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to perform some brilliant action for her sake alone. We are informed by Pontoppidan that Frotho III. of Denmark was at one time in an exactly similar predicament with Harold the Hardy. He woord a Russian maiden, and urged the same qualifications in his favour: but the Russian maiden replied, you are not yet sufficiently celebrated."

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We give one stanza of this song, as an instance of tolerably happy compression;

• Eight feats I ken; the sportive game,

The war array, the fabrile art ;
With fearless breast the waves I stem;
I press the steed; I cast the dart;
O'er ice on slippery skates I glide;
My dexterous oar defies the tide.'

Each of the chiefs of the north seems to have had, at this period, his catalogue of savage virtues. Mr. Herbert will find that of king Oluff Iryggeson in Jacobson Debbes's " Færvæ et Faroa Reserata."

The Lamentation of Starkader. We observe a wildness in the prose accourt quoted by Mr. H. and subjoined to this effusion, which is very striking :

"Starkader accompanied king Vikar to Hordaland; he was the most distinguished warrior in the army, and dearest to the king. The wind proving boisterous and unfavourable, after the oracles had been consulted, it was deemed, that Odin required a man, drawn by lot from the army, to be hanged as a sacrifice; the lot fell upon Vikar, which produced great sorrow amongst his followers. A lit tle before midnight Starkader was awakened by his foster-father Hrosharsgrani, who bade him rise and follow him. They took a small boat, and rowed to an island: there went they up into the woods, and found a spot, from which the trees had been cleared. Eleven men sat there upon stools, and a twelfth seat was unoccupied. They advanced into the assembly, and Hrosharsgrani seated himself in the vacant place. They all saluted Odin, who said, that the judges should decide the fate of Starkader."

Yet all this mysterious pageant is allowed to pass before our eyes without a word of explanation; and we are left to our own sources of information, to learn that it was antiently a method of practising divination. The custom appears to have prevailed very generally in the north; and it had not, as we are informed by Martin in his Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, entirely ceased there so late as the beginning of the last century. We hope to see this poem better illustrated in a future edition; and we take this opportunity of informing the editor that he will find in Bartholinus, p. 644, a strange poetical rhapsody, which evidently refers to the same

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event, and which indeed uses some enigmatical expressions which we likewise find in the narrative quoted from the Saga of Gautreki. Another poem, if we do not mistake, has also been formed on the story of this Starkader, which Saxo Grammaticus has in his usual way turned into Latin verse. We do not know that the original now exists: but, if it does, Mr. Herbert, in his search after materials for his intended work, may perhaps be fortunate enough to recover it. Some of those compositions which Saxo translates, and to which he alludes, are now irretrievably lost.

Song of Regner Lodbrock. As our specimens from the present translations have hitherto been short, we shall indulge in a larger extract from the conclusion of this celebrated ode:

We smote with swords; I hold, that all

By destiny or live or fall:

Each his certain hour awaits;

Few can 'scape the ruling Fates."
When I scatter'd slaughter wide,
And launch'd my vessels to the tide,
I deem'd not, I, that Ella's blade
Was doom'd at last to bow my head;
But hew'd in every Scottish bay
Fresh banquets for the beasts of prey.

We smote with swords; my parting breath
Rejoices in the pang of death.

Where dwells fair Balder's father dread,
The board is deck'd, the seats are spread!
In Fiolner's court with costly cheer
Soon shall I quaff the foaming beer,

From hollow skulls of warriors slain !
Heroes ne'er in death complain;
To Vider's hall I will not bear
The dastard words of weak despair.

We smote with swords; their falchions bright
(If well they kenn'd their father's plight,
How venom fill'd a viperous brood

Have gnaw'd his flesh and lapp'd his blood)
Thy sons would grasp, Aslauga dear,
And vengeful wake the battle here.
A mother to my bairns I gave

Of sterling worth, to make them brave.

We smote with swords; cold death is near,
My rights are passing to my heir.

Grim stings the adder's forked dart;

The vipers nestle in my heart.

But soon, I wot, shall Vider's wand

Fix'd in Ella's bosom stand.

My

My youthful sons with rage will swell,
Listening how their father fell:
Those gallant boys in peace unbroken
Will never rest, till I be wroken.

• We smote with swords! where javelins fly,
Where lances meet, and warriors die,
Fifty times and one I stood
Foremost on the field of blood.
Full young I 'gan distain my sword,
Nor fear'd I force of adverse lord;
Nor deem'd I then, that any arm
By might or guile could work me harm.
Me to their feast the Gods must call;
The brave man wails not o'er his fall.
Cease, my strain! I hear a voice
From realms, where martial souls rejoice.
I hear the Maids of slaughter call,
Who bid me hence to Odin's hall.
High-seated in their blest abodes
I soon shall quaff the drink of Gods.
The hours of life have glided by;
1 fall; but smiling shall I die.'

In the first of these stanzas, I deem'd not I,' is much too thetorical for "a last dying speech and confession." In the third, a mother to my bairns I gave' is quite ludicrous, as are the last two lines of the following stanza. We are of opinion that old words may be occasionally used with effect, but we do not much approve of introducing into modern composition the old terminations of verbs. When the editor is more deeply read in our writers of antiquity, he will correct some errors into which he has fallen in employing their phraseology: he always gives I am hight for I hight; and we believe that he is singular in his use of the word wighty. In the last stanza, drink of the Gods' should be simply ale or beer. Odin is mentioned immediately before; and readers will naturally conclude that Regner's beverage is the same as that of Odin, which could not be the case, since the Edda assures us that Odin alone drinks wine in Valhalla. Throughout the poem, the choral part loses all its rude expression and strength in Mr. H.'s hands. In the orginal, it is Hiuggom ver med hiaurvi, we hewed with swords;-smote is certainly a very inadequate translation,

It is no small part of Mr. Herbert's merit, that his knowlege of the northern languages has in many instances enabled him to correct the mistakes of the former editors of Icelandic poetry. This song of Regner Lodbrock affords some remarkable examples; and we should have felt ourselves bound to

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have allowed him much greater credit for his accuracy, had he borne his faculties more meekly." To the passages in which other translators have represented Regner as comparing his battles to the pleasures received from the favours of beauty, Mr. H. has given quite a contrary turn, making them imply that his battles were serious concerns, and very unlike those pleasures. This error in the first instance arose from their rendering varat by it was, instead of it was not: var means was, and at, when joined to it, has the force of a negative, and is not, as they supposed, used interrogatively. So far Mr, Herbert, we think, was right: but when he adds, (in his incidental note on the Death of Hacon,) What notion the learned translators entertained of kissing young widows I can not pretend to say; but it is singular that they should have imagined Regner Lodbrock could have thought it like breaking heads with a broad sword,' he displays less knowlege of antient northern manners than we should have supposed him to possess. We have no hesitation in stating our opinion that, in as far as the sentiment is concerned, that of the former editors is more conformable to the ideas of a Scandinavian hero, who delighted in nothing so much as the revelry of battle. From a few words, bujus gaudia prælii, in the address of a bar, barian chief to his followers, Gibbon discovered with much acuteness that the speech was in part genuine, and above the invention of a degenerate Roman. The joy with which the Cimbri rushed into battle was a fact which had struck Cicero, and on which he philosophises,

Of this kind of comment we have another example, also in a note on the Death of Hacon; where, in attempting to explain a doubtful passage, Mr. Herbert thus proceeds: Dr. Percy, who followed Peringskiold, asserts that Bauga was a subordinate god of war; but no such person is mentioned in either Edda, and I can find no account of him. I believe, that Pe ringskiold, who was puzzled by the word, got rid of the dificulty by translating it Bogonis, and that Bogo was deified by the learned bishop.'-It is remarkable that, after this note, the author should have penned another (see vol. ii. p. 10.) in which the existence of a person bearing this name in the Edda is placed beyond a doubt. He is not, however, a God: but a Bayo, or Bago, is mentioned in an old chronicle in Fabricius' Scriptores Septentrionales, as the third in succession to Odin; and if we adopt the opinion of Scheffer, (an opinion, indeed, which Mr. Herbert may find corroborated by evidence in his own volumes,) that many of the kings of the north took the names of their gods, the difficulty will vanish, and the learned Bishop be freed from the very disagreeable charge brought

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against him. Lambecius, in his work intitled Res Hamburgenses, tells us that Bog signifies God in the old Bohemian and Polish tongues.

We have now concluded our examination of those parts of this publication which appear important. It contains also translations from the modern European languages, in which the chief feature apparent is an affectation of extensive reading; which has in general induced Mr. Herbert to translate not more than one piece from the same author, and to refer sundry thoughts, not distinguished either for their excellence or their novelty, to writers who have entertained them in common with all the sons of Adam. Much indifferent poetry, moreover, is presented to us in this collection, of which Francisco de Figueroa, Fray Luis de Leon, Bartolome Leonardo de Argen sola, &c. &c. are altogether innocent. One effusion, the Peace of Amiens, begins thus:

• Our arms have thunder'd,

And Europe has wonder'd

At trophies of valor by Britain display'd;
But April expiring

Has heard the guns firing,

To sound the sad fall of her glory and trade.

The pow'r of France growing,

All thrones to her bowing,

Our wealth to republican losels a prey,

Our trophies all faded,

Though proudly paraded,

The tackle, which held us, is all cut away.'

This poem, we are told, is written after the manner of the Flovers of the Forest, a song which is characterised by the most melting tenderness and simplicity; qualities not very discernible, we apprehend, in the imitation. The burden, in particular, has been most barbarously parodied.

Of Mr. H.'s powers in blank verse, a more favourable specimon may be quoted:

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Written in the Neigbourhood of Croyland Abbey, 1801,

O venerable pile! whose shatter'd form

From abject Croyland's melancholy site

Looks proudly o'er this wide extended plain,
Much of thine ancient grandeur and high name
Old annals tell; much of fierce elfin shapes,
And fiery forms, amid thy lonely fens
Strange sojourners, who never dared invade
Thy hallow'd precincts, but around them lurk'd
To harm the holy pilgrim wandering nigh.
So monks have fabled; now forlorn thou see'st

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