the most general sense which can be given to that word, we have to notice each of the two particular Eddas, which have been mentioned.

The first is the Edda of Sæmund :—he was born in 1056, travelled to Rome in search of knowledge, returned to his native country about 1076, and died about 1133.

To him the antient Edda, as it is called, in opposition to the Edda afterwards published by Snorro, is ascribed. Two of the most important poems in the Edda of Sæmund, the Voluspa, and Haavamaal, and a third called Odin's Magic, were published by Resenius in separate pamphlets. The Voluspa is the Oracle or Prophecy of Vola, a Scandinavian Sibyl, and contains the whole Mythology of the Edda; the Haavamaal, or the sublime discourse of Odin, contains, in about 120 strophes, certain lessons of morality supposed to be pronounced by Odin himself. Resenius published an edition of it from another manuscript in

1673: the difference between the editions is considerable. These poems were all we possessed of the antient Edda, till the year 1787, when the whole of the Mythologic part of it, not published by Resenius, was printed at Copenhagen, in one large quarto volume. The preface contains an account of the Eddic mythology, and of the Manuscripts from which the poems are printed; a curious life of Sæmund follows, and then the poems: they are thirteen in number. The ninth of them is the journey of Odin to hell, so finely translated by Mr. Gray: he has omitted to translate the five first stanzas; without them it is impossible to comprehend the action of the poem; and even with them, several parts of it are very obscure.-Dreams of a terrible kind had intimated to the god Balder, one of Odin's sons, that he should soon die: he communicated them to the other gods; they were alarmed, and agreed to conjure away the danger with which he was threatened: with

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that view they sent Odin, and Friga his wife, to exact an oath from every object in nature, not to hurt Balder. Odin and Friga executed the commission. Still Odin was uneasy: he called a new council, and not hearing any thing satisfactory, he " up "rose with speed."-Here Mr. Gray's translation of the poem begins: when the prophetess appears, he assumes a feigned name and character, and asks her, in the figurative style of the Edda, for whom the ornamented bed, (such as according to the Eddic Mythology awaited martial he roes in the next life, immediately on their decease), was then prepared; she replies for Balder, and says his shield already hung over the bowl of mead prepared for him; this was another reward of heroes: then follow the questions and replies respecting the author and avenger of Balder's death. Odin then inquires who the virgins are, who so greatly bewail. Balder's fate; by this question, the prophetess in

stantly perceives the deception put on her, and that she is talking to the “ King of Men:"-but it has been asked, how is this intimated by the question? Now in the Edda of Snorro, it is related, that on the death of Balder, Friga his mother, sent Hermod to Hela the goddess of Death, to persuade her to give him up; Hela required that all things animate or inanimate should bewail his death: to this general lamentation Odin refers; the prophetess feels that this is a circumstance which none but Odin could foresee, and she therefore breaks out into the exclamation,

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King of Men, I know thee now!"-This seems to explain the poem satisfactorily. The poem as it stands in Sæmund's Edda, and the account of Balder's death in the Edda of Snorro, may be read as curious specimens of each.

In Sæmund's Edda, the poems are fol

lowed by a Dictionary. It is difficult to ascertain the age of these poems with pre

cision: we have observed that they are of an earlier date than the introduction of Christianity into Iceland by the Norwegian settlers; the arguments of Sæmund's editor to prove they are of the ninth century are very strong.

Such is the antient Edda.-It is evident that Sæmund was at most the compiler of it, and his being the compiler of it, is uncertain; it is by no means clear that we are in possession of all the fables or mythologies originally inserted in the compilation which goes under his name; and that compilation, probably, did not contain all the Eddic fables or mythological tales then

extant.

4. The modern Edda is unquestionably the work of Snorro Sturleson: he was born in 1179, was supreme judge of Iceland from 1215 to 1222, and died in 1241. His work is an abridgment of Eddic mythology in the form of a dialogue. It was published by Resenius in 1665; a new edition,