Lucan’s determined stoicism may, philosophically, be more consistent than the dubious stoicism of Virgil.  But Virgil knew that, in epic, supernatural imagination is better than consistency.  It was an important step when he made Jupiter, though a personal god, a power to which no limits are assigned; when he also made the other divinities but shadows, or, at most, functions, of Jupiter.  This answers to his conviction that spirit universally and singly pervades matter; but, what is more, it answers to the needs of epic development.  When we come to Tasso and Camoens, we seem to have gone backward in this respect; we seem to come upon poetry in which supernatural machinery is in a state of chronic insubordination.  But that, too, was perhaps necessary.  In comparison with the Aeneid, Gerusalemme Liberata and Os Lusiadas lack intellectual control and spiritual depth; but in comparison with the Roman, the two modern poems thrill with a new passion of life, a new wine of life, heady, as it seems, with new significance—­a significance as yet only felt, not understood.  Both Tasso and Camoens clearly join on to the main epic tradition:  Tasso derives chiefly from the Aeneid and the Iliad, Camoens from the Aeneid and the Odyssey.  Tasso is perhaps more Virgilian than Camoens; the plastic power of his imagination is more assured.  But the advantage Camoens has over Tasso seems to repeat the advantage Homer has over Virgil; the ostensible subject of the Lusiads glows with the truth of experience.  But the real subject is behind these splendid voyagings, just as the real subject of Tasso is behind the battles of Christian and Saracen; and in both poets the inmost theme is broadly the same.  It is the consciousness of modern Europe. Jerusalem Delivered and the Lusiads are drenched with the spirit of the Renaissance; and that is chiefly responsible for their lovely poetry.  But they reach out towards the new Europe that was then just beginning.  Europe making common cause against the peoples that are not Europe; Europe carrying her domination round the world—­is that what Tasso and Camoens ultimately mean?  It would be too hard and too narrow a matter by itself to make these poems what they are.  No; it is not the action of Europe, but the spirit of European consciousness, that gave Tasso and Camoens their deepest inspiration.  But what European consciousness really is, these poets rather vaguely suggest than master into clear and irresistible expression, into the supreme symbolism of perfectly adequate art.  They still took European consciousness as an affair of geography and race rather than simply as a triumphant stage in the general progress of man’s knowledge of himself.  Their time imposed a duty on them; that they clearly understood.  But they did not clearly understand what the duty was; partly, no doubt, because they were both strongly influenced by mediaeval religion.  And so it is atmosphere, in Tasso and