Later, or secondary, epic is not the transmission of legends still active, but the re-creation of a past already remote. Still appealing to a communal sense of the heroic, it adapts the old epic mode to an audience more sophisticated not only in life, but in poetic art. The poet is thus at once more imitative and more original. He binds himself by traditions of subject-matter, of form, and of style; but within this recognized mode he composes with more individual freedom and to a more definite end. Relying less on scenes in a series, he selects and manipulates toward more artistic sequence. Since his descriptions must be less immediate, he develops the art of narrative. Endeavoring to remain the spokesman of his people—for otherwise he must forfeit the communal mainspring of epic—he interprets their past by his own message for their future. Thus he may be all the more a poet, or maker. He cannot hope for the fresh immediacy of primary epic; but in compensation he has greater opportunity to move his people by his own vision. Milton’s conception, vast as is its scope, is essentially the same. He interprets the Bible as the epic of mankind in terms of a Puritan theocracy. Tasso re-creates a departed chivalry to animate a vision of devotion and redemption. Vergil, the great example of secondary epic, makes of the Trojan story, of Roman legend, of myth and cult and drama and history, of all that enriched the Roman past, a progressive vision of Roman destiny. Primary epic and secondary epic, though thus distinguishable, are both epic. They are complementary. They reveal different capacities of a single artistic mode. Epic is constant. It was; it was again; it is; for aught that we can see, it will be. Extended poetic narrative of great deeds for communal inspiration, though it has never been common, has never been extinct. Primary epic seems inevitable. The minstrel in the hall of Hrothgar is poetically identical with the minstrel in the hall of Alcinous.[2] Both hint to us of what epic was made, and how; both show us its constancy. This primary form of epic can never, of course, recur. It has been civilized away. But meantime it has established a poetic art that is permanent. The word epic still connotes a distinct mode. To this Vergil deliberately conformed, and Milton. Secondary epic is still epic.