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We observe a distinction stated in the above mentioned note, which is not, we believe, generally known in England, and which must have puzzled most of the thinking heads to whom the poetry of Iceland seemed worthy of their consideration. Those who are aware that much of Icelandic poetry is natural in thought and expression, but that still more is so laboriously composed and with such artificial inversions under the idea of poetical style as to exhibit a series of most occult enigmas, must have felt themselves much at a loss to discover by what strange combination of circumstances the two species could have been produced and relished by the same race. The truth is that they are the production of distinct æras; the most antient, simple, and beautiful, was the composition of warriors and skalds, who felt the emotions which they describe, and who sang to a nation of heroes: while the comparatively modern species must be referred to an age of riddles and conundrum, when the poet had ceased to be a hero or the friend of heroes. It was then that, in a state of more artificial society, sublimity and pathos were sought in extravagant metaphor and affectation; and a mode of expressing sentiment prevailed, which has removed the bulk of Icelandic poetry to such a hopeless distance from mortal comprehension. Mr. Herbert's volumes refer to the first of these classes; and although we might wish for more ample, we cannot require more satisfactory evidence of the poetical powers of this extraordinary race of savages. We must, however, warn our readers not to expect in these specimens much variety of superb imagery, for that a ship will always be the Dragon of the Deep, and a Rainbow the Bridge of the Gods; nor to indulge the hope that they will discover, in the literal translations of the present editor, that splendour and pomp in which the Scandic rhimes have been arrayed by the gorgeous imagination of Gray.

Of the pieces in this collection, the first is intitled the Song of Thrym, and contains some anecdotes of the northern deities which are highly amusing. It is translated from the old Icelandic in Sæmund's Edda:

Wrath (wroth) waxed Thor, when his sleep was flown,
And he found his trusty hammer gone;

He smote his brow, his beard he shook,
The son of earth gan round him look ;
And this the first word, that he spoke;
"Now listen what I tell thee, Loke;
Which neither on earth below is known,
Nor in Heaven above; my hammer's gone."
Their way to Freyia's bower they took,
And this the first word, that he spoke;

" Thos,

"Thou, Freyia, must lend a winged robe,
To seek my hammer round the globe."

• FREYIA sung.

"That shouldst thou have, though 'twere of gold,

And that, though 'twere of silver, hold "

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Away flew Loke; the wing'd robe sounds,
Ere he has left the Asgard grounds,

And ere he has reach'd the Jotunheim bounds.
High on a mound in haughty state

Thrym the king of the Thursi sate;

For his dogs he was twisting collars of gold,
And trimming the manes of his coursers bold.
THRYM Sung. "How fare the Asi? the Alli how?
Why com'st thou alone to Jotunheim now?”

LOKE sung. "Ill fare the Asi; the Alfi mourn;
Thor's hammer from him thou hast torn.'

<THRYM sung. "I have the Thunderer's hammer bound,
Fathoms eight beneath the ground;

With it shall no one homeward tread,

Till he bring me Freyia to share my bed."

Freyia, however, whose person he wished to secure by this extraordinary mode of courtship, refuses all assent to the proposition; very properly observing that people might consider her as indeed desirous of a husband, if she connected herself with one of such execrable character, and a Jotun too, a name of the most extreme opprobrium among the Asi. The ham mer, notwithstanding, must be again obtained, it being found by experience that this implement was necessary to their existence and power: as we are informed by that veracious historian, Saxo Grammaticus, that the Gods in battle were obliged to fly before the Giants when Thor was unable to use it. The Asi meet in council; and the virago continuing inflexible, Thor is with much intreaty induced to personate her; which he performs to admiration, considering the length of his beard and the strength of his appetite. The marriage-feasts being ended, the hammer milner is brought in to plight the maid:

The Thunderer's soul smiled in his breast,

When the hammer hard on his lap was placed;
Thrym first the king of the Thursi he slew,
And slaughter'd all the giant crew.
He slew that giant's sister old,
Who pray'd for bridal gifts so bold.
Instead of money and rings, I wot,
The hammer's bruises were her lot.
Thus Odin's son his hammer got.'

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Mr. Herbert observes on the first and second lines of Freyia's speech; It is remarkable that silver is here mentioned, as preferable to gold, and I believe intentionally; for gold is frequently spoken of by the old Icelandic poets, and silver very rarely. Suhm (Hist. of Danm. i. 119.) observes, that many utensils of gold have been dug out of the earth, in the northern countries, but very few of silver.' With all our partiality for gold, that necessary incumbrance, we cannot allow this doctrine to pass without examination. From the lines themselves we can gather nothing conclusive, and that Suhm may be correct in his assertion we cannot deny; we only think that people have not been fortunate enough to dig in the proper places when they were in search of silver utensils. That such did exist in the northern countries, at a very early date, is clear from contemporary historians; an authority which we should deem equal to that of poets in a question of this nature. In the Ripa Cimbrice, is an account of plate belonging antiently to ecclesiastical foundations, which it would astonish Mr. Herbert to peruse after having written the above note. “Sed vasa illa, aurea et argentea, hodie non supersunt.” Rip. Cim. p. 213. We wish heartily that they may be dug up soon, and in the meanwhile we beg the sceptic's attention to a passage in the Antiquitates Danica of Bartholinus: "Attamen ante nummorum notitiam, auro et argento abundasse Septentrionem, quæ sive piratica arte olim in pretio habita, sive bellis exterorum quibus semper implicabantur, sive peregrinationibus sive vicinorum commerciis acquisita sunt, verissime collegit venerandus Parens," &c. p. 463.

That gold was deemed superior to silver, Mr. Herbert will find proved by many authorities, and among others by Adam of Bremen, p. 84. edit. Hamb. 1706. It is indeed evident that, had silver been accounted the more precious metal, rings and other ornaments on which the highest value was set would have been almost universally made of it; yet we believe that. very few passages can be pointed out in northern historians or poets, to shew that silver rings were used. We know only of one, viz. in the Stiornu Odda Draumur, appended to the Icelandic Rymbegla.

We should wish to be better acquainted with the nature of the winged robe' in the first of our extracts: but Mr. Herbert has not indulged our curiosity. He occasionally, indeed, passes over allusions to the costume and manners of antiquity, which are far from being apparent or generally understood, in a way that would make some critics, who had a less favourable opinion of his attainments than we have formed, suppose that

he

he knew nothing about them. Thus, the lines in the next poem but one

The shrines have said that Ulter's friend

The loveliest, to death must tend,'

require comment; few know that the Gothic nations had temples whence they received oracular responses; and we think that they would rather have had this information in the notes to the poem than, in lieu of it, an assurance that Mr. Cottle was wretchedly qualified to be a translator of the Edda. That Mr. Herbert, however, does not wilfully lose any opportunity of adding to our stock of knowlege, when it is in his power to increase it, is plainly seen from a remark which he makes on the conclusion of this song of Thrym. She got blows instead of skillings, (a coin nearly answering to a halfpenny) and strokes of the hammer instead of many rings. This seems to be the origin of our old proverb, to get more kicks than halfpence.' We have been long ago taught by some ingenious gentlemen that all our romantic fictions are stolen from the Arabians, and we are now for the first time informed of another though smaller branch of this vast system of peculation, namely the purloining of proverbs from Iceland; a circumstance not surprising, when we consider the great intercourse which has always subsisted between that country and Great Britain; and we may add, in the present instance, the knowlege of our ancestors respecting the Song of Thrym and the catastrophe of Thrym's sister.

The next in succession of those poems that have chiefly engaged our attention is Gunlaug and Rafen; and our notice was first attracted by the versification, which is of a species. the worst calculated to convey to our ears the idea of the march and flow of Icelandic measure. We think that in all such instances Mr. Herbert acts very injudiciously when he employs the quatrain, or any other combination of rhymes, in preference to the couplet used in the Song of Thrym; which he appears to us to manage well, and which gives the expression of the rude numbers of the Skalds with good effect. Stanzas like the following have nothing in common with the genius of his originals:

The rich delights of love

Το many fatal prove ;

From women oft does sorrow spring:
Much evil do they bear,

Though fashion'd purely fair

And chaste by heaven's almighty King.'

We were not more surprised at the versification of this little poem than at a singular fancy of the editor which has induced

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him

him to change its title. In the Icelandic, the fictitious names Svafader and Skarthedin are used instead of Gunlaug and Rafen, but the author certainly alluded to their celebrated history; and deservedly is it celebrated, since, in consequence of their fatal enmity, the legal duel was abolished, by the full public assembly of the Icelanders, in the year 1011, only eleven years after the first establishment of the Christian religion amongst them.' We have reason for believing that Mr. Herbert is here completely in a mistake; 1st, Because Sæmund's Edda was compiled, we should suppose, within sixty or seventy years after the death of these heroes; and at that short distance of time their names would more probably be prefixed to what was totally unconnected with them, than withdrawn from the tale of their own sorrows; since their reputation and their story, yet recent in memory, would give an interest to every thing that related to them. 2dly, In the song, the heroes are represented as bound to each other by the closest ties of friendship, which were only broken by their unfortunate attachment to one object; but, from the Sagan of Gunlaugi, the authentic history of Gunlaug and Rafen, it appears that they never were friends for any length of time. A partiality, indeed, commenced: but we are speedily informed that they quarrelied about precedency in reciting their poems before the king, and were ever afterward irreconcileable foes; so that love had no share in making them enemies. The catastrophe in the song is the same, indeed, with that of Gunlaug and Rafen: but, although we are always inclined to give Fiuellen's resemblances their due share of importance, we cannot allow them to prove identity.

The Song of Harold the Hardy.-This song, so descriptive of the mingled spirit of gallantry and adventure which antiently characterised the Scandinavian pirates or sea-kings, is here translated literally, and, we think, with considerable success: but Mr. Herbert's wish to differ from others has led him to reverse the meaning of the burden, and thus he completely detroys the effect of the song. Harold, after having boasted of his skill in manly exercises, adds to each stanza a complaint," but the maid of the gold ring in Russia refuses to embrace me." Taking the advantage, however, of an ambiguous expression in the original, Mr. Herbert's chorus is,

"With golden ring in Russia's land

To me the virgin plights her hand."

It is true that he has the concurrence of some scholars for this explanation but none of them seem to have been aware that the insensibility of the northern damsel, to the deserts of a warrior, was affected from a desire that he might be induced

to

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