nto two classes, greater and lesser, and assigns
position in the first to five only--the Saga of Burnt Njal, that of
the dwellers in Laxdale, the _Eyrbyggja_, Egil's Saga, and the Saga of
Grettir the Strong. It is very unlucky that the reception extended by
the English public to the publications of Mr Vigfusson and Professor
York Powell, mentioned in a note above, did not encourage the editors
to proceed to an edition at least of these five sagas together, which
might, according to estimate, have been done in three volumes, two
more containing all the small ones. Meanwhile _Njala_--the great sagas
are all known by familiar diminutives of this kind--is accessible in
English in the late Sir G.W. Dasent's well-known translation;[163] the
_Eyrbyggja_ and _Egla_ in abstracts by Sir Walter Scott[164] and Mr
Gosse;[165] _Laxdaela_ has been treated as it deserves in the longest
and nearly the finest section of Mr Morris's _Earthly Paradise_;[166]
and the same writer with Dr Magnusson has given a literal translation
of _Grettla_.[167]

[Footnote 163: _The Story of Burnt Njal._ Edinburgh, 1861.]

[Footnote 164: Included in the Bohn edition of Mallet's _Northern
Antiquities_.]

[Footnote 165: _Cornhill Magazine_, July 1879.]

[Footnote 166: "The Lovers of Gudrun;" _November_, part iii. p. 337,
original edition. London, 1870.]

[Footnote 167: London, 1869.]

The lesser sagas of the same group are some thirty in number, the best
known or the most accessible being those of Gunnlaug Serpent's-Tongue,
often printed in the original,[168] very short, very characteristic,
and translated by the same hands as _Grettla_;[169] _Viga Glum_,
translated by Sir Edmund Head;[170] _Gisli the Outlaw_ (Dasent);[171]
_Howard_ or _Havard the Halt_, _The Banded Men_, and _Hen Thorir_
(Morris and Magnusson)[172]; _Kormak_, said to be the oldest, and
certainly one of the most interesting.[173]

[Footnote 168: _Gunnlaug's Saga Ormstungu_. Ed. Mogk. Halle, 1886.]

[Footnote 169: In _Three Northern Love-Stories_. London, 1875.]

[Footnote 170: London, 1866.]

[Footnote 171: Edinburgh, 1866.]

[Footnote 172: In one volume. London, 1891.]

[Footnote 173: Not translated, and said to require re-editing in the
original, but very fully abstracted in _Northern Antiquities_, as
above, pp. 321-339. The verse is in the _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_.]

So much of the interest of a saga depends on small points constantly
varied and renewed, that only pretty