The word _epic_ is by some writers restricted in its application, but it is preferred here to use it in a broad sense to include various forms of narrative poetry, and to use the term greater, or heroic, epic to designate the smaller class of narratives which the older writers knew as epics. Thomas Arnold's definition of the greater epic is: "The subject of the Epic Poem must be some one, great, complex action. The principal personages must belong to the high places of the world, and must be grand and elevated in their ideas and in their bearing. The measure must be of sonorous dignity, befitting the subject. The action is carried on by a mixture of narrative, dialogue, and soliloquy. Briefly to express its main characteristics, the epic treats of one great complex action, in grand style, and with fullness of detail." Under such a definition there can be but few really great epics in any language. Comparatively few poets have cared to undertake so great a task and many of those who have been willing to make the attempt have failed conspicuously in the execution. But most of the great languages of the world have each one surpassing epic which has held the interest of its readers and established an immortality for itself. Homer gave the Greeks the grandeur of his _Iliad_; Virgil charms the Latin race and every cultivated people since with the elegance of his _Aeneid_; Dante with Virgil for his model and Beatrice as an inspiration wrote in Italian the _Divina Commedia_, in which he described with all-powerful pen the condition of the dead in the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise; and our Milton after years of preparation, from the dark realm of his own blindness, produced the sublime measures of _Paradise Lost_. These are the Greater Epics, greater by far than anything else written by man. With them this course does not concern itself to any great extent.