The First Epics Were Intended For Recitation;

Poetry Is The Work Of Poets, Not Of Peoples Or Communities; Artistic Creation Can Never Be Anything But The Production Of An Individual Mind.

The Border Ballads, For Instance, And The Robin Hood Ballads, Clearly Suppose A State Of Society Which Is Nothing But A Very Circumscribed And Not Very Important 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.

But The Gravest Difficulty, And Perhaps The Most Important, In Poetry Meant Solely For Recitation, Is The Difficulty Of Achieving Verbal Beauty, Or Rather Of Making Verbal Beauty Tell.

Traditional Matter Must Be Glorified, Since It Would Be Easier To Listen To The Re-creation Of Familiar Stories Than To Quite New And Unexpected Things; The Listeners, We Must Remember, Needed Poetry Chiefly As The Re-creation Of Tired Hours.