The bearing of the meager observations on the logical element and on diction (xix-xxii) will be clear from the tabular view.[51] They are not distinctive except in the saying “the greatest is the being metaphorical”;[52] and they have surprisingly little on dramatic rhythms. The third section of the _Poetic_ (xxiii-xxvi) defines epic and compares it with tragedy. As to metrical narrative, its plots [severally] should have the movement of drama in focusing on an action whole and complete with beginning, middle, and end, that [each] may give its proper pleasure as an organic unity, and not be composed as history, which has to exhibit not a single action, but a single time, whatever chanced to happen in this period to one person or to more.[53] The general likeness of epic to drama, then, is in interpretative focus, as distinct from the chronicle method of history. Story, as well as drama, selects in order to unify. Moreover (xxiv) story, too, as well as drama, has its crises, its recognitions, its emotional outbursts. The epic poet, if he have something of Homer’s skill, can make his characters express themselves without intruding his explanations. These are general likenesses throughout the whole poetic field. For characteristic differences, epic has the advantages of scope and variety. It gains from the marvelous, which can generally be suggested better than it can be represented.[54] These points are as significant to-day as in the time of Aristotle. Not so the defense (xxv) of epic against certain typical objections which smack more of the schoolmaster than of the critic. To argue whether a given epic story were possible or probable or promotive of good morals was in fact one of the regular elementary exercises of the later schools. The closing exaltation of drama over epic[55] is summary, indeed; but that is natural, since the points, having been made before, are here simply reviewed comparatively. The idea of intensity through unity is a logical conclusion of the _Poetic_ as a whole. II