17. It may be objected to this limitation of the capabilities of the
novel, that it must stand on the same footing with the epic poem, which
is no less made up of a texture of incident, and which, therefore,
according to the present argument, can only reach the springs of man's
actions from without. Such an objection has some truth with reference to
the Homeric poems. These, as we have seen, have the legendary narrative
for their primitive element, and in so far as they are merely a reflex
of Greek life in the Homeric age, their interest is that of a novel, not
properly of the epic. The true epic (of which the "Paradise Lost" would
seem to be a less mixed form than the Iliad or Odyssey), no less than
tragedy, seizes the idea of a self-determined spirit on the one hand,
and of destiny or divine law on the other. These are the primary springs
from which it makes action and incident issue, with a perfect
subordination which the laws of our lower nature and of social life must
prevent from being realised in the world of experience, and which the
novelist therefore, tied down to the world of experience, only offends
us by attempting to exhibit. The essential character of the novel is not
changed by its assumption of the form of a romance. In the romantic
world of the middle ages, the great Italian poets did indeed find their
materials. To their eyes it was a world in which hope and wonder might
roam at large: it furnished actions which, glorified by them, became
manifestations of the divine and heroic in man. But it is another world
as seen by the novelist, even by such a one as Walter Scott. The
romantic life which he depicts is simply the life which we see our own
neighbors live, with more picturesque situations, with more to excite
curiosity in the reader, and activity in the imaginary hero. We gain
more from him, it is true, than from those copies of the too familiar
faces around us which are the staple commodity in novels of the day. He
at least carries us into scenes of adventure, where we may forget the
"smooth tale" of our nineteenth-century life. But further he cannot go,
for he approaches men from without. He does not reach, by other methods
than observation, to any _a priori_ affection of the spirit, and to this
subordinate incident. Had he done so, he could not have uttered himself
in the language of common life. In the world of heroes or angels,
_i.e._, of men idealised, to which the epic poet raises us, he sustains
us by the power of verse. The exalted action and the poetic expression
are as essentially correlative in the epic, as are the natural incident
and the prosaic expression in the novel.