Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.

It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.

The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.