ions may be counted up, and their literary value noted. These
are the commission of the present essay. When the record is finished, we
shall be in possession of information that may account for certain
considerable writers of our day, and certain tendencies of thought.

CONTENTS.

Prefatory Note

Introductory

I. The Body of Old Norse Literature

II. Through the Medium of Latin
Thomas Gray
The Sources of Gray's Knowledge
Sir William Temple
George Hickes
Thomas Percy
Thomas Warton
Drake and Mathias
Cottle and Herbert
Walter Scott

III. From the Sources Themselves
Richard Cleasby
Thomas Carlyle
Samuel Laing
Longfellow and Lowell
Matthew Arnold
George Webbe Dasent
Charles Kingsley
Edmund Gosse

IV. By the Hand of the Master
William Morris' works
" " " 1
" " " 2
" " " 3
" " " 4
" " " 5
" " " 6
" " " 7
" " " 8

V. In the Latter Days
Echoes of Iceland in Later Poets
Recent Translations

I.

THE BODY OF OLD NORSE LITERATURE.

First, let us understand what the Old Norse literature was that has been
sending out this constantly increasing influence into the world of
poetry.

It was in the last four decades of the ninth century of our era that
Norsemen began to leave their own country and set up new homes in
Iceland. The sixty years ending with 930 A.D. were devoted to taking up
the land, and the hundred years that ensued after that date were devoted
to quarreling about that land. These quarrels were the origin of the
Icelandic family sagas. The year 1000 brought Christianity to the
island, and the period from 1030 to 1120 were years of peace in which
stories of the former time passed from mouth to mouth. The next century
saw these stories take written form, and the period from 1220 to 1260
was the golden age of this literature. In 1264, Iceland passed under the
rule of Norway, and a decline of literature began, extending until 1400,
the end of literary production in I