[Life of John Milton by Richard Garnett]@TWC D-Link book
Life of John Milton

CHAPTER VII
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The world's great epics group themselves in two divisions, which may be roughly defined as the natural and the artificial.

The spontaneous or self-created epic is a confluence of traditions, reduced to symmetry by the hand of a master.

Such are the Iliad, the Odyssey, the great Indian and Persian epics, the Nibelungen Lied.

In such instances it may be fairly said that the theme has chosen the poet, rather than the poet the theme.

When the epic is a work of reflection, the poet has deliberately selected his subject, and has not, in general, relied so much upon the wealth of pre-existing materials as upon the capabilities of a single circumstance.


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