As to how the Epic was evolved, I am unable to say anything precise for want of evidence. Analogy from other early national epic poetry fails us here, because nowhere is there any early national poetry of the same scope and the same consistency. Again, in such epics as the _Chanson de Roland_, and even in _Beowulf_, mythical as it is, there are actual traces of historic events. We know that, because we have chronicles and official annals corroborating parts of the _Chanson de Roland_, or proving the historic existence of a few characters in the _Volsunga Saga_, and _Beowulf_; but in the case of the Homeric poems we have no evidence of the actual existence of any personage. As for the _chansons de geste_, we know, or at least the most eminent French scholars believe, that these, or the earliest of them, are the final poetic results of actual reminiscences, recorded in lays or ballads, popular or military, of the reign of Charlemagne. But Homer is far in advance of the age of ballads on actual events in the remote past. M. Gaston Paris says: "The _Chanson de Roland_ is not a work composed _d'un seul jet à un moment donné_, it contains elements of very different dates and different sources"--there is a basis of popular or military ballads; there are additions invented by professional poets to increase the interest. "The author of the Chanson is Legion."[2] I entirely agree, and Legion is the author of _Paradise Lost_, and the author of _King Lear_, or _Hamlet_, or _Macbeth_. Legion is the name of the myth-makers from an age of savagery onwards; of the Greek and Roman and Celtic poets and historians, of the Christian theologians, and Anglo-Saxon minstrels and low Latin versifiers, and heavy Dutch poets, and gay Italian poets, who have contributed the ideas and material to _Paradise Lost_. But the Epic is Milton's though Homer and Virgil are among the authors: without their lives it had not been what it is. The _form_ is Milton's, and the form of the _Iliad_ is Homer's. These things are manifest. All poetry, down to a lyric like "Bonnie Dundee," has, in one sense, a multiplicity of authors. The poet selects, combines, and gives form to a mass of pre-existing materials. In _Lear_, Shakespeare works on a _Märchen_ still current in rural England. That _Märchen_ he takes in the pseudo-historic form given to it by the chroniclers. Shakespeare combines with it--for Gloucester and Edmund--a French story which he finds in Sidney's _Arcadia_. He has before him an earlier drama on King Lear; he selects, arranges, composes, he adds what is his own, the poetry, and the fatal conclusion; and even so the author of our _Iliad_ treated _his_ materials. Of all poetry, and especially of all epic poetry, the author's name is Legion. Legion supplies the materials, and examples of different methods of dealing with them, and the stock of ballad or epic formulae. The final poet makes his selections, his combinations, and fuses all into a new form.