Note 259 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.

The songs of the Icelandic Skalds were preserved orally for a period longer than two centuries,—P. A. Müller thinks very much longer,—before they were collected, or embodied in written story by Snorro and Sæmund (Lange, Untersuchungen über die Gesch. der Nördischen Heldensage. p. 98; also, Introduct. pp. xx-xxviii). He confounds, however, often, the preservation of the songs from old time,—with the question, whether they have or have not an historical basis.

And there were, doubtless, many old bards and rhapsodes in ancient Greece, of whom the same might be said which Saxo Grammaticus affirms of an Englishman named Lucas, that he was “literis quidem tenuiter instructus, sed historiarum scientiâ apprime eruditus.” (Dahlmann, Historische Forschungen, vol. ii. p. 176.)