But it will be convenient not to make too much of chronology, in a general account of epic development. It has already appeared that the duties of all "authentic" epic are broadly the same, and the poems of this kind, though two thousand years may separate their occurrence, may be properly brought together as varieties of one sub-species. "Literary" epic differs much more in the specific purpose of its art, as civilized societies differ much more than heroic, and also as the looser _milieu_ of a civilization allows a less strictly traditional exercise of personal genius than an heroic age. Still, it does not require any manipulation to combine the "literary" epics from both series into a single process. Indeed, if we take Homer, Virgil and Milton as the outstanding events in the whole progress of epic poetry, and group the less important poems appropriately round these three names, we shall not be far from the _ideal truth_ of epic development. We might say, then, that Homer begins the whole business of epic, imperishably fixes its type and, in a way that can never be questioned, declares its artistic purpose; Virgil perfects the type; and Milton perfects the purpose. Three such poets are not, heaven knows, summed up in a phrase; I mean merely to indicate how they are related one to another in the general scheme of epic poetry. For discriminating their merits, deciding their comparative eminence, I have no inclination; and fortunately it does not come within the requirements of this essay. Indeed, I think the reader will easily excuse me, if I touch very slightly on the poetic manner, in the common and narrow sense, of the poets whom I shall have to mention; since these qualities have been so often and sometimes so admirably dealt with. It is at the broader aspects of artistic purpose that I wish to look. "From Homer," said Goethe, "I learn every day more clearly, that in our life here above ground we have, properly speaking, to enact Hell." It is rather a startling sentence at first. That poetry which, for us, in Thoreau's excellent words, "lies in the east of literature," scarcely suggests, in the usual opinion of it, Hell. We are tempted to think of Homer as the most fortunate of poets. It seems as if he had but to open his mouth and speak, to create divine poetry; and it does not lessen our sense of his good fortune when, on looking a little closer, we see that this is really the result of an unerring and unfailing art, an extraordinarily skilful technique. He had it entirely at his command; and he exercised it in a language in which, though it may be singularly artificial and conventional, we can still feel the wonder of its sensuous beauty and the splendour of its expressive power. It is a language that seems alive with eagerness to respond to imagination. Open Homer anywhere, and the casual grandeur of his untranslatable language appears; such lines as: amphi de naees smerdaleon konabaesan ausanton hup' Achaion.[6]