The translations are twelve in number, and evince an intelligent and facile versifier.  When all is said, these old songs could contribute to the pleasure of very few.  Only a student of history, or a poet, or an antiquarian, would dwell with loving interest on the lays of Vafthrudnis, Grimner, Skirner and Hymer (as Cottle spells them).  Besides, they are difficult to read, and must be abundantly annotated to make them comprehensible.  In such works as this of Cottle, a Scott might find wherewith to lend color to a story or a poem, but the common man would borrow Walpole’s words, used in characterizing Gray’s “Odes”:  “They are not interesting, and do not ... touch any passion; our human feelings ... are not here affected.  Who can care through what horrors a Runic savage arrived at all the joys and glories they could conceive—­the supreme felicity of boozing ale out of the skull of an enemy in Odin’s hall?"[12]

In 1804 a book was published bearing this title-page:  Select Icelandic Poetry, translated from the originals:  with notes.  The preface was signed by the author, William Herbert.  The pieces are from Saemund, Bartholinus, Verelius, and Perinskjoeld’s edition of Heimskringla, and were all translated with the assistance of the Latin versions.  The notes are explanatory of the allusions and the hiatuses in the poems.  Reference is made to MSS. of the Norse pieces existing in museums and libraries, which the author had consulted.  Thus we see scholarship beginning to extend investigations.  As for the verses themselves not much need be said.  They are not so good as Cottle’s, although they received a notice from Scott in the Edinburgh Review.  The thing to notice about the work is that it pretends to come direct from Old Norse, not, as most of the work dealt with so far, via Latin.

Icelandic poetry is more difficult to read than Icelandic prose, and so it seems strange that the former should have been attacked first by English scholars.  Yet so it was, and until 1844 our English literature had no other inspiration in old Norse writings than the rude and rugged songs that first lent their lilt to Gray.  The human North is in the sagas, and when they were revealed to our people, Icelandic literature began to mean something more than Valhalla and the mead-bouts there.  The scene was changed to earth, and the gods gave place to nobler actors, men and women.  The action was lifted to the eminence of a world-drama.  But before the change came Sir Walter Scott, and it is fitting that the first period of Norse influence in English literature should close, as it began, with a great master.

SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832).

In 1792, Walter Scott was twenty-one years old, and one of his note-books of that year contains this entry:  “Vegtam’s Kvitha or The Descent of Odin, with the Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the English poetical version of Mr. Gray; with some account of the Death of Balder, both as related in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the Northern historians—­Auctore Gualtero Scott.”  According to Lockhart,[13] the Icelandic, Latin and English versions were here transcribed, and the historical account that followed—­seven closely written quarto pages—­was read before a debating society.