capable of enjoyment and determined to make the most of it ; not CHAP.
deceived by men's specious ways, but disdaining to cry out because ^ —
he must needs bear with them ; scorning men, yet helping them
when called on, and desirous of fame ; prudent in theory, and wise
in foreseeing the inevitable sequence of events, but reckless even
beyond the recklessness of that time and people, and finally capable
of inspiring in others strong affection and devotion to him in spite of
his rugged self-sufficing temper."^ It is one thing if this is to be
regarded as the portrait of a man who really lived and died on this
earth, or as the picture of some inhabitant of the Phaiakian cloud-
land. The translators raise a vital issue when they say that " to us
moderns the real interest in these records of a past state of life lies
principally in seeing events true in the main treated vividly and
dramatically by people who completely understood the manners, life,
and above all the turn of mind of the actors in them."^ If we have
any honest anxiety to ascertain facts, and if we are prepared to give
credit to a narrative only when the facts have been so ascertained,
then everything is involved in the question whether the events here
related are true in the main or not The genealogies given in the
earlier part of the Saga agree, we are told, with those of the Land-
nama-bok and of the other most trustworthy Sagas ; yet such names
tell us as much and as little as the names in the genealogy of the
tale-maker Hekataios. A catalogue of names belonging to real
persons cannot impart authority to a narrative of fictitious events, if
they are fictitious; and when we have put aside these genealogies
and the names of one or two kings, as of Olaf, Hacon, and Harold
Fairhair, we have numbered all the historical elements in the book :
nor is it necessary to say that some safeguard is wanted when we
remember that the Carolingian romances take the great Karl to
Jerusalem,
If then we have before us a story, some of the incidents of which Materials are manifestly impossible or absurd, we are scarcely justified iug*^^^^ accepting, on the mere authority of the Saga, other portions which involve no such difficulties. We have the alternative of rejecting the whole story without troubling ourselves to examine it further, or we may take it to pieces, reducing it to its constituent elements, and then seeing whether these elements are to be found in any other narratives. If this should be the case, the character of the narratives in which these common elements are seen will go far towards deter- mining the credibility of the story. Clearly the latter course is the more philosophical and the more honest That the translators had
'P. xiv. * p. xiii.
