The London Magazine (March, 1768) found in the new volume "little, if anything, more than a new edition of those very entertaining productions with which the elegant Mr. Gray has already obliged the world, and which are so well known to all the readers of taste in this country." The Monthly Review (May, 1768) threw cold water on Gray's innovations: "All that we find new in this collection is, the Fatal Sisters, an ode, the Descent of Odin, an ode, and the Triumphs of Owen, a fragment. These turn chiefly on the dark diableries of the Gothic times; and if to be mysterious and to be sublime be the same thing," the reviewer concludes, lucidly, "these deep-wrought performances must undoubtedly be deemed so. For our parts, we shall ever regret the departure of Mr. Gray's muse from that elegantly moral simplicity she assumed in the Country Churchyard." The Critical Review (May, 1768) was more appreciative:

In each [i.e. the Sisters, the Descent, and the Triumphs] the poetry is glowing and animated: but the two former, which are employed upon subjects of incantation, are stamped with the most evident marks of a vigorous imagination, occupied by the notions of gloomy superstition. The imagery is everywhere strongly conceived and strongly expressed, abounding with those terrible graces of which Aristotle tells us Eschylus was so fully possessed.

The reviewer concludes by quoting The Fatal Sisters entire.

At least one of Gray's readers gave immediate and conclusive proof of his interest in the Norse odes. On Dec. 16, 1768, Henry

Harvard University Library has one of fourteen copies of the catalogue of Gray's library printed in London in 1851. It appears that the only book Gray owned of special interest to us was Wotton's not very valuable Conspectus Brevis of Hickes. If, like most of Gray's books, this copy contains marginal notes, something might be learned from an examination of it. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader, however, that Gray's researches were not confined to his own private collection of books-less than a hundred and fifty titles. Gray lived at London, we are told, two years in order to enjoy the advantages of the British Museum, and spent the last three years of his life at the University of Cambridge as Professor of Modern History and Languages. The catalogue of his library records several MS. volumes of notes on his reading and antiquarian investigations.

Mackenzie wrote from Edinburgh to James Elphinston, at Kensington, a letter from which the following is an extract:1

Gray's Fatal Sisters, one of his new publications; in the late edition of his works, I dare say you have seen. A gentleman observed to me that the appearance of the gigantic deities there mentioned, of which Mr. Gray had only given us some account in prose,2 might afford a good subject for poetical description; and desired I would supply that want, by way of introduction. In pursuance of his suggestion, I wrote these stanzas. They are mere description; and therefore have, at best, but a secondary degree of merit.3

The poem opens:

'T was in Eirins' fatal day,

Led by Woden's secret hand,
Where the dancing waves of Mey
Speed the current to the land.

Red his eye, that watched the book,
Sealed with many a hero's blood,
With bristling locks, and haggard look,
The hoary prophet gazed the flood.

1 See the Forty Years' Correspondence of James Elphinston (6 vols., London, 1791), I, 167 ff. Elphinston spells phonetically, after a mode which he aptly termed "Propriety ascertained in her Picture," but his orthography, or heterography, has been here normalized for purposes of quotation. The Henry Mackenzie in question is the well-known author of The Man of Feeling.

2 "On Christmas-day, (the day of the battle), a Native of Caithness in Scotland saw at a distance a number of persons on horseback riding full speed towards a hill, and seeming to enter into it. Curiosity led him to follow them, till looking through an opening in the rocks he saw twelve gigantic figures resembling women: they were all employed about a loom; and as they wove, they sung the following dreadful Song; which when they had finished, they tore the web into twelve pieces, and (each taking her portion) galloped Six to the North and as many to the South."- From Gray's Preface to The Fatal Sisters.

3 Elphinston prints the verses in his Forty Years' Correspondence, VI, 199. They are reprinted in The Works of Henry Mackenzie, Esq. (8 vols., Edinburgh, 1808), VIII, 63-67, with an introductory note explaining the circumstances that led to their composition.

The wind sweeps in from the north, clouds gather, lightnings flash, and the thunder rumbles. Presently "the giant maids appear" and are addressed by the hoary prophet:

"Fatal Sisters! speed your way,

Give your foamy coursers rein;

Pass the dancing waves of Mey,

Pass the murmur of the main."

The Sisters find their way, amid screaming vultures and various convulsions of nature, to the loom :

There are eighteen stanzas in all. Elphinston expressed his approval guardedly. "Your letter charmed me much; the verses could hardly more," he wrote to Mackenzie, May 8, 1769.1 "They are native, strong, sweet, Grayish; yet, nor in Gray, nor in Mackenzie, can I admit (though neither first claims the indulgence) a mixture of Trochaics and Iambics," a criticism which is not more singular than many another we shall have occasion to quote.

The importance of Gray's two odes in popularizing the themes of Norse literature can hardly be overestimated. By 1768 cultivated

1 Forty Years' Correspondence, I, 171.

Englishmen had shown a very general interest in the revival of mediævalism that lent character to the so-called Romantic movement in England. Macpherson's Ossianic fragments, Evans's Specimens of the Antient Welsh Bards, and Percy's Five Pieces had all appeared; Mallet's Introduction was still read and was in process of translation into English. Now neither Mallet's nor Percy's bare pseudo-literal prose versions of the poetry of the Norsemen could compete, as literary performances, with the ornate productions of Macpherson and Evans; but The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin were not of merely archæological interest: they were notable contributions to English literature. Gray's fine lines appealed to emotions which Percy's ragged prose could not stir; they became widely and favorably known,1 and flattering citations of them were for a long time invariably tagged to English allusions to Norse literature:

"What can exceed the thrilling horror of Gray's celebrated odes from the Norse," wrote Dr. Nathan Drake in 1800, with his customary prodigality of fine phrase," which first opened to English poetry a mine of the most wild yet terrific mythology! Since their appearance the fictions of the Edda have been seized upon with more freedom and avidity."2

An additional stimulus was given the awakening interest in the literature of the Eddas by the second of the two publications mentioned above. In 1770 appeared in London an anonymous translation (by Percy), in two volumes, of Mallet's Introduction, with a

1 Perhaps not immediately. Beattie writes to Sir William Forbes, for instance, May 4, 1770 (Beattie's Letters, London, 1820, I, 81): "Of all the English poets of this age, Mr. Gray is most admired, and, I think, with justice; yet there are, comparatively speaking, but a few who know anything of his, but his " 'Churchyard Elegy,' which is by no means the best of his works." In the same year that this letter was written, however, appeared Percy's Northern Antiquities, the English version of Mallet's book. This, and other works to be mentioned later, took such a hold upon public attention, that there was for some time, as we shall see, a steadily growing interest in Norse literature. During this time The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin are frequently mentioned, always with the highest approbation. The citations (which might be greatly multiplied) collected in Appendix B, below, will give the reader some idea of the popularity of these pieces. Warton's unaccountable blunder in attributing to Gray a translation of the Dialogue at the Tomb of Angantyr has been pointed out by Professor Kittredge (Phelps's Gray, p. xlix). 2 Literary Hours, II, 73. 8 See p. 33.

considerable amount of new critical apparatus, under the title Northern Antiquities. Mallet had printed near the end of his second volume extracts from three of the poems represented in the Five Pieces, viz.: Regner Lodbrog, Harald, and Hacon. These appeared likewise in the Northern Antiquities, but in a new English translation. "An ingenious Friend having translated from the French this part of M. Mallet's Book," explains Percy,1 "I have got leave to insert his Version." He refers the reader, however, to the Five Pieces (without giving any hint as to its editor): "There the ODES here abridged may be seen at large, confronted with the Icelandic Originals, and accompanied with two other ancient Pieces of Northern Poetry." A supplement to the second volume contained Göransson's Latin version of the Gylfaginning.2

...

The Monthly Review (August, 1770), obviously bent upon discouraging all attempts to popularize "Runic poetry," commented as follows: "In the 2d vol. we are presented with a translation of the Edda, or Runic mythology, at large. But it has been so apparently accommodated by the writer to the Christian system; and where it differs from that, is so filled with childish fancies, that we can make no extract from it. . . . As for the specimens of the ancient poetry of the North, they are but trifling. We find in them neither the spirit nor imagination, which are so visible in the translations that Mr. Macpherson has given us from the Erse." The London Magazine, however, after giving a preliminary notice of the work in September, 1770, which spoke of the book as a "very entertaining " performance, printed a series of extracts from it which ran from October through December.

1 II, 227, n.

2 About 1804 a new edition of Northern Antiquities was projected. For correspondence relating to this matter, see Appendix A, below. The new edition finally appeared, again anonymously, in 1809 at Edinburgh. To the second volume was appended - at the end of Göransson a reprint of the Five Pieces, with some slight alterations in the Introduction, and the Norse and English texts printed in parallel columns. The work was edited for a third time with extensive alterations and additions by I. A. Blackwell for Bohn's Antiquarian Library, London, 1847. To this edition was appended Scott's Abstract of the EyrbiggiaSaga.