III. FROM THE SOURCES THEMSELVES.

In the preceding section we noted the achievements of English scholarship and genius working under great disadvantages. Gray and Scott may have had a smattering of Icelandic, but Latin translations were necessary to reveal the meaning of what few Old Norse texts were available to them. This paucity of material, more than the ignorance of the language, was responsible for the slow progress in popularizing the remarkable literature of the North. Scaldic and Eddie poems comprised all that was known to English readers of that literature, and in them the superhuman rather than the human elements were predominant.

We have come now to a time when the field of our view broadens to include not only more and different material, but more and different men. The sagas were annexed to the old songs, and the body of literature to attract attention was thus increased a thousand fold. The antiquarians were supplanted by scholars who, although passionately devoted to the study of the past, were still vitally interested in the affairs of the time in which they lived. The second and greatest stage of the development of Old Norse influence in England has a mark of distinction that belongs to few literary epochs. The men who made it lived lives that were as heroic in devotion to duty and principle as many of those written down in the sagas themselves. I have sometimes wondered whether it is merely accidental that English saga scholars were so often men of high soul and strong action. Certain it is that Richard Cleasby, and Samuel Laing, and George Webbe Dasent, and Robert Lowe are types of men that the Icelanders would have celebrated, as having "left a tale to tell" in their full and active lives. And no less certain is it that Thomas Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold, and William Morris, and Charles Kingsley, and Gerald Massey labored for a better manhood that should rise to the stature and reflect the virtues of the heroes of the Northland.

RICHARD CLEASBY (1797-1847).

In the forties of the nineteenth century several minds began to work, independently of one another, in this wider field of Icelandic literature. Richard Cleasby (1797-1847), an English merchant's son with scholarly instincts, began the study of the sagas, but made slight progress because of what he called an "unaccountable and most scandalous blank," the want of a dictionary. This was in 1840, and for the next seven years he labored to fill up that blank. The record ^[16] of those years is a wonderful witness to the heroism and spirit of the scholar, and justifies Sir George Dasent's characterization of Cleasby as "one of the most indefatigable students that ever lived." The work thus begun was not completed until many years afterward (it is dated 1874), and, by untoward circumstances, very little of it is Richard Cleasby's. But generous scholarship acknowledged its debt to the man who gave his strength and his wealth to the work, by placing his name on the title-page. No less shall we fail to honor his memory by mentioning his labors here. Although the dictionary was not completed in the decade of its inception, the study that it was designed to promote took hold on a number of men and the results were remarkable for both literature and scholarship.

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881).

First in order of time was the work of Thomas Carlyle. It will not seem strange to the student of English literature to find that this writer came under the influence of the old skalds and sagaman and spoke appreciative words concerning them. His German studies had to take cognizance of the Old Norse treasuries of poetry, and he became a diligent reader of Icelandic literature in what translations he could get at, German and English. The strongest utterance on the subject that he left behind him is in "Lecture I" of the series "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History," dated May, 1840. This is a treatment of Scandinavian mythology, rugged and thorough, like all of this man's work. Carlyle evinces a scholar's instinct in more than one place, as, for instance, when he doubts the grandmother etymology of Edda, an etymology repeated until a much later day by scholars of a less sure sense. ^[17] But this lecture "On Heroes" is also a glorification of the literature with which we are dealing, and in this regard it is worthy of special note here.

In the first place, Carlyle with true critical instinct caught the essence of it; to him it seemed to have "a rude childlike way of recognizing the divineness of Nature, the divineness of Man." For him Scandinavian mythology was superior in sincerity to the Grecian, though it lacked the grace of the latter. "Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these old Northmen were looking into Nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way. A right valiant, true old race of men." This is a truer appreciation than Gray and Walpole had, eighty years before. In the second place, Carlyle was not misled into thinking that valor in war was the only characteristic of the rude Norseman, and skill in drinking his only household virtue. "Beautiful traits of pity, too, and honest pity." Then he tells of Baldur and Nanna, in his rugged prose account anticipating Matthew Arnold. Other qualities of the literature appeal to him. "I like much their robust simplicity; their veracity, directness of conception. Thor 'draws down his brows' in a veritable Norse rage; 'grasps his hammer till the knuckles grow white." Again; "A great broad Brobdignag grin of true humor is this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and sadness, as the rainbow on the black tempest: only a right valiant heart is capable of that." Still again: "This law of mutation, which also is a law written in man's inmost thought, has been deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers in their rude style."

Thomas Carlyle, seeking to explain the worship of a pagan divinity, chose Odin as the noblest example of such a hero. The picture of Odin he drew from the prose Edda, mainly, and his purpose required that he paint the picture in the most attractive colors. So it happened that our English literature got its first complete view of Old Norse ethics and art. The memory of Gray's "dreadful songs" had ruled for almost a century, and ordinary readers might be pardoned for thinking that Old Norse literature, like Old Norse history, was written in blood. We have seen that Gray's imitators perpetuated the old idea, and that even Scott sanctioned it, and now we see England's emancipation from it. The grouty old Scotchman of Craigenputtoch knew no more Icelandic than most of his fellow countrymen (be it noted that he said: "From the Humber upwards, all over Scotland, the speech of the common people is still in a singular degree Icelandic, its Germanism has still a peculiar Norse tinge"); but he saw far more deeply into the heart of Icelandic literature than anybody before him. His emphasis of its many sidedness, of its sincerity, its humanity, its simplicity, its directness, its humor and its wisdom, was the signal for a change in the popular estimation of its worth to our modern art. Since his day we have had Morris and Arnold and a host of minor singers, and the nineteenth century revival of interest in Old Norse literature.

The other work by Carlyle dealing directly with Old Norse material is The Early Kings of Norway. Here he digests Heimskringla, which was obtainable through Laing's translation, in a way to stir the blood. The story, as he tells it, is breathlessly interesting, and it is a pity that readers of Carlyle so often stop short of this work. As in the Hero-Worship, he shows this Teutonic bias, and the religious training that minified Greek literature.

Snorri's work elicits from him repeated applause. Here, for instance, in Chap. X: "It has, all of it, the description (and we see clearly the fact itself had), a kind of pathetic grandeur, simplicity, and rude nobleness; something Epic or Homeric, without the metre or the singing of Homer, but with all the sincerity, rugged truth to nature, and much more of piety, devoutness, reverence for what is ever high in this universe, than meets us in those old Greek Ballad-mongers."

SAMUEL LAING (1780-1868).

It was the work of Samuel Laing that gave Carlyle the material for this last-mentioned book. ^[18] Laing's translation of Heimskringla bears the date 1844, and although Mr. Dasent's quaint version of the Prose Edda preceded it by two years, The Sagas of the Norse Kings was the "epoch-making" book. It is true that a later version has superseded it in literary and scholarly finish, but Laing's work was a pioneer of sterling intrinsic value, and many there be that do it homage still. Laing had the laudable ambition—so seldom found in these days—"to give a plain, faithful translation into English of the Heimskringla, unencumbered with antiquarian research, and suited to the plain English reader." ^[19] With this work, then, Icelandic lore passes out of the hands of the antiquarian into the hands of common readers. It matters little that the audience is even still fit and few; from this time on he that runs may read.

For our purpose it will not be necessary to characterize the translation. Laing commanded an excellent style, and he was enthusiastic over his work. Indeed, the commonest criticism passed on the "Preliminary Dissertation" was that the author's zeal had run away with his good sense. Be that as it may, Laing called the attention of his readers to the neglect of a literature and a history which should be England's pride, as Anglo-Saxon literature and history even then were. The reviews of the time made it appear as if another Battle of the Books were impending—Anglo-Saxon versus Icelandic; a writer in the English Review (Vol. 82, p. 316), pro-Saxon in his zeal, admitting at last that "of none of the children of the Norse, whether Goth or Frank, Saxon or Scandinavian, have the others any reason to be ashamed. All have earned the gratitude and admiration of the world, and their combined or successive efforts have made England and Europe what they are."

It is refreshing to come upon new views of Old Norse character, that recognize "amidst anarchy and bloodshed, redeeming features of kindliness and better feeling which tell of the mingled principles that war within our nature for the mastery." Laing's translation accomplished this for English readers, and with the years came a deeper knowledge that showed those touches of tenderness and traits of beauty which, even in 1844, were not perceptible to those readers.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882).

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819-1891).

The Story of the Norse Kings, thus translated by an Englishman, suggested to our American poet, Longfellow, a series of lyrics on King Olaf. The young college professor that wrote about Frithjof's Saga in the North American Review for 1837, was bound, sooner or later, to come back to the field when he found that the American reading public would listen to whatever songs he sang to them. Before 1850, Longfellow had written "The Challenge of Thor," a poem which imitated the form of Icelandic verse and catches much of its spirit. In 1859, the thought came to him "that a very good poem might be written on the Saga of King Olaf, who converted the North to Christianity." Two years later he completed the lyrics that compose "The Musician's Tale" in The Tales of a Wayside Inn, published in 1863, and in this work "The Challenge of Thor" serves as a prelude. The pieces after this prelude are not imitations of the Icelandic verse, but are like Tegner's Frithjof's Saga, in that each new portion has a meter of its own. There is not, either, a consistent effort to put the flavor of the North into the poetry, so that, properly speaking, we have here only the retelling of an old tale. The ballad fervor and movement are often perceptible, though nowhere does the poet strike the ringing note of "The Skeleton in Armor," published in the volume of 1841.

Truth to tell, Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf" is not a remarkable work. One who reads the few chapters in Carlyle's Early Kings of Norway that deal with Olaf Tryggvason gets more of the fire and spirit of the old saga at every turning. The poet chooses scenes and incidents very skilfully, but for their proper presentation a terseness is necessary that is not reconcilable with frequent rhymes. Compare the saga account with the poem's: "What is this that has broken?" asked King Olaf. "Norway from thy hand, King," answered Tamberskelver.

Nevertheless, Longfellow is to be thanked for acquainting a wide circle of readers with the sterling saga literature.

One other American poet was busy with the ancient Northern literature at this time. James Russell Lowell wrote one notable poem that is Old Norse in subject and spirit, "The Voyage to Vinland." The third part of the poem, "Gudrida's Prophecy," hints at Icelandic versification, and the short lines are hammer-strokes that warm the reader to enthusiasm. Far more of the spirit of the old literature is in this short poem than is to be found in the whole of Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf." The character of Biörn is well drawn, recalling Bodli, of Morris' poem, in its principal features. Certainly there is a reflection here of that Old Norse conception of life which gave to men's deeds their due reward, and which exalted the power of will. This poem was begun in 1850, but was not published till 1868.

In Lowell's poems are to be found many figures and allusions pointing to his familiarity with Icelandic song and story. At the end of the third strophe of the "Commemoration Ode," for instance, Truth is pictured as Brynhild,

In these borrowings of themes and allusions, Lowell is at one with most of the poets of the present day. It used to be the fashion, and is still, for tables of contents in volumes of verse to show titles like these: "Prometheus"; "Iliad VIII, 542-561"; "Alectryon." Present-day volumes are becoming more and more besprinkled with titles like these: "Balder the Beautiful"; "The Death of Arnkel," etc. In this fact alone is seen the turn of the tide. Heroes and heroines in dramas and novels are beginning to bear Old Norse names, even where the setting is not northern; witness Sidney Dobell's Balder, where not even a single allusion is made to Icelandic matters.

MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888).

Matthew Arnold's strong sympathy with noble and virile literature of whatever age or nation led him in time to Old Norse, and his poem "Balder Dead" is of distinct importance among the works of the nineteenth century in English literature. It is an addition of permanent value to our poetry, because of its marked originality and its high ethical tone. "Mallet, and his version of the Edda, is all the poem is based upon," says Arnold. ^[20] It is the poet's divinely implanted instinct that gathers from the few chapters of an old book a knowledge wonderfully full and deep of the cosmogony and eschatology of the northern nations of Europe. "Balder Dead" tells the familiar story of the whitest of the gods, but it also contains the essence of Old Icelandic religion; indeed there is no single short work in our language which gives a tithe of the information about the North, its spirit, and its philosophy, which this poem of Matthew Arnold's sets forth. In future days a text-book of original English poems will be in the hands of our boys and girls which will enable them to get, through the medium of their own language, the message and the spirit of foreign literature. Old Norse song will need no other representative than Matthew Arnold's "Balder Dead."

This is an original poem. It does not imitate the verse nor the word of the older song, but the flavor of it is here. Gray and his imitators drew from the Icelandic fountain "dreadful songs" and many poets since have heard no milder note. Matthew Arnold's instincts were for peace and the arts of peace, and he found in Balder a type for the ennobling of our own century. Balder says to his brother who has come to lament that Lok's machinations will keep the best beloved of the gods in Niflheim:

Arnold has exalted the Revelator of the Northern mythology, and in magnificent poetry sets forth his apocalyptic vision:

Here is the grandest message that the Old Norse religion had to give, and Matthew Arnold concerned himself with that alone. It is a far cry from Regner Lodbrog to this. There is a fine touch in the introduction of Regner into the lamentation of Balder. Arnold makes the old warrior say of the ruder skalds:

Here is a human Norseman, a figure not often presented in the versions of the old stories that English poets and romancers have given us. Arnold did a good service to Icelandic literature when he put into Regner's mouth mild sentiments and a love for home and family. The note is not lacking in the ancient literature, but it took Englishmen three centuries to find it. It was the scholar, Matthew Arnold, who first repeated the gentler strain in the rude music of the North, as it was the scholar, Thomas Gray, who first echoed the "dreadful songs" of that old psalmody. Gray has all the culture of his age, when it was still possible to compass all knowledge in one lifetime; Arnold had all the literary culture of his fuller century when multiplied sciences force a scholar to be content with one segment of human knowledge. The former had music and architecture and other sciences among his accomplishments; the latter spread out in literature, as "Sohrab and Rustum," "Empedocles on Etna," "Tristram and Iseult," as well as "Balder Dead" attest. The quatrain prefixed to the volume containing the narrative and elegiac poems be-tokens what joy Arnold had in his literary work, and indicates why these poems cannot fail to live:

Balder is the creation of Old Norse poetry that is most popular with contemporary English writers, and Matthew Arnold first made him so. As Bugge points out, no deed of his is "celebrated in song or story. His personality only is described; of his activity in life almost no external trait is recorded. All the stress is laid upon his death; and, like Christ, Baldr dies in his youth." ^[21]

SIR GEORGE WEBBE DASENT (1820-1896).

Among the scholars who have labored to give England the benefit of a fuller and truer knowledge of Norse matters, none will be remembered more gratefully than Sir George Webbe Dasent. Known to the reading public most widely by his translations of the folk-tales of Asbjörnsen and Moe, he has still a claim upon the attention of the students of Icelandic. As we have seen, he gave out a translation of the Younger Edda in 1842, and during the half century and more that followed he wrote other works of history and literature connected with our subject. Two saga translations were published in 1861 and 1866, The Story of Burnt Njal, and The Story of Gisli the Outlaw, which will always rank high in this class of literature. Njala especially is an excellent piece of work, a classic among translations. The "Prolegomena" is rich in information, and very little of it has been superseded by later scholarship. In 1887 and 1894 he translated for the Master of the Rolls, The Orkney Saga and The Saga of Hakon, the texts of which Vigfusson had printed in the same series some years before. The interest of the government in Icelandic annals connected with English history is indicated in these last publications, and England is fortunate to have had such enthusiastic scholars as Vigfusson and Dasent to do the work. These men had been collaborators on the Cleasby Dictionary, and in this work as in all others Dasent displayed an eagerness to have his countrymen know how significant England's relationship to Iceland was. He was as certain as Laing had been before him of the preeminence of this literature among the mediæval writings. Like Laing, too, he would have the general reader turn to this body of work "which for its beauty and richness is worthy of being known to the greatest possible number of readers." ^[22]

To mark the progress away from the old conception of unmitigated brutality these words of Dasent stand here: ^[23] "The faults of these Norsemen were the faults of their time; their virtues they possessed in larger measure than the rest of their age, and thus when Christianity had tamed their fury, they became the torch-bearers of civilization; and though the plowshare of Destiny, when it planted them in Europe, uprooted along its furrow many a pretty flower of feeling in the lands which felt the fury of these Northern conquerers, their energy and endurance gave a lasting temper to the West, and more especially to England, which will wear so long as the world wears, and at the same time implanted principles of freedom which shall never be rooted out. Such results are a compensation for many bygone sorrows."

CHARLES KINGSLEY (1819-1875).

In 1874, Charles Kingsley visited America and delivered some lectures. Among these was one entitled "The First Discovery of America." This interests us here because it displays an appreciation, if not a deep knowledge, of Icelandic literature. In it the lecturer commended to Longfellow's attention a ballad sung in the Faroes, begging him to translate it some day, "as none but he can translate it." "It is so sad, that no tenderness less exquisite than his can prevent its being painful; and at least in its denouement, so naive, that no purity less exquisite than his can prevent its being dreadful." ^[24] Later in the lecture he commends to his hearers the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson, the "Homer of the North." ^[25]

Speaking of the elements that mingled to produce the British character, Kingsley says: "In manners as well as in religion, the Norse were humanized and civilized by their contact with the Celts, both in Scotland and in Ireland. Both peoples had valor, intellect, imagination: but the Celt had that which the burly, angular Norse character, however deep and stately, and however humorous, wanted; namely, music of nature, tenderness, grace, rapidity, playfulness; just the qualities, combining with the Scandinavian (and in Scotland with the Angle) elements of character which have produced, in Ireland and in Scotland, two schools of lyric poetry second to none in the world." ^[26] Over the page, Kingsley has this to say: "For they were a sad people, those old Norse forefathers of ours." ^[27] Humorous and sad are not inconsistent words in these sentences; the Norseman had a sense of the ludicrous, and could jest grimly in the face of death. Of the sadness of his life, no one needs to be told who has read a saga or two. Kingsley says: "There is, in the old sagas, none of that enjoyment of life which shines out everywhere in Greek poetry, even through its deepest tragedies. Not in complacency with Nature's beauty, but in the fierce struggle with her wrath, does the Norseman feel pleasure." ^[28]

This lecture shows a deeper acquaintance with Old Norse literature than Kingsley was willing to acknowledge. Not only are the stories well chosen which he uses throughout, but the intuitions are sound, and the inferences based upon them. He anticipated the work of this investigation in the last words of the address. He has been telling the fine story of Thormod at Sticklestead:

"I shall not insult your intelligence by any comment or even epithet of my own. I shall but ask you, Was not this man your kinsman? Does not the story sound, allowing for all change of manners as well as of time and place, like a scene out of your own Bret Harte or Colonel John Hay's writings; a scene of the dry humor, the rough heroism of your own far West? Yes, as long as you have your Jem Bludsos and Tom Flynns of Virginia City, the old Norse blood is surely not extinct, the old Norse spirit is not dead." ^[29]

EDMUND GOSSE (1849-).

Among contemporary English poets who have taught the world of readers that things Norse are worthy of attention, is Edmund Gosse. He has been more intimately connected with the popularization of modern Norwegian literature, notably of Ibsen, but he has also found in Old Norse story themes for poetic treatment. We mention "The Death of Arnkel," found in the volume Firdausi in Exile, more because it shows that our poets are turning to the gesta islandicorum for themes, than because it is a remarkable poem. More pretentious is King Erik, a Tragedy, London, 1876. Here is a noble drama which displays an intimate acquaintance with the literature that gave it its themes and inspiration. The author dedicates it to Robert Browning, calling it:

I have often thought that fate was very unkind to keep Browning so persistently in the south of Europe, when, in Iceland and Norway, were mines that he could have worked in to such supreme advantage. To be sure his method clashes with the simplicity of the Old Norse manner, but from him we should have had men and women superb in stature and virility, and perhaps the Arctic influence would have killed the troublesome tropicality of his language.

This drama by Gosse is not strictly Icelandic in motive. Jealousy was not the passion to loosen the tongue of the sagaman, and in so far as that is the theme of "King Erik," the play is not Old Norse in origin. Christian material, too, has been introduced that gives a modern tinge to the drama, but there is enough of the genuine saga spirit to warrant attention to it here. Something more than the names is Icelandic. Here is a woman, Botilda, with strength of character enough to recall a Brynhild or a Bergthora. Gisli is the foster-brother that takes up the blood-feud for Grimur. Adalbjörg and Svanhilda are the whisperers of slander and the workers of ill. Marcus is the skald who is making a poem about the king. Here are customs and beliefs distinctly Norse:

Although this work is dramatic in form, it is not so in spirit. The true dramatist would have put such an incident as the swearing of brotherhood into a scene, instead of into a speech. This effort is, however, the nearest approach to a drama in English founded on saga material. It is curious that our poets have inclined to every form but the drama in reproducing Old Norse literature. It is not that saga-stuff is not dramatic in possibilities. Ewald and Oehlenschläger have used this material to excellent effect in Danish dramas. Had the sagas been accessible to Englishmen in Shakespeare's time, we should certainly have had dramas of Icelandic life.