In the Epics his practice agrees with that of Homer.
If they had not, lengthy epics would never have survived oral transmission for centuries.
In Scandinavia, in Lithuania, in Russia, according to Gaston Paris (Histoire poetique de Charlemagne, p. 9), the national songs have been arrested in a form which may be called intermediate between contemporary poetry and the epic. The true epics are those of India, Persia, Greece, Germany, Britain and France.
In the domain of intellect the advance of the French showed a no less dazzling and a no less universal activity; they sang Intel- as well as they fought, and their epics were worthy Iectual of their swordsmanship, while their cathedrals were develop- hymns in stone as ardent as their soaring flights of inent, devotion.
The Indian epics and the Puranas belong to a much later date, and are full of deities either unknown to or undeveloped in the Rig Veda and the Brahmanas.
