PREFACE 4-00 EVERY student of English literature in the eighteenth century understands, of course, how conspicuous a part was played by Mac"son's Ossianic fragments, Evans's Welsh Bards, and Percy's in the so-čalled Romantic Revival; but not every one has up'irriated the fact that this enthusiasm over Gaelic, Welsh, and English mediaeval poetry was accompanied by a widespread interest in the literature of the Scandinavian North. The credit of first pointing out specifically the significance of the Norse element in the Romantic Revival belongs, I believe, to Professor Phelps, whose Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement appeared at Boston in 1893, though Mr. Frederick Metcalfe had called attention in 1880 (The Englishman and the Scandinavian) to a very few English men of letters of the eighteenth century who interested themselves in Norse literature, and in 1891 Jon Stefansson contributed to the Nordisk Tidskrift för Vetenskap, Konst och Industri an article on Oldnordisk Indvirkning på Engelsk Literatur i det Attende og Nittende Århundrede (based in good part upon Southey's review of Sayers's Poetical Works, Quarterly Review, January, 1827), which devotes half a dozen pages to the matter. The subject was first examined in detail, however, by Professor Kittredge (Gray's Knowledge of Old Norse, appended to the Introduction to Phelps's Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Thomas Gray, Boston, 1894), who clearly indicated the lines on which further research must be conducted. At Professor Kittredge's suggestion and under his direction I undertook the following investigation, 190904 a |