But in testing whether they actually
are equally close, we have to remember that in the later epic it has
become necessary to use the ostensible subject as a vehicle for the real
subject. And who, with any active sympathy for poetry, can say that
Milton felt his theme with less intensity than Homer? Milton is not so
close to his fighting angels as Homer is to his fighting men; but the
war in heaven is an incident in Milton's figurative expression of
something that has become altogether himself--the mystery of individual
existence in universal existence, and the accompanying mystery of sin,
of individual will inexplicably allowed to tamper with the divinely
universal will. Milton, of course, in closeness to his subject and in
everything else, stands as supreme above the other poets of literary
epic as Homer does above the poets of authentic epic. But what is true
of Milton is true, in less degree, of the others. If there is any good
in them, it is primarily because they have got very close to their
subjects: that is required not only for epic, but for all poetry.
Coleridge, in a famous estimate put twenty years for the shortest period
in which an epic could be composed; and of this, ten years were to be
for preparation. He meant that not less than ten years would do for the
poet to fill all his being with the theme; and nothing else will serve,
It is well known how Milton brooded over his subject, how Virgil
lingered over his, how Camoen.
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