"What was that?"

The Elite Eight is the final list of The Instauration. (Fanfare is appropriate here.)

This final list is one that is more prone to substitution with no loss to the general concept of a "tapestry" poem that the other two lists -- The Top Ten ("tower" poems) and The Back Nine ("fortress and grounds" poems) are. Unlike the other two lists, this one can, and does, include incomplete works.

They don't need to be complete to be useful. Also, you could put in the Dunciad instead of Essay on Man, for instance, or Samson Agonistes for, say, The Faerie Queen. Tapestries can be exchanged much more easily than towers and battlements, towns and schools, herbaria and observatories. And we can hold some extras in storage, just in case.

Have fun with this one. I did.

I'll have more to say soon about the total concept of The Instauration and the lists. For now, let me say that the lists concern what poems are for, more than anything else.