The Poem.
The Lady of the Lake is an excellent example of the minor epic. Corresponding to the “Arms and the man I sing,” of the Æneid, and the invocation to the Muse, are the statement of the theme, “Knighthood’s dauntless deed and Beauty’s matchless eye,” and the invocation to the Harp of the North, in the opening stanzas. For the heroes, descendants of the gods, of the great epic, we have a king, the chieftain of a great clan, an outlaw earl and his daughter, characters less elevated than those of the great epic, but still important. The element of the supernatural brought in by the gods and goddesses of the epic is here supplied by the minstrel, Brian the priest, and the harp. The interest of the poem lies in the incidents as with the epic. The romantic story of Ellen and Malcolm, however, lies quite outside the realm of the great epic, which is concerned with the fate of a state or body of people rather than with that of an individual.