( xxviii )
Some people have maintained that all the Fables of the Edda were nothing but the offspring of the Author’s fancy. This even seems to have been the opinion of the famous Huet. We cannot pardon this learned man for the peremptory air he assumes in treating on a subject he so little understood as the antiquities of the north. All he has said upon this subject is full of inaccuracies[1]. To suppose that Snorro invented the Fables of the Edda, plainly proves the maintainer of such an opinion, neither to have read that work, nor the ancient historians of the north, of Germany or of England. It shows him to be ignorant of this great truth, which all the ancient monuments and records of these countries; which all the Greek and Roman writers since the sixth century; which the Runic inscriptions, universal tradition, the popular superstitions, the names of the days, and many modes of speech still in
- ↑ See his book De l’Origine des Romans, p. 116. What is most astonishing is, that he pretends to have himself seen in Denmark, the ancient histories of that country, written in Runic characters on the rocks. Another author, Mr. Deslandes, in his History of Philosophy, affirms, that one finds engraven on those stones the mysteries of the ancient Religion. This shows how little one can rely upon the accounts given of one country in another that lies remote from it.
