It remains to consider briefly the epics of the second class. Like those of the first, these may deal with the traditions, mythieal or historical, of the nation; but they are in every way the cre ation of an individual mind, front which they receive their atmosphere and color. They stand, therefore, in sharp contrast with the wholly im personal work of Bonier, for instance, in Greece, and the poets of Nibelungenlied and Gudrun in Germany, and of the Mahabharata and RC/far/ yang in India—poems which are the natural out come of a fermentation epique, as :M. Gaston Paris calls it, and of which it may be truly said that the song dominates the singer rather than the singer the song. Epics of this personal char acter belong to no special period in the history of a people, and their number is still increasing. It must suffice to mention a few of these. ID 'India the renaissance of literary activity in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. produced those epics which, as being the work of a single poet (Kari), are called Mahan ryu, or great poems—a name already applied to their model, the lliBudyana. as being composed by Viihniki. In Greece, in the centuries immediately following the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the so-called Cyclic poets further developed and unified the Trojan cycle of legends. in the Alexandrian period the
Argonanfica of Apollonius Rhodius may be noted; and in our own era between the fourth and sixth centuries, Nonnus and Musams have some claim to distinction. At Rome national epic poetry was early cultivated by and Ennius, and comes to its most perfect form in the Augustan age, in the .Encid of Vergil. undoubtedly one of the great epics of the world. Later we find the Pharsalia of Lucan, the Puniea of Silins the Thehais and A ehilleis of Statics. In Persia Firdausi, drawing upon good historical sources, composed the Shah-Nantah. or "Book of Kings"— a complete history of Persia. which was at once hailed with enthusiasm as the national elde. Among the great epics of modern times must cer tainly he reckoned the Lusiad of CantoMis. the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, and the (Jerusalem me liberata of Tasso, the Paradise Lost of Milton and the ]Iessias of Klopstoek.
The epic has been written also in burlesque form, as, for instance. in the Batraehomyomachia, or "Battle of the Frogs and Mice." The animal epic should also be mentioned. best represented by Reineke Fuchs.