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This estimate of the superiority of the elephant of Ceylon, if it ever prevailed in India, was not current there at a very early period; for in the Ramayana, which is probably the oldest epic in the world, the stud of Dasartha, the king of Ayodhya, was supplied with elephants from the Himalaya and the Vindhya Mountains.
In the year 1796, the main incident occurring of any importance for English literature was the publication by Southey of an epic poem. This poem, the Joan of Arc, was the earliest work of much pretension amongst all that Southey wrote; and by many degrees it was the worst.
This song was an epic of the age-long battle between the sea and the shore, a song without words, but told so well in tone that it was easy, seeing nothing there in the black shadow of the wood, yet to see it all; the jagged horizon against the sullen sky, the streaks of mottled foam sliding landward along the weltering backs of black waves, spinning into sea drift at every wind-sheared crest, and blowing, soft as wool, in rolling masses far inland.
The raid ends in itself; and so Master Allen is sucked back again, having accomplished nothing but an epic. There is one thing which, in the presence of average modern journalism, is perhaps worth saying in connection with such an idle matter as this.
The success of the Latin epic in Ennius' hands was indeed for the period so complete that it left no room for further development; for the next hundred years the Annales remained not only the unique, but the satisfying achievement in this kind of poetry, and it was only when a new wave of Greek influence had brought with it a higher and more refined standard of literary culture, that fresh progress could be attained or desired.
With her winning the author has deftly interwoven an epic of national reclamation work and present-day good business." Richmond Times-Dispatch. "With a vividness that assumes reality Mr. Wright shows how capital may be used to gain its end and at the same time save the community and still be 'good business'." Omaha Bee.
The metrical form goes back most probably to the four-accented verse of the poet Otfrid of the ninth century, although some have thought that Latin hymns, others that the French epic verse, may have been of influence.
Let it then rest on the shelf till a better season. For this time, good reader, I, following up the object of self-relieving, thank you for your patience, and will turn to other themes of a more sublunary aspect. One of the most natural and indigenous productions of a true author's mind, is, by common consent, an epic poem: verily, a wearisome, unnecessary, unfashionable bit of writing.
These have nothing to do with its management of supernaturalism; those who object to this simply show ignorance of the fundamental necessities of epic poetry. The first book is magnificent; everything that epic narrative should be; but after this the poem grows long-winded, and that is the last thing epic poetry should be.
Herodotus's narrative of the false princess sent by Pharaoh Amasis to Cambyses as a wife, and who became the innocent cause of the war through which the kingdom of the Pharaohs lost its independence, would not bear criticism, but it was certainly usable material for a dramatic or epic poem. And this material gave me no peace. Yes, something might certainly be done with it.
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