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of Poetry, amid the few monuments now remaining of ancient Scandinavia: Especially among those Goths and Normans, who contributed so much to replunge Europe into ignorance, and whom many nations have had so much reason to accuse of ferocity and barbarism. Could one have expected to find among such a people, so decisive a taste for an Art which seems peculiarly to require sensibility of soul, a cultivation of mind, and a vivacity and splendor of imagination? for an Art, I say, which one would rather suppose must be one of the last refinements of luxury and politeness.
I trusted we should find the causes of this their love of poetry, in the ruling passion of the ancient Scandinavians ‘for war,’ in the little use they made of writing, and especially in their peculiar system of Religion. What was at first only conjecture, a later research hath enabled me to discover to have been the real case: And I flatter myself that the perusal of the Edda will remove every doubt which may at first have been entertained from the novelty and singularity of the facts which I advanced.
IT now remains for me to relate in a few
words the history of this Book, and to give
a short account of my own labours. I have
already hinted that there have been two
