From the painting by L.F. Guesnet

The Palace Where Inez de Castro Lived and was Murdered

Dante Interviewing Hugues Capet
From an illustration by R. Galli

Hermione Finds Tancred Wounded
From the painting by Nicolas Poussin

The Body of Elaine on its Way to King Arthur's Palace
By Gustave Dora

Una and the Red Cross Knight
From the painting by George Frederick Watts

The Heralds Summon Lucifer's Host to a Council at Pandemonium
By Gustave Dore

The Dead Sigfried Rome Back to Worms
From the painting by Th. Pixis

St. John the Evangelist at Patmos Writing the Apocalypse
From the painting by Correggio

Sita Soothing Rama to Sleep
From a Calcutta print

The Monk Breaks into the Robbers' House to Rescue White Aster
From a Japanese print

"It is in this vast, dim region of myth and legend the
sources of the literature of modern times are hidden; and it
is only by returning to them, by constant remembrance that
they drain a vast region of vital human experience, that the
origin and early direction of that literature can be
recalled."--Hamilton Wright Mabie.

FOREWORD

Derived from the Greek _epos_, a saying or oracle, the term "epic" is
generally given to some form of heroic narrative wherein tragedy,
comedy, lyric, dirge, and idyl are skilfully blended to form an
immortal work.

"Mythology, which was the interpretation of nature, and legend, which
is the idealization of history," are the main elements of the epic.
Being the "living history of the people," an epic should have "the
breadth and volume of a river." All epics have therefore generally
been "the first-fruits of the earliest experience of nature and life
on the part of imaginative races"; and the real poet has been, as a
rule, the race itself.

There are almost as many definitions of an epic and rules for its
composition as there are nations and poets. For that reason, instead
of selecting only such works as in the writer's opinion can justly
claim the title of epic, each nation's verdict has been accepted,
without question, in regard to its national work of this class, be it
in verse or prose.

The following pages therefore contain almost every variety of epic,
from that which treats of the deity in dignified hexameters, strictly
conforms to the rule "one hero, one time, and one action of many