Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

But you are, sir; and a fine old Trojan too, methinks! What audacious word has escaped my lips!

NORTH

Epic Poetry! Tell but a Tale, and see Childhood – the harmless, the trustful, the wondering, listen – "all ear;" and so has the wilder and mightier Childhood of Nations, listened, trustful, wondering, "all ear," to Tales lofty, profound —said, or, as Art grew up, sung.

SEWARD

ΕΠΕ, Say or Tell.

BULLER

ΑΕΙΔΕ, Sing.

NORTH

Yes, my lads, these were the received formulas of beseeching with which the Minstrels of Hellas invoked succour of the divine Muse, when their burning tongue would fit well to the Harp transmitted Tales, fraught with old heroic remembrance, with solemn belief, with oracular wisdom. ΕΠΕ, Tell, ΕΠΟΣ, The Tale. And when, step after step, the Harp modelling the Verse, and the Verse charming power and beauty, and splendour and pathos – like a newly-created and newly-creating soul – into its ancestral Tradition – when insensibly the benign Usurper, the Muse, had made the magnificent dream rightly and wholly her own at last. – ΕΠΟΣ, The Sung Tale. Homer, to all following ages the chief Master of Eloquence whether in Verse or in Prose, has yet maintained the simplicity of Telling.

"For he came beside the swift ships of the Achæans,
Proposing to release his daughter, and bringing immense ransom;
Having in his hand the fillet of the far-shooting Apollo,
On the golden rod: and he implored of the Achæans,
And the sons of Atreus, most of all, the two Orderers of the People."

These few words of a tongue stately, resplendent, sonorous, and numerous, more than ours – and already the near Scamandrian Field feels, and fears, and trembles. Milton! The world has rolled round, and again round, from the day of that earlier to that of the later Mæonides. All the soul-wealth hoarded in words, which merciful Time held aloft, unsubmerged by the Gothic, by the Ottoman inundation; all the light shrined in the Second, the Intellectual Ark that, divinely built and guided, rode tilting over the tempestuous waste of waters; all the mind, bred and fostered by New Europe, down to within two hundred years of this year that runs: These have put differences between the Iliad and the Paradise Lost, in matter and in style, which to state and illustrate would hold me speaking till sunset.

BULLER

And us listening.

NORTH

The Fall of Hector and of his Troy! The Fall of Adam and of his World!

BULLER

What concise expression! Multum in parvo, indeed, Seward.

NORTH

Men and gods mingled in glittering conflict upon the ground that spreads between Ida's foot and the Hellespont! At the foot of the Omnipotent Throne, archangels and angels distracting their native Heaven with arms, and Heaven disburthening her lap of her self-lost sons for the peopling of Hell!

SEWARD

Hush! Buller – hush!

NORTH

In way of an Episode – yes, an Episode – see the Seventh Book – our Visible Universe willed into being!

SEWARD

Hush! Buller – hush!

NORTH

For a few risings and settings of yon since-bedimmed Sun – Love and celestial Bliss dwelling amidst the shades and flowers of Eden yet sinless – then, from a MORE FATAL APPLE, Discord clashing into and subverting the harmonies of Creation.

"Sin, and her shadow, Death; and Misery,
Death's Harbinger."

The Iliad, indeed!

SEWARD

I wish you could be persuaded, sir, to give us an Edition of Milton.

NORTH

No. I must not take it out of the Doctor's hands. Then, as to Milton's style. If the Christian Theologian must be held bold who has dared to mix the Delivered Writings with his own Inventions – bold, too, was he, the heir of the mind that was nursed in the Aristotelian Schools, to unite, as he did, on the other hand, the gait of an understanding accomplished in logic, with the spontaneous and unstudied step of Poetry. The style of Milton, gentlemen, has been praised for simplicity; and it is true that the style of the Paradise Lost has often an austere simplicity; but one sort of it you miss – the proper Epic simplicity – that Homeric simplicity of the Telling.

SEWARD

Perhaps, sir, in such a Poem such simplicity could not be.

NORTH

Perhaps not. Homer adds thought to thought, and so builds up. Milton involves thought with thought, and so constructs. Relation is with him argumentative also, and History both Philosophy and Oratory. This was unavoidable. He brought the mind of the latter age to the Form of Composition produced by the primitive time. Again, the style is fitted to the general intention of a Poem essentially didactic and argumentative. Again, the style is personal to himself. He has learnedly availed himself of all antecedent Art – minutely availed himself, yet he is no imitator. The style is like no other – it is intensely and completely original. It expresses himself. Lofty, capacious, acute, luminous, thoroughly disciplined, ratiocinative powers wonderfully blend their action with an imagination of the most delicate and profound sensibility to the beautiful, and of a sublimity that no theme can excel.

SEWARD

Lord Bacon, sir, I believe, has defined Poetry, Feigned History – has he not?

NORTH

He has – and no wonder that he thought much of "Feigned History" – for he had a view to Epos and Tragedy – the Iliad and Odyssey – the Attic Theatre – the Æneid – Dante – Ariosto – Tasso – the Romances of Chivalry – moreover, the whole Immense Greek Fable, whereof part and parcel remain, but more is perished. Which Fables, you know, existed, and were transmitted in Prose, – that is, by Oral Tradition, in the words of the relator, – long before they came into Homeric Verse – or any verse. He saw, Seward, the Memory of Mankind possessed by two kinds of History, both once alike credited. True History, which remains True History, and Fabulous History, now acknowledged as Poetry only. It is no wonder that other Poetry vanished from importance in his estimation.

BULLER

I follow you, sir, with some difficulty.

NORTH

You may with ease. Fabulous History holds place, side by side, with True History, as a rival in dignity, credence, and power, and in peopling the Earth with Persons and Events. For, of a verity, the Personages and Events created by Poesy hold place in our Mind – not in our Imagination only, but in our Understanding, along with Events and Personages historically remembered.

SEWARD

An imposing Parallelism!