BOOK those which human agency can create. Mankind appear from history to have been always attacking each other, without the provocation of personal injury. If civilisation, science, and Christianity have not allayed the spirit of political ambition, nor subdued the love of warlike glory, we cannot be surprised that the untaught Northmen delighted in the depredations to which they were educated, from which they derived honour and fame, and by which they subsisted. Pity and benevolence are the children of our disciplined reason and augmented felicity. They are little known to our species in those ages, when general misery licenses and produces the most tyrannical selfishness. Hence the berserkir, the vikingr, or the sea-king, felt no remorse at the sight of human wretchedness. Familiar with misery from their infancy, taught to value peaceful society but as a rich harvest easier to be pillaged, knowing no glory but from the destruction of their fellow-creatures, all their habits, all their feelings, all their reasonings were ferocious; they sailed from country to country, to desolate its agriculture, and not merely to plunder, but to murder or enslave its inhabitants. Thus they landed in Gothia. The natives endeavoured to escape. The invaders pursued with the flame and sword.39 So in Sweden, part of the inhabitants they massacre, and part they make captive; but the fields were ravaged far and wide with fire.40 The same miseries proclaimed their triumphs in Wendila. The flame and sword were unsparing assailants, and villages were converted into uninhabited deserts.41 Thus at Paris they impaled 111 of their captives, crucified many others on houses and trees, and slew numbers 39 Snorre, Ynglinga Saga, c. xxi. p. 24. 40 Snorre, c. xxxi. p. 39. 41 Ibid. in the villages and fields.42 In war they seemed to have reckoned cruelty a circumstance of triumph; for the sea-king and the vikingr even hung the chiefs of their own order on their defeat.43 And yet from the descendants of these men some of the noblest people in Europe have originated. 42 Du Chesne, Hist. Francorum Script. vol. ii. p. 655. edited abound with such incidents. The annals which he 43 There are many instances of this in Snorre, pp. 31. 33. 44, &c. also in the Hervarar Saga, and others. CHAP. II. BOOK IV. CHAP. III. Comparison between the Histories of SAXO-GRAMMATICUS and The first Aggression of the Northmen on the ·And the Rise, Actions, and Death of RAGNAR SNORRE. LODBROC. SUCH was the dismal state of society in the North. For a long time the miseries of this system were limited to the Baltic. After the colonisation of England had freed the Germanic and British ocean from Saxon piracy, Europe was blessed with almost three centuries of tranquillity. One Danish rover is stated to have wandered to the Maes1 in the beginning of the sixth century; but the enterprise was unfortunate. Other Danes are mentioned as acting with the Saxons against the Francs. But after this century 2 we hear no more of Danes for above two hundred years. 2 But some of the historians of the North pretend that the Danes visited England and Europe in a much earlier period. Are these entitled to our belief? Saxo-Grammaticus, who died 12043, has left us a history which has delighted both taste and learning 4, 1 Gregory of Tours, who lived in 573, the oldest author extant who mentions the Danes, narrates this expedition, lib. iii. c. 3. p. 53. Corpus Franc. Hist. ed. Hanov. 1613. 2 Venantius Fortunatus, who lived 565, mentions them as defeated by the kings of the Francs, lib. viii. c. 1. p. 822. and in his lines to the Dux Lupus (lib. vi.) he implies that the Danes and Saxons had invaded the country near Bordeaux. This was probably some ebullition of the Anglo-Saxon expeditions against Britain. 3 Stephan. Prolog. p. 22. 4 Erasmus has honoured Saxo with a panegyric which every historian must covet; "qui suæ gentis historiam splendide magnificeque contexuit. Probo vividum et ardens ingenium, orationem nusquam remissam aut dormitantem; tam miram verborum copiam, sententias crebras, et figurarum admirabilem varietatem, ut satis admirari nequeam, unde illa ætate, homini Dano, tanta vis eloquendi sup by its elegance and vigour; and which, considering Some documents for his history Saxo may have derived from poems of the ancient scallds, from inscriptions on stones and rocks, from an inspection (yet how imperfect!) of the Icelandic authors, and from the narrations of his friend. 10 We may even grant to him, that such men as he enumerates, such actions as he so eloquently describes, and such poems as he so diffusely translates", once appeared; but the chronology and succession into which he arranges them are unquestionably false. The boasted foun petiverit." Dial. Ciceron, ap. Stephan. p. 33. And yet a more correct taste would suggest that his work is rather an oration than a history. Though some parts are happy, it is in general either tumid and exaggerated, or the specific fact is darkened or lost in declamatory generalities. It wants that exact taste for truth, as well as for patient comparison of antiquarian documents, which the history of such a period peculiarly required. 5 Hist. Dan. lib. ii. p. 25. Ibid. lib. iii. p. 56, 57. The speech of Amleth to the people, after destroying Fengo, is an exertion of eloquence very creditable to the genius of Saxo, p. 54, 55. 7 Ibid. 67. Ibid. 95. Saxo places the birth of Christ immediately after. Ibid. 9 Ibid. 137. 10 Saxo mentions these authorities in his preface, p. 2.; and the curious will be pleased to read Stephanius's notes upon it. "We have a striking proof how much Saxo has amplified the barren songs of the scallds, and therefore how little to be relied on for precision, in his poetical and elegant dialogue between Hialto and his friend Biarco, whom he roused to the defence of his endangered king. Forgetful of the emergency, Saxo prolongs it to six folio pages. Stephanius has cited part of the concise and energetic original, p. 82., which discovers the historian's exuberance. СНАР. III. BOOK IV. tains of the history of the ancient Scandinavians 12, their memorial stones, and funeral runæ 13, the inscribed rings of their shields, the woven figures of their tapestry, their storied walls, their lettered seats and beds, their narrative wood, their recollected poetry, and their inherited traditions, may have given to history the names of many warriors, and have transmitted to posterity the fame of many battles; but no dates accompanied the memorials; even the geography of the incidents was very rarely noted. Hence, however numerous may have been the preserved memoranda, their arrangement and appropriation were left to the mercy of literary fancy or of national conceit. Saxo unfortunately emulated the fame of Livy, instead of becoming the Pausanias of Scandinavia; and instead of patiently compiling and recording his materials in the humble style or form in which he found them, which would have been an invaluable present to us, has shaped them into a most confused, unwarranted, and fabulous chronology. The whole of his first eight books, all his history anteceding Ragnar Lodbrog, can as little claim the attention of the historian, as the British history of Jeffry, or the Swedish history of Johannes Magnus. It is indeed superfluous, if we recollect the Roman history, to argue against a work which pretends to give to Denmark a throned existence, a regular government, and a tissue of orderly and splendid history for twenty-four royal accessions before the birth of Christ. Saxo, on whose history many others were formerly built, refers to the Icelandic writers 14; but this only increases our 12 Torfæus mentions these in the prolegomena to his History of Norway, and in his Series Regum Dan, 50–53. They are also remarked by Bartholin, lib. i. c. 9. 13 Wormius has given us the inscriptions found in Denmark in his Monumenta Danica; and Peringskiold copies many out of Sweden in his Monumenta Ullerakarensia, 321-349., and in his Monumentum Sveo-Goth. 177-306. See also Verelius's Manuductio, and others. 14 Though he applauds them in his preface, and even says, "quorum thesauros |