se_ should have made familiar to all the quarrel
or, if hardly quarrel, feud between the cousins Kiartan and Bodli, or
Bolli, owing to the fatal fascinations of Gudrun. Gudrun is less
repulsive than Hallgerd, but she cannot be said to be entirely free
from the drawbacks which, as above suggested, are apt to be found in
the Icelandic heroine. It is more difficult to sentiment, if not to
morality, to pardon four husbands than many times four lovers, and the
only persons with whom Gudrun's relations are wholly agreeable is
Kiartan, who was not her husband. But the pathos of the story, its
artful unwinding, and the famous utterance of the aged heroine--

"I did the worst to him I loved the most,"

which is almost literally from the Icelandic, redeem anything
unsympathetic in the narrative: and the figure of Bodli, a strange
mixture of honour and faithlessness to the friend he loves and
murders, is one of the most striking among the thralls of Venus in
literature.

[Sidenote: Eyrbyggja.]

The defect of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_ is its want of any central
interest; for it is the history not of a person, nor even of one
single family, but of a whole Icelandic district with its inhabitants
from the settlement onwards. Its attraction, therefore, lies rather in
episodes--the rivalry of the sorceresses Katla and Geirrid; the
circumventing of the (in this case rather sinned against than sinning)
bersarks Hall and Leikner; the very curious ghost-stories; and the
artful ambition of Snorri the Godi. Still, to make an attractive
legend of a sort of "county history" may be regarded as a rare
triumph, and the saga is all the more important because it shows,
almost better than any other, the real motive of nearly all these
stories--that they are real _chansons de geste_, family legends, with
a greater vividness and individuality than the French genius could
then impart, though presented more roughly.

[Sidenote: Egla.]

The Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson, again, shifts its special points of
attraction. It is the history partly of the family of Skallagrim, but
chiefly of his son Egil, in opposition to Harald Harfagr and his son
Eric Blood-axe, of Egil's wars and exploits in England and elsewhere,
of his service to King Athelstan at Brunanburh, of the faithfulness of
his friend Arinbiorn, and the hero's consequent rescue from the danger
in which he had thrust himself by seeking his enemy King Eric at York,
of his son's shipwreck and Egi