“There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny.”
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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.
If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.
The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.
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.