e structure of the Heroic Age.

The note of the Heroic Age, then, is vehement private individuality
freely and greatly asserting itself. The assertion is not always what we
should call noble; but it is always forceful and unmistakable. There
would be, no doubt, some social and religious scheme to contain the
individual's self-assertion; but the latter, not the former, is the
thing that counts. It is not an age that lasts for very long as a rule;
and before there comes the state in which strong social organization and
strong private individuality are compatible--mutually helpful instead of
destroying one another, as they do, in opposite ways, in savagery and in
the Heroic Age--before the state called civilization can arrive, there
has commonly been a long passage of dark obscurity, which throws up into
exaggerated brightness the radiance of the Heroic Age. The balance of
private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals;
but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on
nothing else. In Homer, for instance, it can be seen pretty clearly that
a "good" man is simply a man of imposing, active individuality[2]; a
"bad" man is an inefficient, undistinguished man--probably, too, like
Thersites, ugly. It is, in fact, an absolutely aristocratic age--an age
in which he who rules is thereby proven the "best." And from its nature
it must be an age very heartily engaged in something; usually fighting
whoever is near enough to be fought with, though in _Beowulf_ it seems
to be doing something more profitable to the civilization which is to
follow it--taming the fierceness of surrounding circumstance and man's
primitive kind. But in any case it has a good deal of leisure; and the
best way to prevent this from dragging heavily is (after feasting) to
glory in the things it has done; or perhaps in the things it would like
to have done. Hence heroic poetry. But exactly what heroic poetry was
in its origin, probably we shall never know. It would scarcely be
history, and it would scarcely be very ornate poetry. The first thing
required would be to translate the prowess of champions into good and
moving narrative; and this would be metrified, because so it becomes
both more exciting and more easily remembered. Each succeeding bard
would improve, according to his own notions, the material he received
from his teachers; the prowess of the great heroes would become more and
more astonishing, more and more