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

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

The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling.

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

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.

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.

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