How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see is the dilemma of teaching.

For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality.

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

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

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 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.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.