there is a distinct progress in the narrative, but it is nevertheless wholly without methodical combination of the separate parts into a well-ordered whole. Herein they differ also from those poetical Epics which we have found agreeing with them in being virtually anonymous. Nothing can exceed the grace, the finish, the perfection of style, of those immortal poems which are known as Homeric. The northern Epics are indeed simpler, ruder, far more destitute of literary merit. The first part, for instance, of the Edda Saemundar (which perhaps ought not to be called an Epic at all) is to the last degree uncouth and barbarous. But then the subject-matter of this portion of the Edda is such as belongs properly to Sacred Books, and had it ever been actually current among the Scandinavians as a canonical work—of which we have no evidence—it would be entitled to a place among them. When we come to the second or heroic portion of this Edda, the case is different. The mode of treatment is still rude and unattractive, but if, unrepelled by the outward form, we study the longest of the narratives which this division contains—the Saga of the Valsungs—we shall discover in it a tale, which for the exquisite pathos of its sentiments, for the deep and tragic interest which centres round the principal characters, for the vivid delineation by a few brief touches of the intensest suffering, is scarcely surpassed even by the far more finished productions of Hellenic genius. No doubt the foundation of the story is mythological, and this throws over many of its incidents a grotesqueness which goes far in modern eyes to mar the effect. But the mythological incidents of the Iliad and the Odyssey are grotesque also, and it requires all the genius of the poet to render them tolerable. Apart from this groundwork, the Volsunga-Saga treats its personages as human, and claims from its readers a purely human interest in their various adventures. It relates these adventures in a connected form, it depicts the feelings of the several actors with all the sympathy of the dramatist, and draws no moral, teaches no lesson. In the whole range of sacred literature I recollect nothing like this. Stories are doubtless told in it, but we are made to feel that they are subservient to an ulterior purpose. In the Old Testament and in the New, they serve to enforce the theological doctrines of the writers; in
