e comparison. Homer's singularity in this
respect is overwhelming; but it is frequently forgotten, and especially
by those who think to help in the Homeric question by comparing him with
other "authentic" epics. Supposing (we can only just suppose it) a case
were made out for the growth rather than the individual authorship of
some "authentic" epic other than Homer; it could never have any bearing
on the question of Homeric authorship, because no early epic is
comparable with the _poetry_ of Homer. Nothing, indeed, is comparable
with the poetry of Homer, except poetry for whose individual authorship
history unmistakably vouches.

So we cannot say that Homer was not as deliberate a craftsman in words
as Milton himself. The scope of his craft was more restricted, as his
repetitions and stock epithets show; he was restricted by the fact that
he composed for recitation, and the auricular appreciation of diction is
limited, the nature of poetry obeying, in the main, the nature of those
for whom it is composed. But this is just a case in which genius
transcends technical scope. The effects Homer produced with his methods
were as great as any effects produced by later and more elaborate
methods, after poetry began to be read as well as heard. But neither
must we say that the other poets of "authentic" epic were not deliberate
craftsmen in words. Poets will always get as much beauty out of words as
they can. The fact that so often in the early epics a magnificent
subject is told, on the whole, in a lumpish and tedious diction, is not
to be explained by any contempt for careful art, as though it were a
thing unworthy of such heroic singers; it is simply to be explained by
lack of such genius as is capable of transcending the severe limitations
of auricular poetry. And we may well believe that only the rarest and
most potent kind of genius could transcend such limitations.

In summary, then, we find certain conceptual differences and certain
mechanical differences between "authentic" and "literary" epic. But
these are not such as to enable us to say that there is, artistically,
any real difference between the two kinds. Rather, the differences
exhibit the changes we might expect in an art that has kept up with
consciousness developing, and civilization becoming more intricate.
"Literary" epic is as close to its subject as "authentic"; but, as a
general rule, "authentic" epic, in response to its surrounding needs,
has a simple an