Hence it is that no one has ever written a long story in any but heroic verse...

Hence it is that no one has ever written a long story in any but heroic verse; nature herself, as we have said, teaches us to select the metre appropriate to such a story. Homer, admirable as he is i.e.ery other respect, i.e.pecially so in this, that he alone among epic poets is not unaware of the part to be played by the poet himself in the poem. The poet should say very little in propria persona, as he is no imitator when doing that.

Whereas the other poets are perpetually coming forward in person, and say but little, and that only here and there, as imitators, Homer after a brief preface brings in forthwith a man, a woman, or some other Character--no one of them characterless, but each with distinctive characteristics. The marvellous is certainly required in Tragedy. The Epic, however, affords more opening for the improbable, the chief factor in the marvellous, because in it the agents are not visibly before one.

The scene of the pursuit of Hector would be ridiculous on the stage--the Greeks halting instead of pursuing him, and Achilles shaking his head to stop them; but in the poem the absurdity is overlooked. The marvellous, however, is a cause of pleasure, as is shown by the fact that we all tell a story with additions, in the belief that we are doing our hearers a pleasure. Homer more than any other has taught the rest of us the art of framing lies in the right way. I mean the use of paralogism.

Whenever, if A is or happens, a consequent, B, is or happens, men's notion is that, if the B is, the A also is--but that is a false conclusion. Accordingly, if A is untrue, but there is something else, B, that on the assumption of its truth follows as its consequent, the right thing then is to add on the B. Just because we know the truth of the consequent, we are in our own minds led on to the erroneous inference of the truth of the antecedent.

Here is an instance, from the Bath-story in the _Odyssey_. A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable incidents; there should be nothing of the sort in it.

If, however, such incidents are unavoidable, they should be outside the piece, like the hero's ignorance in _Oedipus_ of the circumstances of Lams' death; not within it, like the report of the Pythian games in _Electra_, or the man's having come to Mysia from Tegea without uttering a word on the way, in _The Mysians_.