ccurate combination of parts, and coherence of
narrative, essentials of epic poetry." This is in Sir Walter's happiest
natural vein; not so the astounding passage that follows it. "_That a
classic scholar_ like Trapp should think the plan of the Knight's Tale
equal to that of the Iliad, _is a degree of candour not to be hoped for_;
but surely to an unprejudiced reader, a story which exhausts in its
conclusion all the interest which it has excited in its progress; which,
when terminated, leaves no question to be asked, no personage undisposed
of, and no curiosity unsatisfied, _is abstractedly considered more
gratifying than the history of a few weeks of a ten years' war, commenced
long after the siege had begun, and ending long before the city was
taken_!" Why, is not this the true and magnificent praise of the Iliad,
that from the heart of the immense war it has taken out a story of
individual interest, which begins where your curiosity asks, and where
your sympathy finds repose? Achilles--his quarrel with Agamemnon--his loss
of Patrocles--his vengeance on Hector--accomplished when he willingly
relinquishes the body to burial? That is the integrity of an epic fable,
which employs the Ten Years' War, not for its subject, but for the
illimitable field in which its gigantic subject moves. He was the greatest
of the poets, who knew how to make the storms, rising and falling, in the
single breast of the goddess-born _more_ to you, his hearer, than the war
which has encamped a hundred thousand Greeks in siege before the imperial
city of Priam. From a great poet, the most Homeric of modern poets--what a
judgment on the Iliad! Trapp's words are--"Novimus judicium Drydeni de
poemate quodam Chauceri pulchro sane illo, et admodum laudando, nimirum
quod non modo vere epicum sit, sed Iliada etiam atque AEneada aequet, imo
superet. Sed novimus eodem tempore viri illius maximi non semper
accuratissimas esse censuras, nec ad severississimam critices normam
exactas: _illo judice, id plerumque optimum est, quod nunc prae manibus
habet, et in quo nunc occupatur_." Perfectly true. What says Dryden? "It
is of the epic kind, and perhaps not much inferior to the 'Ilias' or the
'AEneid.' The story is more pleasing than either of them, the manners as
perfect, the diction as poetical, the learning as deep and various, and
the disposition full as artful, only it includes a greater length of time,
as taking up seven years at least." Godwin says truly