of the original lyric constitution of poetry under the predominance of the element or spirit of dialogue, so under that of the narrative element was evolved the Epic. An epic poem is nothing more than a more extended and more artificial ballad. A subject that would furnish out a dozen ballads may be all comprehended in a single epic. The first of all epics, the Iliad of Homer, has been maintained by some modern critics to be actually only a number of originally distinct ballads strung or tacked together, which were possibly or probably not even all composed by the same poet. But if this were really so, the Iliad would not be an epic at all, or at best would be one only by accident. For it is indispensable to that, as to every other artistic production, that it shall have been all conceived both by one mind and as one thing.

4. The antiquity of the Iliad and the Odyssey so far transcends all history that external evidence in regard to their origin is entirely wanting. They had already been in existence for many generations at the date of the earliest notices of them that have come down to us. Long before the commencement of that Greek literature of which we know the age and the history, the Homeric poetry had certainly acquired a wide popularity. This goes to make the question of its authorship a dark and difficult one in various ways. It is somewhat like the question of the origin of language itself. But surely we very slightly reduce the difficulty by merely getting rid of so much of it as we should be relieved from by the supposition that the poetry, when first produced, wanted the epic unity which we now find in it. That is not the chief thing that makes it so wonderful. The marvel would be scarcely less if its claim to the epic character were given up. The great fact would still remain, that a large body of the most remarkable poetry in the world had been produced in an age long preceding what, but for such phenomenon, we should have regarded as the birth of literature in the language to which the poetry belongs-we might almost say, indeed, the birth of civilization, seeing that apparently even the art of writing was not then known among the Greeks: not only

is nothing of the kind ever mentioned or alluded to in the Homeric poetry, with all its abounding knowledge and universal sympathy, and minute, as well as multifarious, as the picture is which it spreads before us of what must be supposed to be the social condition out of which it proceeded, but some things seem positively to imply the non-existence of alphabetic characters. Those traces in the poems, on the other hand, which have been cited in support of the position that they could not have been originally composed in the form in which we now have them, may all be otherwise accounted for. Some such evidence might probably be produced against any long poem whatever. It would only prove at the most, in any case, that the poet had been now and then oblivious or negligent, or, from some other cause, not always perfectly consistent with himself. The Homeric poetry, besides, cannot be supposed to have descended through its existence of probably not many fewer than thirty centuries without having sustained some injuries from time, or, more especially before it was committed to the guardianship of writing, having possibly also contracted some additions to its original substance.

5. As for the laws of epic poetry, which the Iliad as we have it is accused of sometimes violating, they may be said to be one and all founded upon or derived from itself. The science of poetical criticism is mainly a systematic digest of the practice of Homer. Its rules and principles have been from the first little more than what his example has been believed to sanction. If the Iliad is not, or was not originally, a true epic, it has nevertheless served as the grand model and standard for all the epic poetry that has since been produced.

6. By the Greeks themselves the poetry of Homer was regarded as standing apart from all other poetry. With them others were poets, but he was the poet. Nature herself was not greater than Homer. He and it were the same. His poetry belonged to nature, and was a part of it, as much as anything in the peopled earth or the covering sky. And certainly there is no other poetry that is at once so ideal and so real. Whatever he describes he paints to the sense as well as to the

mind. We see his battles and hear his harangues. Yet at the same time there is no poetry that is farther from being a mere literal transcript of reality. Everything in it is transfigured and glorified. While it is all so like truth, it is still liker creation. It is the most glowing of all poetry, and at the same time the most melodious. Nowhere else is passion either so fiery and tumultuous, or so rhythmical and imaginative. And ever, the higher the passion mounts, the more

musical is the resounding verse. It is as if the power of passion only furnished fuel to that of song; or as if they were throughout wrestling together and contending for the mastery, and, the fiercer their embrace, were only the more thoroughly fused into one. And no other poet has so forgotten himself in his theme as Homer has done. It seems almost to sing itself, that wondrous "tale of Troy," so divine, and yet so human too,--so life-like and at the same time so dream-likeso crowded with both the natural and the supernatural, --which has in his magic numbers so charmed so many generations.

7. The literature of Rome is for the greater part a reflection from that of Greece; and the Eneid of the Latin poet Virgil is a very pale reflection of the Iliad. The Iliad and the Odyssey have been discriminated by being compared respectively to the sun in his meridian height and in his decline; such poetic effulgence as we have in the Eneid may be likened to the borrowed light of the moon. It is a delicate and tender light, not without its own peculiar beauty, though cold and lifeless. By many minds, and by most, perhaps, in some moods, it is preferred to the glow and fervour of the other. As Pope has sung :

"So when the sun's broad beam has tired the sight,
All mild ascends the moon's more sober light:

Serene in virgin modesty she shines,

And unobserved the glaring orb declines."

And Coleridge tells of

66 a climate where, they say,

The night is more beloved than day."

66

The charm of the Eneid lies in its being so perfectly that which it is. It is a gem of purest ray serene." It is a sky without a cloud, though only a night-sky. But the imitation of Homer is, after all, but the imitation of gold in silver

""Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!

So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start, for soul is wanting there."

8. Of modern European epics the "Paradise Lost" of our own Milton is the most renowned and the greatest, if it is not, indeed, to be accounted the first and noblest of all epics. It differs from the two great epics of antiquity, and also from most modern poems of the same class, such as, for instance, the "Lusiad of the Portuguese Camoens, and the "Henriade" of the French Voltaire, (if this last deserves to be reckoned among great poems), in that its subject is not specially national. In this respect it resembles the great Italian epic, the "Jerusalem Delivered" of Tasso. For the narrowness of nationality both Tasso and Milton have substituted the wider bond of religion. Theirs are not epics

of Italy or of England, but of Christendom. Such a constitution of the epic would have been hardly possible for antiquity. With Greece and Rome religion was little or nothing except as associated with or in subordination to race. Even among the Hebrews it was the same. The sentiment of which Tasso and Milton have taken advantage has been wholly the product of Christianity (from which, however, it has also been caught to some extent by the Mahometan populations, impressed upon them mainly by the long contest for supremacy between the two faiths of which what has been called "the world's debate" of the Crusades was only a remarkable and exceptional portion, that, namely, in which Christianity became for a time the assailing power, and attempted to roll back the tide of Mahometan aggression and conquest). But Milton is the epic poet of Christianity in a much deeper and more comprehensive sense than Tasso. The spirit of his poem may be most correctly described by the term Biblical; it is, drawn equally from both Testaments.

And its theme is universal as humanity, or indeed we may say as the universe itself; embracing, as it does, earth and heaven and hell, and not only the creation and fall of man but the rebellion of the angels and the origin of evil and of sin, and stretching not only over all time but into the depths of past and coming eternity. Nor has any poetry in any tongue more of the soul of divinest song than Milton's: it is a world of richest music; and majesty and beauty walk about in it like his own happy pair in their glorious Eden.

9. Most of the subordinate forms of poetry may be regarded as derivations from or modifications of the epic. Almost the only kind that can be classed with the drama is Eclogue or Pastoral. That, too, as well as dramatic poetry, is frequently in dialogue. All narrative poetry plainly comes under the head of the epic; and by far the greater part of all poetry is more or less of a narrative character. Even what is called a philosophical, or didactic, or descriptive poem is rarely without some thread of narrative running through it, if it were no more than so much as to tell us what it was that gave occasion to the course of the reasonings or reflections. Any such poem is only an epic with the narrative reduced and the other ingredients exaggerated. And it is in poetry as it is in prose: while great epics are the rarest of all poems, narrative poetry is of all poetry the most plentiful; just as nine-tenths of all the prose that is written is narrative, and yet great histories are almost as few in number as great epics.

WHAT IS PRAYER.

PRAYER is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed;

The motion of a hidden fire,

That trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear;

The upward glancing of an eye
When none but God is near.

G. L. CRAIK.