edge of which all this gain had come to him, To which last acquisitions adding his previously acquired Invulnerability, and his natural dignities as Prince of Netherland, he might well show himself before the foremost at Worms or elsewhere; and attempt any the highest adventure that fortune could cut out for him. However, his subsequent history belongs all to the “Nibelungen Song”; at which fair garden of poesy we are now, through all these shaggy wildernesses and enchanted woods, finally arrived.
Apart from its antiquarian value, and not only as by far the finest monument of old German art; but intrinsically, and as a mere detached composition, this “Nibelungen” has an excellence that cannot but surprise us. With little preparation, any reader of poetry, even in these days, might find it interesting, It is not without a certain Unity of interest and purport, an internal coherence and completeness; it is a Whole, and some spirit of
Music informs it: these are the highest characteristics of a true
Velint, once an apprentice of his) was challenged by another Craftsman, named Amilias, who boasted that he had made a suit of armour which no stroke could dint,—to equal that feat, or own himself the second Smith then extant. This last the stout Mimer would in no case do, but proceeded to forge the Sword Mimung; with which, when it was finished, he, “in presence of the King,” cut asunder “a thread of wool floating on water.” This would have scemed a fair fire-edge to most smiths: not so to Mimer; he sawed the blade in pieces, welded it in “a red-hot fire for three days,” tempered it “with milk and oatmeal,” and by much other cunning brought out a sword that severed, “a ball of wool floating on water.” But neither would this suffice him; he returned to his smithy, and by means known only to himself, produced, in the course of seven weeks, a third and final edition of Mimung, which split asunder a whole floating pack of wool. The comparative trial now took place forthwith. Amilias, cased in his impenetrable coat of mail, sat down on a hench, in presence of assembled thousands, and bade Mimer strike him. Mimer fetched of course his best blow, on which Amilias observed, that there was a strange feeling of cold iron in his inwards. “Shake thyself,” said Mimer; the luckless wight did so, and fell in two halves, being cleft sheer through from collar to haunch, never more to swing hammer in this world. See “Illustrations of Northern Antiquities,” p. 31.
