Studies in Literature and History
modification of the procedure of Homer.'
Professor Ker's essays are a brilliant and scholarly contribution to
the external history of poetical forms: and it would be great
presumption in me to attempt a review of his work. But it is so
eminently suggestive, and to my mind so valuable as a study for verse
writers of the present day, that I have ventured to place this book in
the foreground of an attempt to sketch rapidly some clear outline of
the conditions and the essential qualities of heroic poetry, which is
too commonly regarded as an easy off-hand kind of versification,
largely made up of dash, glowing words, and warlike clatter; although
in reality nothing is more rare or difficult than success in it.
We may say, then, that the first heroic poets and tale-tellers were
those who related the deeds and sufferings, the life and death of the
mighty men of earlier times; and that their verse was the embodiment
of the living traditions of men and manners. They were bards and
chroniclers who lived close enough to the age of which they wrote to
understand and keep touch with it--an age when battles and adventures
were ordinary incidents in the annals of a tribe, a city, or a
country--when valour, skill at arms, and a stout heart were supremely
important, being almost the only virtues that led to high distinction
and a great career. Heroic poetry of the higher kind could not exist
in a period of mere barbarism, for among barbarous folk there is no
art of poetic form. It could not have arisen before the people were so
far civilised as to have among them artistic singers or story-tellers
who gave fine and forcible expression to the acts they celebrated or
the scenes they described.
The old heroic poets were neither too near to the time of which they
sung or wrote, nor too far from it; and this gave them another special
advantage, they had a good audience. The song, or the story, must have
often been recited before listeners to whom the whole subject was more
or less familiar, who knew the facts and ways of war, the true aspect
and usages of a rough and perilous existence. They were too well
acquainted, at any rate, with such things to be captivated by vague
imaginative descriptions of fighting and refined chivalrous methods of
dealing with a mortal foe, such as are found in the later Romance.
Among primitive folk there would have been no taste for fantastic,
allegoric, and extravagant though highly poetical accounts of
valorous exploits by noble knights, with their tournaments and their
adventures with giants, dwarfs, or enchanters. The tradition was of a
community encompassed by dangers for men and for women, where life and
goods depended on strength and sagacity. And so the original hero was
strictly a practical soldier, a man who knew his business, who had
very few troublesome scruples; he was a man of war from his youth up,
struggling with arduous circumstance; and he usually came at last, as
in actual life, to a bloody though glorious end. For the experience of
a rough age is that the drama mostly finishes tragically, not happily
as in a modern novel. There was always a strain of Romance in the
heroic tale, and softer feelings were never quite absent: but all this
was subordinate to facts: whereas Romance seems to have prevailed and
grown popular in proportion as the writer stood further away from the
actualities, trusted to imagination rather than to authentic
experience, preferred literary ornament to probability, and indeed
took his readers as far away as possible from scenes or situations
which they could recognise or verify.
It may thus be suggested that the essential quality of Heroic poetry
is this--that it gives a true picture of the time. Not that the poet
was an eye-witness of what he narrated, or even that he lived in the
same generation with the men or the events that he celebrated. On the
contrary, the distance which lends enchantment to the view is needed
to surround heroes with a golden haze of glorification. But the bard
did live on the outer edge, so to speak, of the period which he wrote
about; he was more or less in the same atmosphere; his audience kept
him very near the truth because they could detect any exaggeration,
absurdity, or very unlikely incident; just as we should mark and
reject any particularly foolish story of the war that might appear in
to-morrow's newspaper. They would indeed swallow strange marvels of a
supernatural kind, the doings of gods and goddesses, and of magicians.
But I think it will be agreed that in all ages this has been a
separate matter, because men will believe what is plainly miraculous,
when they will not accept what is merely improbable. So far as the
natural world was concerned, the heroic artist worked upon genuine
material, transmitted orally or by fragmentary records, producing a
right image of remarkable men and the world in which they lived. It
was a world, in most cases, of small communities and petty wars, in
which a good chief or warrior came rapidly to the front, and was
all-important individually.
The word Hero is one of those Greek words which have been adopted into
all European languages, because they signify precisely a universal
idea of the thing. He must be strong and able in battle, for a lost
fight might mean the death or slavery of all his people. If the hero
does his living and dying in a noble fashion, the folk trouble
themselves very moderately about minor questions of religion or
ethics, and are very moderately scandalised by occasional ferocity.
Such a man is not to be hampered by ordinary rules; he is like a
general commanding in the field, who may do anything for the
preservation of his army, and the consequence is that he is seldom
expected to moralise. He acknowledges and pays great honour to the
cardinal virtues of truth-speaking, mutual fidelity, hospitality,
strict observance of pledges. He is in many ways a religious man;
though he is apt to break away from the priests when they interfere
seriously with the business in hand. For the chastity of wives he has
a high esteem, yet although he and his people are constantly brought
into trouble about women, he is tolerant of them, even when their
behaviour is what might be called regrettable; he treats them in some
degree as irresponsible beings, on the ground, perhaps, that they are
the only non-combatants in the world as he knows it, and that this
gives them special privileges. We can measure the importance of such a
personage in ancient days, by the noise which a first-class hero made
in the primitive world. He became literally and figuratively immortal:
he was regarded as a god, or at least godlike--the greatest of them
were actually deified. He was seized upon by fable, myth, miraculous
legend, and poetry--his name was handed down for centuries until the
heroic lineaments were softened down, disfigured, and at last faded
away in the magical haze of later Romance. But in very rare instances
he had the good luck to be taken in hand, before it was too late, by
some man of genius, who knew the temper of heroic times because he
lived within range of them, and who has preserved for us a story, an
incident, or a typical character--not, indeed, an authentic narrative,
for the true story disappears under the tradition which is built over
it; nor would such accurate knowledge be of much use to the poet,
whose business it is only to give us a fine spirited account of what
might have occurred. For the evidence that an ancient battle was
really fought we must go to the historian; the poet will tell us how
it was fought, he stirs the blood and fires the imagination by his
tale of noble deeds and deaths. His strength rests upon the foundation
of reality that underlies his artistic construction: he has never let
go his hold upon sound experience: and the truth is felt in all the
colour and detail of the picture, though the whole is a work of vivid
imagination. We cannot verify, obviously, the facts and motives which
led to the siege of Troy, although Herodotus appears to agree that the
cause of that war was a Spartan woman's abduction, and only examines
the point whether the Asiatic or the European Greeks were first to
blame in the matter. Professor Murray prefers to believe in a myth
growing out of the strife of light and darkness in the sky: but the
rape of beautiful girls by seafaring rovers was evidently common
enough in those times, so why should not the Homeric version be right?
We can always be sure that the old poems represent accurately life,
manners, and character; and from the analogy of those legends whose
origin is known, we may fairly infer that the root of a famous story,
divine or human, is first planted in fact, not in fancy; just as the
Chanson de Roland is founded on a real battle in the pass of
Roncevalles.
Such, therefore, were the conditions and fortunate coincidences which
produced the finest heroic poetry. You had the popular hero--the noble
warrior who knew his business; and you had also the poet or
story-teller who knew his art, could give you a dramatic picture
founded upon fact, and could always keep close to reality, without
crowding his canvas with unnecessary particulars; he gave you the
ruling motives, actions, and feelings of the age. The excellence of
the work lay in simplicity and directness of treatment, in a sureness
of line drawing, in a power of striking the right note, whether of
praise or sorrow, of glory or grief. There is no staginess or
far-fetched emotion, or artificial scene-painting: the style strikes
the right chords of passion or pity, and stamps upon the mind a vivid
impression of situation and character. Moreover, the heroic poet, as a
composer, had this advantage in early days, that continual recital
before an appreciative public must have had the effect of polishing up
his best verses, and polishing off his bad ones. As the theme was
always some well-known story or personage, it was possible to omit
details and explanations, and to go straight to the points that
repetition had proved to be the most effective, so that the criterion
of excellence must have been immediate popularity with the audience as
in a play. It may be conjectured also that the metre, in length of
line and cadence, formed itself to a great degree on the natural
conditions of oral delivery and listening. For all poetry, I think,
makes its primary appeal to the ear; and the modern habit of reading
it seems to me to have thrown this essential test of quality somewhat
into the background. The arrangement of metre and rhyme may have been
gradually invented to correspond with and satisfy that natural
expectation of the recurrence of certain tones and measures which
always delights primitive men, and of which one may possibly trace
some symptoms even in animals, as when the snake sways slowly to the
simple sounds of a snake-charmer's pipe. The order of all modern
versification (except in blank verse, which is never popular) depends
on the echoing rhyme, which marks time like the stroke of a bell, and
is waited for with keen anticipation by the sensitive listener. It is
strange, to my mind, that such a beautiful creation as the beat of
tonic sounds at a line's terminal should have been comparatively so
recent a discovery in European poetry.
That a master of this art must have been very rare is shown by the
very few pieces of first-class heroic poetry still extant out of the
immense quantity that must have been attempted in different ages and
countries. Yet the materials lie strewn around us, awaiting the
skilful hand; they are to be found wherever a high-spirited warlike
race is fighting its way upward out of barbarism into some less
wretched stage of society that may allow breathing time for working