Rendered into English, with his usual fine judgment, in verses of seven or eight syllables, Gray's Fatal Sisters and Descent of Odin at once inspired numerous imitators. Henry Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling, wrote a metrical introduction to The Fatal Sisters, from which the following stanza, apparently suggested by the imagery of The Bard, will serve as a specimen of the melodramatic | Scandinavianism that soon became fashionable— Red his eye, that watched the book, In 1770 Another proof of the influence of the two odes may also be cited, as it furnishes at the same time a typical example of the fraudulent spirit frequently found among men of letters in the period now under consideration. was published a little volume entitled Poems on Several Occasions by Michael Bruce, a young Scotsman, who died on the 5th of July 1767. They were edited by Bruce's friend, John Logan, and among them was the well-known Ode to the Cuckoo, which was for some time generally, and no doubt rightly, regarded as the work of Bruce. The editor, however, had prefixed to the volume the following dishonest note :— To make up a miscellany, some pieces, wrote by different authors, are inserted, all of them original, and none of them destitute of merit. The reader of taste will easily distinguish them from those of Mr. Bruce, without their being particularised by any mark. No poems by Bruce having been before published, it was impossible to say certainly which of the contents of the volume were his, and it was therefore obviously open to Logan (who had got possession of all Bruce's MSS.) to claim any of the pieces he had edited which might be received with favour by the public. This he did in a volume of poems, published in 1781, which opens with the charming Ode to the Cuckoo. Among the poems published in 1770 were two Danish Odes, which, : being evidently inspired by The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin, can hardly be supposed to have been written by Bruce, who died before Gray's odes appeared in print. Logan himself did not at once pretend to the authorship of the Danish Odes by inserting them in his volume of 1781 he may have thought it unsafe to claim as his own all the compositions of merit which had originally appeared after the name of his friend; but they were asserted to be his by one of his executors, the Rev. Thomas Robertson, and since no one else besides Bruce has been mentioned as their possible author, it cannot be said they are not Logan's. In any case they illustrate, both by their imitative style and by the enthusiasm with which they were received, the attitude of the age towards the Scandinavian Revival. One of them opens as follows: The great, the glorious deed is done! The raven claps his sable wings; With mighty ale the goblet crown ; From danger's front, at battle's eve, The fact that these odes were not translations, but imitations, of the Scandinavian manner points to the progress of the Revival since the appearance of The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin; and Nathan Drake, writing on the subject thirty years after that date, defines the feeling then prevalent in the public mind :— What (he asks) can exceed the thrilling horror of Gray's celebrated Odes from the Norse, 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.1 Evidently the jaded taste of Drake's contemporaries required to be stimulated by an agreeable "thrill of horror"; and it is amusing to observe how long this sensation depended on the fancy that one of the enjoyments of the Scandinavian paradise was to drink out of the skulls of their enemies. The funny mistake (observes Vigfusson), which led Bishop Percy and his copiers down to this very day to entertain the belief that the "Heroes hoped in Odin's hall to drink beer out of the skulls of their slain foes," has its origin in a misinterpretation of the phrase biug-viðum hausa by Ole Worm, who says, "Sperabant Heroes se in Aula Othini bibituros ex craniis eorum quos occiderant." 2 Vigfusson says that the meaning of the original Norse is, "We shall soon be quaffing ale out of the crooked skullboughs (horns) in the splendid house of Odin," a statement which would scarcely have sufficed to "thrill" the languid veins of civil society. In point of fact, the newly discovered Norse myths, as such, did little to stimulate original poetic invention, for, till the appearance of Sayer's Dramatic Sketches of Northern Mythology in 1790, almost all the efforts of the bards of the Revival were concentrated on the translation of five fine fragments of Norse poetry, first published by Percy in 1760, from materials largely derived out of the Chevalier Mallet's book, L'Introduction a l'histoire de Dannemarc. Most of the minor poets of the period, including Mathias, Miss Seward, and Matthew Gregory ("Monk") Lewis, tried their hands, with various degrees of success, at translating them, but their inspiration was of an entirely artificial kind; and indeed the quality of the treasure that the "mine of wild yet terrific 1 Literary Hours, ii. 73. 2 Cited in Scandinavian Influences in the English Romantic Movement, 3 Ibid. p. 62. P. 62. mythology" yielded to English Poetry at this epoch may be divined from the tamely didactic verses of Hayley on the subject; who says, addressing Mason : Thy modest Gray, solicitous to pierce The dark and distant source of modern verse, With pleasing dread our Northern sires appalled.1 3. The revival of Ossian and of Scandinavian Mythology served as nutriment for the tastes encouraged in poetry by the criticism of Joseph Warton; but a more really vital movement was effected, along the path first opened by his brother Thomas, through the revival of Mediæval Forms of English verse. And here the subject branches off again into two divisions; one relating to the increased popularity of the Ballad metre, mainly due to the publication of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry; the other to the Rowley Poems of Chatterton. Beyond all the forms of early romantic poetry the Ballad had preserved an influence over the cultivated imagination of the English people. The old ballad of "Chevy Chase" had roused the heart of Philip Sidney, trained as he was in all the culture of the Italian Renaissance, "like a trumpet"; it had been praised also by the refined pen of Addison in The Spectator? Another ballad, William and Margaret, fraudulently claimed by David Mallet as his own composition, was enthusiastically noticed in The Plain Dealer by Aaron Hill.3 This appreciation of the ballad, in an in an age dominated by classical form, was the result of the vitality lingering in the art of minstrelsy. Though in a very 2 Spectator, No. 70. 1 Essay on Epic Poetry. 3 Plain Dealer for August 28, 1724. For an account of Mallet's fraud see Phelps' Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement. Appendix II. depressed condition, the ministrel in England still plied a scanty trade; while in Scotland a comparatively simple mode of life, and the abiding memories of Border warfare in feudal times, afforded more abundant materials to the professors of the art. The Act of Union, and the jealousies aroused by it between North and South Britain, helped to put new life into the ballad, and Scottish poets of aristocratic station and classical culture obtained reputation by the success with which they imitated the ancient manner of oral ministrelsy. This patriotic movement was promoted by Allan Ramsay, whose pastoral songs in the Scottish dialect have been already noticed. In Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany (1724) were published two ballads of great poetical merit, one, the spirited Hardyknute, the other, The Braes of Yarrow by William Hamilton of Bangour (1704-54), whose voluminous verse in the English idiom is almost entirely wanting in character and distinction. This latter ballad is said by the author to be written "in imitation of the ancient Scottish manner"; and indeed he has caught most admirably the wild pathos and the abrupt energy of narrative that are the distinguishing marks of the best ballad style. The following dialogue between a newly married Scottish maiden and her bridegroom who has slain her lover, will serve to illustrate the exquisite strain of poetry in this composition :— A. B. 1 Did I not warn thee not to luve, And warn from fight? but to my sorrow, O'er rashly bauld a stronger arm Thou met'st and fell on the Braes o' Yarrow. Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass, Yellow on Yarrow's braes the gowan ; Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan. Flows Yarrow sweet? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed, As green its grass, its gowan as yellow, As sweet smells on its braes the birk, The apple frae the rock as mellow. 1 See vol. i. p. 461. |