ause no one can deny that the latter-day story of the English
has been full of enterprise and perilous adventure, providing ample
material to the artist who knows how to use it. Nor can it be said
that there is any lack of demand for this sort of poetry, and
consequently little inducement to supply it. On the contrary, any one
can see that hero worship is as strong as ever, that any striking
incident, or example of personal valour, or exploit of war, brings out
the verse-writer, and that his efforts, if only very moderately
successful, are sure to win him great popularity.

But it must be admitted that most of these efforts fail rather
lamentably, insomuch that at the present day we may seem to be losing
one of the finest forms of a noble art. From this point of view there
may be some advantage in looking back to the heroic poetry of earlier
ages, and in endeavouring to mark briefly and imperfectly its
distinctive qualities, to recall the conditions and circumstances in
which it flourished, and possibly to hazard some suggestions as to
the causes of its decline.

I do not know any recent book which throws more light upon this
subject than Professor Ker's book on _Epic and Romance_, published in
1897. It is, to my mind, most valuable as an exposition of the right
nature and methods of heroic narrative, in poetry and in prose. The
author has the rare gift of insight into the ways and feelings of
primitive folk, and the critical faculty of discerning the
characteristics of a style or a period, showing how men, who knew what
to say and the right manner of saying it, have shaped the true form of
heroic poetry. We can see that its elementary principles, the methods
of composition in verse and prose, are essentially the same in all
times and countries, in the _Iliad_, in the Icelandic Sagas, in the
old Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon poems, and to some extent in the French
Chansons de Geste; they might be used to-morrow for a heroic subject
by any one gifted with the requisite skill, imagination, and the eye
for impressive realities.

'Few nations have attained, at the close of their heroic age, to a
form of poetical art in which men are represented freely in action
and conversation. The labour and meditation of all the world has
not discovered, for the purposes of narrative, any essential
modification of the procedure of Homer.'

Professor Ker's essays are a brilliant and scholarly contribution to
the e