ther perhaps those sectarians them. selves, denominate Rational Theologians, but at an early age was converted to the established religion of Denmark, namely, Lutheranism; and he first appeared in the field of literature as a vigorous and orthodox polemic in divinity. The profoundly learned Germans do not, indeed, esteem Grundtvig a thoroughly grounded theologian; but even they hold him qualified to discuss such subjects, and his acquired knowledge, when combined with his great natural abilities, is held sufficient to render him a distinguished writer; whilst it must be stated, to the credit of his moral character, that, upon the sincerity of his conversion, or the purity of its motives, not a shadow of suspicion has ever been cast. The merits of his sermons and theological writings procured him, in the year 1822, an appointment as pastor to a Copenhagen parish. But he did not long retain this office. He is generally somewhat violent in his polemical character, and the virulence with which he assailed the orthodoxy of a work published three years afterwards by Clausen, Professor of Theology at the Copenhagen University, was such as to provoke an appeal to the tribunals of justice on the part of his opponent. The professor obtained a favourable verdict, and Grundtvig lost his benefice. We cannot call in question a religious zeal thus vehement in its workings; yet neither can we believe that the ex-preacher greatly regretted a result which left him at liberty to devote his time and thoughts more completely to the history, mythology, and literature of the Scandinavians and AngloSaxons, which last he esteems the first of the cognate nations in spirit of life as in literature. Of Grundtvig's diligence in this department, it may suffice to say, that, in addition to his work upon Northern Mythology-of which presently-and several original poems upon the Hero-life of the North, he has translated-or shall we say rendered? for his version is, we are told, "free and genial"— into Danish, the Latin and Icelandic histories of Deumark and Norway, by Saxo Grammaticus and Snorro Sturleson; as also a variety of Scan

dinavian poems, and the Anglo Saxon epic, Beowulf, recently made known, by name at least, to the British public through the successful labours of the most distinguished of our English Anglo-Saxon scholars, Mr John Kemble, a worthy descendant of his gifted family. Further, Grundtvig at one time undertook to edit, in London, all our AngloSaxon MSS., under the title of Bibliotheca Anglo-Saxonica; but this enterprise, we believe, proved a failure.

We now turn to that one of his books which has produced most literary sensation in Denmark, and, by attracting our attention, has given rise to these remarks. It is entitled "Norden's Mythologi, eller Sindbil led-Sprog;" Anglicé, "The North's Mythology, or Symbolical Language," and has a twofold purpose; namely, to change and elevate, as before hinted, the received opinions touching the allegory concealed under mythological lore, and to put down that object of his especial detestation, Roman-Italian, or ItalicoRoman learning, substituting in its stead a Greco-Norse, or New Da nish. This Italico-Roman learning, or Roman yoke, he reprobates mainly, it should seem, from the circumstance of Latin being a dead language; for, mirabile dictu, our voluminous writer disdains the pen, placing all power of argument or of persuasion in the living voice; and one reason for his preference of Greek and Norse is their reflected or ghost-like life, in the resemblance borne them by the living Romaic and Icelandic languages. He, however, further holds the Greeks and Scandinavians to be the only naturally and rationally developed nations with which we are acquainted.

We shall now offer our readers a specimen of the manner in which this most original and polemical author defends his own theories, and impugns those of his antagonists; and if the eager bitterness of his style upon subjects which, however pleasing to our fancy, have no vital hold upon our essential interests, provokes a smile, it may likewise teach us to commiserate the luckless professor of theology, who incurred its sarcastic virulence

upon points importing his welfare or perdition here and hereafter. Grundtvig thus declares war against Latin:

"I aver, first, that in no country is this Italico-Roman erudition so firmly rooted as in England. I aver further, that it is not worth preserving, because it stands up in enmity against all actual life in the spiritual (or intellectual) world; and therefore, so far from leading to any elucidation of life and spirit, it has, on the contrary, all its days, except during the few moments that Luther yoked it to the triumphal car of intellect, led to national death, and spiritual abrogation.

"Finally, I aver, that if we contemplate the intellectual world with Northman eyes in the light of Christianity, we may then gain a notion of a universal historical developement of an art and science, comprehending the whole of human life, with all its powers, conditions, and operations; and which, emancipating, strength ening, and enlightening every thing connected with the temporal welfare of the individual, the nation, or the human race, must necessarily lead to the most complete interpretation of life that upon earth is possible. This Greco Norse, or New-Danish developement of life and intellectual creation it is that gives to those northern Myths, in which the germ has been preserved, an importance to human history, and it is of this species of knowledge that I would here give a sketch, as well in itself as in its opposition to the ItalicoRoman life tormentor and intellect

consumer.

"It is a historical fact, that almost all Roman literature, especially Roman belles lettres, was imitated. Now, what sort of erudition could grow out of such a literature, when, moreover, Latin had become the corpse of a dead language, was easy to guess; but this erudition dies hard. Heavy is the Roman yoke in all its forms; as the chains of the Roman Cæsars, as the crosier of the Roman Pope, as the birch rod in the hand of the Latin schoolmaster. The chains it was the vocation of the

Northmen and the Germans to burst; the crosier it was their pleasure to snap; but the rod they have reverently kissed, although it was perhaps the most dangerous, most pernicious weapon in the disguised homicide's hand, since it frightened the mothers out of their lives, and whipped the children out of theirs, till no men were left to break it."

We now turn to the more pleasing object of the enthusiastic Dane's volume, and will endeavour to exhibit his theory in his own words. But, as he no where presents it in a fully developed system, it will, perhaps, be more readily intelligible if we briefly explain before hand, that Grundtvig considers all mythology as metaphysical allegory, resting upon a philosophical view of human nature, chiefly in the social condition; different mythologies typifying such views differently, according to the various temperament and spirit of the several nations of the earthGreek mythology, e. g., symbolizing the progress of political society, Scandinavian the spirit of martial he. roism.

"If we would learn from history the progress of human developement, we must take enlarged views, wherein a little more or less will make no difference; for who can doubt that, relatively, the whole of Antiquity was the age of imagination, the Middle Ages that of feeling, and Modern Times that of the understanding or of reflection? Accordingly, is not the literature of antiquity clearly the most poetical, that of the middle ages the most historical, and that of modern times the most philosophical? If we now refer this to our daily experience, we find that, relatively, imagination always prevaiis in youth, feeling in manhood, and the understanding in old age. And as every given nation is only a union of individuals, and a portion of mankind, we might know, a priori, that every nation must really have followed the same course, although deficient information, or particular circumstances of perplexity, may make the traces fainter amongst one people than another.

"Mean while, had the moderns, who undertook to expound the ancients, possessed a scientific spirit, they would have devoted their whole attention to the Greeks, the only one of the ancient natural nations" (he considers the Israelites and the Romans as artificial nations)" that is historically known through the whole. period of developement,-that is to say, the five hundred years that separate Solon from Augustus; and it would then be seen that, relatively, the time before Solon belonged wholly to the imagination, that feeling reigned between him and Alexander, and after Alexander the understanding."

This system is, however, most agreeably developed in its application to mythological legends, and we will now give our author's version of a classical myth. He begins by telling the tale; and this we could perhaps do more concisely, more to the taste of our countrymen ; but Grundtvig's manner is so idiosyncratic that really to alter his style seems much like destroying his identity; wherefore, as we have a fancy for making our readers well acquainted with him, we shall still content ourselves with the humbler task of translating and cutting out

Chronos was the son of Uranos+ and Ge, and when he was deposed, his three well-known sons divided the world amongst themselves, the earth excepted, which they seem to have forgotten. Zeus took heaven, Poseidon the sea, and Aides, or Pluto, the realm of shades, which Northmen call Hell, by which, however, we understand a region not of heat but of cold. Pluto seems to have been of our mind; he, therefore, resolved to share his cold, empty grandeur with a warm beauty, and his choice fell upon the lovely Persephone, § daughter of Zeus and Demeter. * He surprised her whilst innocently gathering lilies, and she wept bitterly during her compelled elopement, although carried off in a golden chariot. Her mother's earnest entreaties obtained for her permission to visit the earth,

• Saturn.

+ Heaven.

or perhaps only Olympus, every spring and summer; and there, by Zeus, in the form of a snake, she became the mother of Zagreus, who is likewise called Bacchus. * I will now intrust the reader with my notion as to what could so inspire the old poets and their Greek hearers in favour of these Chronides, upon whom they lavished what they had not to give, the whole world, and divinity.

"Methinks I see the blind old mythologist ***He stands amidst the Isthmian games, with drooping head, wrinkled brow, and snowwhite hair, listening to the flowery lay of a young poet who sings the triumphant conqueror in the pride of his manhood; and I read in the old man's countenance how human life floats before him as a sweet dream, from which it is bitter to awaken with only the lifeless shadows remaining of infancy's gladness, of youth's sparkling eyes and bold flight, of manhood's energetic step and conquering glance, in wise, but dark, cold, powerless age.

"But see, the old man's face suddenly brightens as when the clouds divide on an autumn day, and the rainbow shows how sweetly the sunbeams bathe in the shower. It has flashed like lightning upon the old man, that what he mourns is the lot of his kind, that it is really the same life which grows old in one generation, and is again young in the next. He rises amidst the listening circle, and sings with deep but calm inspiration, how wonderfully, pathetically, and beautifully the divine is mirrored in the mortal. *

"Something like this it must have been that inspired the bard and the people for the Chronides, as the genii of human life, for they are young gods these offspring of the aged poet, these fruits of inspira tion's second youth in poesy's old age. This explanation gives unity to the myth, and with it all the names agree, from Chronos, Time, to Zagreus, the Solacer. No wonder that Zeus deposes Chronos, usurps Heaven, is the father of gods

Earth.

and heroes, with the thunder for his weapon and the eagle for his bird; so it is with imagination, the spirit of youth. That the ocean was to the Greeks the symbol of feeling is evident from its being the mother of both Achilles and Aphrodite; and so it still is to us in storm and in calm; but it was the tempestuous passion which silences all other feelings, that the Greeks deified in Poseidon, as his name and history indicate. Lastly, Pluto is the same with Plutus (the rich), and derives his other name, Aides, from the irksome satiety, i. e. weariness of life, or from that solving quality which characterises the understand ing's chief action, and from the sha dowiness belonging to ideas that want actual reality. *** Naturally, he has no child by Persephone, because the understanding is father only of shadows, and it is to an especial union of the imagination with the understanding, that the historico-poetical view of life, old age's consolation, owes its birth. Imagination twines in snaky coils round the understanding, like the vine around the elm, when Zagreus, the Solacer, the intellectual grape, is to be produced. ||

"Would you know, reader, how a beautiful myth can lose its significa tion? Only think away its spirit, and immediately Zeus is the air, Demeter the earth, Persephone the green sward, the snake a vine-tendril, Zagreus a bunch of grapes; and you are at a loss only with Pluto, who becomes nothing at all."

But dearly as Grundtvig loves Hellenic lore, it is to the north that his soul is devoted, and thither we must now accompany him, regretting that we have left ourselves little room to illustrate his Scandinavian views, especially as we would fain squeeze in a word of another Northern antiquary. Again Grundtvig shall speak for himself:

"As it is in the grove of Mamre, under Abraham's tent, that we learn to know the pastoral life, and in Greece that we find political life, as they both naturally fashion themselves when their spirit is present, so is it in the North that we find upon

the dark sea the cradle of the intellectual hero-life, for the warfare with the boisterous tempest and with the foaming waves is the most natural that the human spirit can wage, and becomes bloody when the battle demands a sacrifice. **** So shall it be manifest that our old Norse warriors possessed both intellect and heart, although heroic ballads and the sword expressed their highest art, and proverbs all their wisdom. Evi dently they left it to their latest posterity to adorn and explain their lives, because they felt inly that their great energies were given them in order to achieve great deeds, and thus lead lives which it should be worth while to investigate.

"Could we but comprehend how it happens that the maritime powers, which are the least calculated for making conquests, are the best adapted for extending and protecting the world of intellect, we should feel the deepest veneration for the indisputable testimony of all times, that this is actually the case. Even in the middle ages, that bright era of land forces, if we do but suppose the absence of the Anglo-Saxons and Normans from the page of history, its spirit is at once gone, and there is not one new popular world to be found from the Baltic to the Atlantic.

"It is not difficult to conjecture why the historical warrior_spirit chose the sea for its element-for the theatre of its great deeds; for the warfare between wind and wave is the only natural image of the warfare peculiar to the human spirit, and the seaman's life is this warfare's cradle. Besides, in naval battles the indivi dual man is less, the social human spirit more, than on land, whence it follows, that individual ambition or selfishness has less to gain at sea, and is compelled to veil itself under cares for the general interests.

"Asa Thor is the warrior spirit's mythic name, which men in jest, but only brutes in earnest, have called John Bull; his life proves the assertion. England has no one man to compare with Martin Luther, who must therefore be deemed typified

in Tyr, the god of duelling, because, as before said, on land it is the individual, at sea the general spirit, that gains power and honour. Asa-life is the hero-life deified."

From our author's numerous separate exemplifications of his principle, we must select one or two. Of the NORNIR, the Scandinavian fates, he says

"It is with the Nornir as with Chronides, if we have once made their acquaintance we are in no danger of forgetting them, for we meet them in life wherever we turn. The Nornir bear to the Chronides the like relation as history to human nature, or as intellectual activity to strength. Thus the Urda-well answers to Chronos, (how a well can answer to a man or a god we confess puzzles us,) Urd, herself, to Zeus, Werdan to Poseidon, and Skuld to Pluto." (We must here explain that Urd, Werdan, or Werthandi, and Skuld, the names of the Nornir, are generally understood, from the forms of grammar, to mean the past, the present, or coming into existence, and the future.) For it is always in middle age, during the warfare of stormy passion, that relations become strangely involved, as is apparent in the Middle Ages of Universal History. But the northern is of deeper meaning than the Chronos-myth; mirrored only in human life, it expresses Divine Providence, which fashions a drama not ending with death and disentangle ment, but finding its elucidation in eternal life, and uninterrupted splendour."

But perhaps the ash Yggdrasill, where the Nornir sit by their Urdawell, affords the best detached specimen of our author's views, and of the mythology itself.

"The Gods hold their assembly, or tribunal of justice, under the ash Yggdrasill, the tallest and finest of trees, whose branches spread over the world and reach to heaven. It has three roots, that lie far apart, -the one reaches to Asgard, (the abode of the Asir); the second to the Giant-realm, where erst was Ginnunga gap; and the third to Niflheim, (the icy region, north of Ginnunga-gap). Under the last, in the fountain Hvergelmir, lies the dragon Nidhaugr, and gnaws the root. Under the Giant's root is the well of wisdom, of which Mimir is

lord; under the Asa-root the far holier Urda-well. In the branches sits an eagle of great wisdom, with a hawk named Veirlofner between his eyes. The squirrel Ratatosk springs up and down the tree, making mischief betwixt the eagle and the dragon. Four stags, Daain, Dvalin, Dunner, and Dyrathror, leap at the boughs and bite off the buds, whilst Nidhaugr, with more serpents than tongue can name, gnaws the root. The Nornir daily pour water from their Urda-fountain, and the white mud from its banks-for its waters turn every thing that they touch white-over the ash, to preserve the freshness of its leaves. Upon the Urda-fountain swim two white swans, the parents of all earthly swans.

*

"If we are now told that the ash Yggdrasill means not spirit, but merely air; that the leaves are clouds, the deer winds, &c. &c., this does not even agree with the whole of the description, and is both poetically and historically impossible. For it is the very essence of symbolical language, not to typify the visible by the invisible, or the present by the absent, but the direct reverse; the most miserable poetaster in existence would not, when he means fire say love, or spirit when he means wind. If a poet be inspired by the rising sun or the roaring ocean, or other natural phenomena, it is not merely by what he sees or hears, but either by the immediate action of the phenomena, or by the series of thoughts associated therewith. Never, therefore, will be conceal, under obscure and enigmatical words, the prodigious mystery that sometimes it is light, sometimes dark, sometimes hot, especially in summer, &c.

"But to look upon Yggdrasill as an emblem, even of the really mysterious influences of nature, is historically wrong; because the Norse spirit was clearly historical, and the whole description refers to the history of human life. The very situation of the ash over the fountains of Urd and of Mimir, and yet more, the Nornir's care to preserve it fresh and green until Ragna rauk, forbids our thinking of any other signification than the great struggle