With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem. – Lascelles Abercrombie
If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it. – Lascelles Abercrombie
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. – Lascelles Abercrombie
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. – Lascelles Abercrombie