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

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.

The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always.

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

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.