common, that they represent life in action. They are very largely
objective; they portray events, conditions, and deeds which have
passed beyond the stage of thought and have involved the thinker in
the actual historical world of vital relationships and dramatic
sequence. The lyric poet may sing, if it pleases him, like a bird in
the recesses of a garden, far from the noise and dust of the highway
and the clamour of men in the competitions of trade and work; but the
epic or dramatic poet must find his theme and his inspiration in the
stir and movement of men in social relations. He deals, not with the
subjective, but with the objective man; with the man whose dreams are
no longer visions of the imagination, but are becoming incorporate in
some external order; whose passions are no longer seething within him,
but are working themselves out in vital consequences; whose thought is
no longer purely speculative, but has begun to give form and shape to
laws, habits, or institutions. It is the revelation of the human
spirit in action which we find in the epic and the drama; the inward
life working itself out in material and social relations; the soul of
the man becoming, so to speak, externalised.

The epic, as illustrated in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," deals with a
main or central movement in Greek tradition; a series of events which,
by reason of their nature and prominence, imbedded themselves in the
memory of the Greek race. These events are described in narrative
form, with episodes, incidents, and dialogues, which break the long
story and relax the strain of attention from time to time, without
interrupting the progress of the narrative. There are heroes whose
figures stand out in the long story with great distinctness, but we
are interested much more in what they do than in what they are; for in
the epic, character is subordinate to action. In the dramas of
Shakespeare, on the other hand, while action is more constantly