleness of the sex to which Joan belongs as maid; the love of his sweet bride, who waits for his return home in tears; the grief of the parents whom he has left at home; the grievous fate of death unwept for in a foreign land--all these motives are themselves, in one aspect of them, essentially objective conditions, effective and of value as such, and on the other hand, the tranquil exposition of them is itself in the epic vein. In the same way the poet motives the condition, that Joan must hearken to him, through the external circumstance of the defencelessness of the pleader, although from the dramatic point of view she ought without delay and at the bare sight to have slain him, being as she was the relentless foe of all Englishmen, and in fact expresses such destructive hatred with every resource of rhetoric, justifying her action by the statement that she is bound with most fearful vow to the spirit-world.
Mit dem Schwert zu tödten alles Lebende, das ihr Der Schlachten Gott verhängnissvoll entgegenschickt.[26] If the point of importance to the maid were merely that Montgomery ought not to die defenceless, he possessed apparently an excellent means in his grasp of retaining his life; in other words he had merely to refuse to take up his weapons. This view is supported by the fact that Joan has already listened to him so long. Yet when she demands that he should fight for his life with her, of mortal flesh like himself, he again takes up his sword and falls by her hand. Such a _development_ of the scene had been more in keeping with the drama had it dispensed with all this varied epic exposition.
(_γγ_) In general, then, we may characterize the type in which we have the poetic passage of epic events set before us in the following way, namely, that the epic presentation does not merely linger over the picture of objective reality and ideal conditions, but over and above this provides _obstacles_ to a final solution. This not only applies to its relation to the wide field of external condition, to which the more immediate vision enforces us, but also in respect to the culminating movement of the action, more especially in its contrast to dramatic poetry. For this reason above all it diverts us from the execution of the fundamental purpose, the connected course of whose evolved conflict a dramatic poet ought never to lose sight of, into much digressive matter; and, moreover, by this means avails itself of the opportunity, to bring before our vision the complex unity of a world of circumstances, which otherwise could not have been expressed in speech. We have an illustration of such an obstacle in the beginning of the Iliad. Homer here at once tells us about the fatal sickness, which Apollo had spread throughout the Greek camp, and connects with it the strife between Achilles and Agamemnon. This wrath is the second impediment. Even more obviously in the Odyssey is every adventure that Odysseus has to pass through, a delay to his home return. More particularly, however, the distinct episode serves to interrupt the unimpaired progression of the story, and is to a great extent an obstacle to this. Such, for instance, is the shipwreck of Æneas, his love for Dido, the appearance of Armida in Tasso, and we may add as a rule the many independent love affairs of particular heroes in the romantic Epos, which, in the poetry of Ariosto, accumulate and interlace with such profusion, that the conflict between Christian and Saracen is thereby entirely hidden. In the "Divine Comedy" of Dante we do not find such definite examples of obstruction to the plot or narrative. In this case we must associate the slow advance of the Epic denouement partly with the generally pausing manner of the description, and in part with the many little episodical histories and conversations with particular characters, whether damned or otherwise, about whom the poet permits himself more detailed information.
In this connection it is above all things necessary that impediments of this description, which interfere with the flow of narrative to its final end, should not be presented as though they were merely means directed to objects of an objective character. For inasmuch as already the general condition, on the basis of which the movement of the epic world is carried forward, is only truly poetical where it appears as a self-constructed growth, so too its entire course, either in virtue of circumstances or the inherent destiny, must also appear self-originated without our being able to detect thereby the personal views of the poet; and this is all the more so because, in the form of its objectivity--not merely under its aspects of phenomenal reality, but also in respect to the substantive character of its content--it claims for the whole no less than its divisible content that it is a positive growth, spontaneous in its origin and independent. If, however, a directive world of gods is its apex, controlling the course of events, it is even more necessary that the poet himself should possess a lively and vivid faith in them, because in that case it is generally through the instrumentality of these that obstructions such as we have referred to are asserted; consequently where these divine forces are treated merely as some lifeless mechanism, it is inevitable that everything for which they are responsible must equally become so in a poetic composition which is artificial even in intention.
(_γ_) Having thus briefly adverted to the totality of objects, which the Epos is able to unfold by interweaving a particular event with a universal national world-condition, and, further, having discussed the manner in which the course of events is developed, we have now, _thirdly_, and in conclusion, to examine the problem as to the nature of the _unity_ and _rounding off_ of an epic composition.
(_αα_) This is a point all the more important for the reason that in our own day people are ready to take up the view that we may end an Epic as we like, or continue it just as capriciously. Although this is the opinion of men of talent and learning--it is in fact the contention of F. N. Wolff--it remains none the less a crude and illiterate view.
It in fact amounts to nothing less than excluding from the finest ethic compositions any genuine character of artistic composition. For it is only in virtue of the fact that an Epos depicts an essentially exclusive, and thereby, for the firs time independent world, that it is at all a work of fine art in contrast to what is, in part, the diffuse, and, in part, the finite, series of independent sections, causes, effects, and other modes of self-causative reality. One can, of course, so far admit that for the genuine and primitive Epos the wholly aesthetic review of the design and organization of the parts, of the position and completion of the episodes, of the kind of similes employed, and so forth, this is not the point of most importance, inasmuch as here, more than in lyrical poetry of a later date, and its artificial elaboration of the drama, the general world-outlook, the faith in divine beings, and, in a word, what is most essential in such national Bibles, must be expressed as the aspect of most weight.
Nevertheless, these great national books, such as are the Ramajana, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, and even the "Song of the Nibelings," ought not to lose that quality which alone, in respect to both their beauty and their art, can endow them with the worth and freedom of artistic works, the quality, that is, whereby they bring before our vision a complete sphere of action. What we have simply to do, therefore, is to discover the appropriate form of this exclusive unity.
(_ββ_) The term Unity, if employed in this general sense, has become a very commonplace one even for tragedy, one capable of much misuse.
For every event, in its causes and effects, creates an infinite chain, which, in the direction of the past no less than the future, and in a way that is in both directions incalculable, leads to a further series of particular circumstances and actions, it being impossible to determine all that may form part of the circumstances and detail in other respects, or the mode of their coalescence. If we merely confine our attention to this series, no doubt an Epos may be extended backwards and forwards indefinitely; and, over and above this such always offers opportunity for digression. But it is just such a series as this which makes the composition prosaic. To adduce an example the Greek cyclic poets have celebrated the entire cyclus of the Trojan war, and in doing so continue at the point where Homer stops, with a beginning, too, from the egg of Leda. But it is precisely on account of this that they degenerate into prose, if we contrast them with Homer's compositions. Just as little--I have already drawn attention to this--can an individual as such surrender the central focus of his unity, inasmuch as it is from this that the most varied events issue, and are able to effect a union in the same, though they may be entirely without connection regarded simply as events. We have consequently to seek for another type of unity. In this respect we must briefly determine the distinction between a mere _event_, and a _definite action_, which accepts the form of event in the epic narrative. We may define a mere event as the external aspect and realization of every human action, without involving with it the execution of a particular end; or, in general terms, we may call it every external modification in the form and appearance of what actually exists. When anyone is struck by lightning, that is a mere event, an external occurrence. More is implied in the sack of a hostile city; we have here the fulfilment of a predeterminate purpose. An essentially distinct object of this kind, such as the liberation of the Holy Land from the yoke of the Saracens and heathen, or better still the satisfaction of a specific impulse, such as the wrath of Achilles, must, under the mode of the epic eventuality, constitute the synthetic unity of the Epopaea; and by this I mean that the poetic narrative must restrict itself to that which is uniquely the effect of this conceived purpose or specific impulse, and in this co-operation be rounded off in an essentially exclusive unity. Action and execution of this type is, however, only possible to human agency; so that, as the culminating point of our composition, we must have in progressive conjunction with purpose and impulse a _human personality._ Furthermore, if the action and satisfaction of the entire heroic character, from which both purpose and impulse proceed, are merely the result of wholly definite situations and motives, which are dissipated as we look back in an extensive complexity of relation, and if, further, the execution of the purpose, as we look forward, carries with it a variety of result, then in that case on the one hand no doubt a large number of presuppositions will be involved with such a specific action, and on the other hand we shall have many effects of reaction, which, however, will not be placed in any more intimate poetic connection with just this determinate character of the end under exposition. In this sense, for instance, the wrath of Achilles has as little connection with the rape of Helen or the judgment of Paris, although the one fact is presupposed in the other, as it has with the actual sack of Troy. When, therefore, it is contended that the Iliad neither possesses a necessary beginning, nor an appropriate conclusion, such a verdict is due to an inability to see distinctly that it is the wrath of Achilles which is the main subject of the Iliad, and which consequently should supply the focus-point of unity. If, on the contrary, we form a stable conception of the heroic figure of Achilles, and assume that this, as asserted in the wrath aroused in him by Agamemnon, is the connecting thread of the whole, we shall be unable to conceive either a beginning or termination of greater beauty. It is, as I have already pointed out, the direct motive of this anger, which forms the poem's commencement; the consequences of the same are comprised in all that follows. Against this critics have attempted to enforce the view that in such a case the last cantos are irrelevant, and might just as well be omitted. Such an opinion, if we look at the poem itself, is untenable. For just as the dallying of Achilles himself by the ships and his abstinence from the conflict are purely the result of his indignant wrath, and are in this inactivity bound up closely with the almost immediate success of the Trojans over the Grecian host, no less than with the fight and death of Patroclus, so, too, the lament and revenge of the noble Achilles and his victory over Hector is closely linked with this fall of his brave friend. If in the previous opinion it is implied that death is the end of everything, and after that we may as well pack and be off, such a view merely indicates extreme crudity of imaginative conception. With the idea of death it is merely _Nature_ that is brought to a standstill; man is not so, nor yet are the obligations of his _ethical life_ and _habit_,[27] with their claim of honourable recognition for the fallen hero. In this sense the sports that form part of the funeral rites of Patroclus, the heartrending pleas of Priam, the reconciliation of Achilles, who returns the father the corpse of his son, in order that in this case, too, honour to the dead may not be absent, each and all are connected with the previous events, and contribute to the supreme and satisfying beauty of the narrative's conclusion.
(_γγ_) Inasmuch, however, as we have attempted above to make a specifically individual action, which issues in accordance with a deliberate purpose or heroic impulses, conform to the type of an epic whole in which focal points are ascertainable that bind it together and round off its completeness, the view is at least possible that we have made the _unity_ of the Epos too nearly identical with that of the _drama._ For in the drama also it is _one_ particular line of action issuing from self-conceived purpose and character with its conflict which constitutes the focal centre. In order, therefore, not to involve these two types of poetry, the epos, that is, and the drama, in confusion, though the confusion merely appear to be such, I will yet again draw the reader's attention emphatically to my previous explanation of the distinction between human action and event. And quite apart from this the epic interest is not simply confined to those characters, objects, and situations which have their ground in the particular action as such, whose progress is the subject of the epic narrative, but this action possesses the further stimulus to its opposed factors and their resolution, and in fact is directed throughout its course and exclusively within a _national_ and _collective whole_, or substantive content, which claims on its own account to assert a variety of characters, conditions, and events. In this respect the final consummation of the Epos does not merely consist in the particular content of the predominant action selected, but quite as much in the entire synthesis of the _general world-survey_ whose objective reality it undertakes to depict; in fact, the epic unity is only then fully complete when the particular action, from one point of view no doubt, in its independent character, but also from another, regarded in its progression as the essentially rounded world within the sphere of which it moves, is placed before us as one indissoluble totality; and both of these spheres, or aspects of one sphere, repose together in the mediating fulness and unimpaired unity of very life.
Such, then, are the most essential characteristics we find it possible, within the limits accepted, to draw attention to in respect to the genuine Epos.
It is, however, possible to apply the same form of objectivity to other subject-matter, whose content does not carry with it the true significance of genuine objectivity. It is very possible that a theorist in Art will feel embarrassment when, with such modes of speech before him, he is asked to make a classification adapted to all poems without distinction; and we must not forget that under the generic term of poem these hybrid forms have also to be reckoned. In any really just classification, however, we ought only to include that which only conforms with a definition of the generic notion.[28] All that is, on the contrary, incomplete in content or form, or both, precisely for the reason that it is not as it ought to be, is only subsumed defectively under the notion, or in other words under the definition, which gives us the thing as it ought to be, and in truth actually is. I only propose, therefore, in conclusion and by way of supplement, to add a few observations upon such subordinate and collateral branches of the true epic composition.
To this class of poetry above all the _idyll_ belongs in the modern sense of that term, viz., that in which poetry stands aloof from the profounder interests of spiritual and ethical life, and depicts mankind in its innocence. Innocent life in this sense amounts to little more than an ignorance of everything except eating and drinking. We may add that what we eat and drink here is extremely simple, it is goat's milk merely, or sheep's milk, or at the most cow's milk, roots, acorns, vegetables, and cheese made from milk. I should say that bread is no longer in the truly idyllic sphere; we must, however, allow to it flesh-eating; for it is hardly possible that our idyllic shepherds and shepherdesses could have wished to sacrifice their herds exclusively to the gods. Their occupation will consist in looking the whole day long after their beloved herds with their faithful hound, in providing their food and drink, and along with this giving vent, with as much sentimental feeling as possible, to every kind of mood which does not disturb this condition of repose and contentment. In a word, they are satisfied with their peculiar piety and gentleness, piping away on their reed or oat-pipes, warbling to each other, and above all making love with the greatest tenderness and innocence.
The Greeks, on the contrary, possessed in their plastic representations a more jubilant world, with its attendants of Bacchus, Satyrs and Fauns, who, in their harmless service of a god, stimulated animal life and human joviality with a vivacity and truth totally different from the above pretentious innocence, piety, and emptiness. We may also recognize the same essentially animated outlook on the world as illustrated in lively pictures of national condition, in the Greek Bucolic poets such as Theocritus; this is so whether our poet lingers over actual situations of the life of fisher-folk, or shepherds, or extends the mode in which he expresses this, or similar spheres of life, to a yet wider circle, either depicting such states in an epic form, or treating them in lyric form and that of the objective drama. Virgil already sings to us with less warmth in his Eclogues.
Most tedious of all, however, is Gessner, so tedious that I suppose no one reads him nowadays. We can only wonder that the French ever had so much taste for him that they even ranked him highest among German poets. Their morbid sensibility on the one hand, which evades the tumult and changes of life, while yearning also for some kind of movement, and on the other the absence of all true interest in such poetry, so that the otherwise disturbing influences of our culture were not represented--both of these factors, no doubt, contributed to this preference.
We may reckon as a further class of this hybrid type of Epic those poems which are half description and half lyrics, a favourite type with the English, and one which for the most part accepts for its subject-matter Nature, the Seasons, and similar subjects. We may also associate with this type the various _didactic_ poems concerned with physical science, astronomy, medicine, chess, fishing, and hunting--in short, the art which loves to elaborate in a poetic form what is really the content of prose, an art which has been cultivated with much talent in later Greek poetry, and after that by the Romans, and, in our time, pre-eminently by the French. Such poetry, despite its general epic temper, will very readily pass over into the lyric treatment.
The _romances_ and _ballads_, which we find both in the Middle Ages and modern times, are no doubt poetry of a kind, though it is impossible to define accurately their type; so far as their content is concerned they are in part epic. If we look at the form of their composition, however, they are for the most part lyrical, so that we have perforce to reckon them from different points of view to different types.
The _romantic_ novel, that Epopaea of _modern society_, opens a different field altogether. In this we possess, on the one hand, in all its completeness and variety, an epic prodigality of interests, conditions, characters, and living relations, the extensive background in fact of an entire world. We have also the epic exposition of events.
What fails us here is the _primitive_ world-condition as poetically conceived, which is the source of the genuine Epos. The romance or novel in the modern sense pre-supposes a basis of reality already organized in its _prosaic form_, upon which it then attempts, in its own sphere, so far as this is possible from such a general point of view, both in its treatment of the vital character of events and the life of individuals and their destiny, to make good once more the banished claims of poetical vision. For this reason one of the most common collisions in the novel, and one most suitable to it, is the conflict between the poetry of the heart and the prose of external conditions antagonistic to it, including with such the contingency such imply. This is a conflict which may be resolved on the lines of tragedy or comedy, or finds its settlement in the twofold conclusion, first, that the characters which in the first instance contend with the ordinary course of life are taught to recognize in it what is the genuine heart of things, becoming thereby reconciled to their conditions and ready to cooperate with them; and, secondly, that they learn how to brush away the purely prosaic aspect of all that they do and accomplish, and thereby replace the prose which they have found there with a reality allied and congenial to beauty and art. In so far as the form of the exposition is concerned, the genuine romance pre-supposes, precisely as the Epos does, the synthesized purvey of the world and life as one whole, the manifold contents of which are manifested within the reach of the individual event which supplies the focal centre of the entire complexus. In his attitude to detail,