Every one knows that the Greeks have left us three long epic poems--one the epic of war, the second the epic of voyage, the third, that of Apollonius Rhodius, the epic of adventure combined with a great love story. There were many other early epic poems composed in imitation of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, but they have been laid aside and forgotten, most probably because their material has been worked up by the Greeks into the nobler form of tragedy. For, as you know, the Greeks, who confined themselves to mythical subjects for these tragedies, avoided the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and utilised what were called the Cyclic poets. It is mere commonplace to tell you that the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ have been the unapproachable ideals for all subsequent time. The first and greatest foreign imitator was Virgil, and through his immortal epic, indirectly more even than directly, the world of poets has been swayed. It is nevertheless very remarkable that these two masterpieces, coming complete from the early genius of Greece, as Athena leaped full-armed from the brain of Zeus, appearing, like Melchisedec, without father, mother, or descent, to bless the father of the faithful, should never again have been equalled among men. The best epic of modern Europe since the classical Renaissance is the _Paradise Lost_ of Milton. He has given us ample evidence that he was a great poet, and yet how far below the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ does he fall! I need hardly tell you that the controversies which agitated his mind, and the mind of his age, disturbed the serenity of his poetic vision and dictated to him many digressions which are blots on the purity of his golden pages. But that is not to my mind his greatest defect. The action of the gods which in the _Iliad_ is a mere preamble to the general action of the poem, or an irrelevant episode, and hardly interferes with its thoroughly human character, is in the theological poet far too prominent. It occupies in Milton’s poem the forefront, compared to which the episodes in Eden are but a small matter. The tremendous part of the poem is not Paradise lost by man, but heaven lost by the angels that fell. It is the conflict between gods and Titans, as the Greeks would have put it, and not the conflicts or mortal heroes that fascinate us. Another remark obtrudes itself as we pass on. The weakest book in all the _Iliad_ is the Battle of the Gods. It might readily be expunged from the poem without loss. In Milton the Divine wholly outweighs the human in grandeur and is the essence of the poem.