THE EPIC OF THE VOLSUNGS.*

IT seems probable that to many of our readers the name of this poem will carry butlittle significance, or at least awaken but a vague remembrance of some old Norse legend ; but this work is of much greater importance than any of the previously published poems of Scandinavia, for the story of the deliverer, Sigurd, and the fall of the Niblungs, bears to that country a very similar relation to that which the "tale of Troy" bears to Greece, constituting the great national epic. A slight sketch of the sources from which this metrical version of the Edda is taken shows that as early as the twelfth century there existed a prose version of this story, composed partly from floating traditions existing at that time, partly from songs, some of which have since perished, but others of which still survive, and have been previously translated by Morris and Eirfkr Magmisson, and published about six years since. A translation of this twelfth-century prose version into English was published at the same time by the above authors, and it is on this groundwork that Mr. Morris has founded the main structure of his poem, using the usual poetical license in omitting some incidents and interpolating others. On the whole, the poem now published follows the prose version as to its main events ; but Mr. Morris has, somewhat unwisely, we think, enlarged the text to nearly three times its original size, and thereby lost much of the force and straightforward simplicity of the Edda.

It is hardly gracious to find fault with an author who has given us so much pleasure as Mr. Morris, for writing too copiously, but we cannot help thinking that the case with which he writes sometimes betrays him into too great diffuseness. Three epics in little over three years, and two of such tre- mendous length as the "'Mad and Sigurd, are almost too much for any man who gives due attention to his work ; and be- sides, the demand on a reader's patience made by an epic on a semi-mythological subject is almost too great to be borne. There is another remark to be made before proceeding to give an account of this work, and that is that the form of versification adopted is one especially fatiguing to the reader. These long, fifteen - syllabled lines, consisting of iambics and anapests, are exceptionally difficult to read aloud, and lack all the smoothness of the old heroic couplet. This latter can be seen very plainly throughout the work, for even Mr. Morris's powers of melodious writing are sorely taxed by the metre, and we cannot find in the whole poem one of the delicious pieces of mournful harmony of which we had so many in the Earthly Paradise and Lore is Enough.

It may be said that such pieces would be out of place in a Scandi- navian epic, but we cannot think an author does wisely in putting himself into metrical fetters, more especially when he is not com- pelled to do so by any inducements of custom or by the structure of the original verse. The Eddas, as is well known to all, were written, or rather composed, in very short lines, and those who remember the specimen of a saga given by Kingsley in Hypatia, and imitated by him in his ode to the North-east Wind, will acknowledge that few metres could be better adapted for express- ing rapid movement and intense feeling.

The great beauty of Mr. Morris's poetry has always been, in our opinion, that it transported those who read it into a land of dreamful ease, where,—

" The emerald fields are of dazzling glow,

And the flowers of everlasting blow,"

—where we might fancy all toil and care and sin at an end, or at worst, feel that vague, half-yearning regret for the gradual loss of life which he expresses so finely, when he says that all joy that comes to us makes us but "the more mindful that the glad days die." His poetry is tinged throughout with this personal sentiment. Over his brightest flowers lies the shadow of the tomb. The glad days die, the glad days die, he cries,—make the most of them ; but the most is not to be made, he implies, • The StarY Of Sigurd the Voisung and the Fall of the Niblangs. London: Ellis and White.

as sterner prophets would persuade us, by active energy and unceasing toil, but by surrendering ourselves to the slumberous influences of sight and sound. In the Earthly Paradise occurs phase after phase of this feeling. Whether Mr. Morris told of the death of Paris, the deeds of Bellerophon, or the race of Atalanta, we closed each poem with the same feeling. If the hero died, we were told how good was restful death ; if he lived, we were reminded that it was but a short time before he should perish, and all his desire and glory be of no account ; and throughout poem after poem there ran the spirit of the mourn- ful verses prefixed to the book, which tell how the poet, having no power to make quick-coming death a little thing, yet strives to lull us for awhile into forgetfulness, to build for us "a shadowy isle of bliss midmost the beating of the steely sea." And as in the Earthly Paradise, so in Love is Enough and Jason is the hastening of death the key-note, and it is in con- nection with this subject that all Mr. Morris's best verses have been written.

With these few words on the former works of our author, we turn to his latest and most ambitious achievement. Sigurd the Yawing is, as we have said, an epic of the North ; and if we are to believe Mr. Morris, it is " the great story of the North, which should be to all our race what the 'tale of Troy' was to the Greeks ; to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has been,—a story too,—then should it be to those that come after, as no less than the 'tale of Troy' has been to us." These words, which formed part of the preface to the original prose rendering of this Edda, indicate high pretensions, and probably had Mr. Morris thought at the time of writing them that he would have rendered the legend into verse himself, he would have been somewhat more moderate, for we must confess that with all our admiration for the author of the Earthly Paradise, it has been a hard task for us to read this epic. The truth is that a poem of twelve thousand lines on such a subject must be tire- some. Had Mr. Morris held the pen of an angel _instead of that of a somewhat medimval Englishman, we should have tired of this legendary mythical hero ere half the book was out. It is impossible to take much interest in a man's fighting if we know he is certain to be victorious ; and if he hold a sword which is irresistible, as is the case with our hero, Sigurd, it seems excessively probable that he will kill anybody who opposes him. And so with all such episodes as that of the dwarf Andvari and his hoard of treasure, and the serpent Fafnir. We seem to have heard of all this before "in the most ancient books," our nursery ones, and to be merely reading a new version of "St. George and the Dragon." We find it impossible to look upon this story in any other light than that of a literary curiosity, as a specimen of the legendary traditions which used to be sung and told in Scandinavia some thousand years ago. As to its claims for equal merit with the stories of Homer, we cannot agree with Mr. Morris. Although in the latter there is occa- sional supernatural interference on the part of the gods, yet the poems, as a whole, are most intensely human,—human in the motive, the action, and the characters ; and indeed, it is this wonderful simplicity and naturalness of Homer which have rendered him so universal a favourite with the people of every nation and every land. The petulance of Achilles, the pride of Agamemnon, the craft of Ulysses are universally true as types of character, and as one of our own writers observes, "Ajax has his exact counterpart in the blustering dragoon of our own day."

And it is (in our opinion) this universality which is one of the chief conditions of a great epic, and in this the poem before us is almost entirely wanting. There are many eloquent passages, there are some exquisite descriptions, but the whole is enveloped in a hazy mist of unreality, which may be necessary to the render- ing of such a story, but which must be fatal to its pretensions to excite universal interest. From the beginning of Sigurd's ad- ventures (which, by the way, is not till the poem is nearly half over) we are conscious of a lack of interest in him ; we don't know clearly what he is going to do, and the prophecy which precedes his departure is, though fine, unintelligible. What can be made of such words as the following ?—

" Arise, 0 Sigurd, Sigurd ! in the night arise and go;

Thou shalt smite when the day-dawn glimmers through the folds of Godhome's foe.

Then the child in the noon-tide smiteth ; the young king rendeth* apart, The old guile by the guile encompassed, the heart made wise by the heart.

Bind the red rings, 0 Sigurd ; bind up to cost abroad !

That the earth may laugh before thee rejoiced by the Water Hoard.

Ride on, 0 Sigurd, Sigurd! for God's word goes forth on the wind, And He speaketh not twice over, nor shall they loose that bind ; But the Day and the Day shall loosen, and the Day shall awake and arise, And the Day shall rejoice with the Dawning, and the wise heart learn of the wise."

It may mean something, but we must allow that its meaning is totally beyond us, and we fear it will be hardly grasped by many of our readers. It is difficult to give shortly any idea of the story as a whole, and we can only attempt the barest outline of the four books.

The first book, called "Sigmund," tells of the Volsungs, and

how Signy, the daughter of the King, was wedded to the King of the Goths, and how afterwards the Goth King laid a snare for the King of the Volsungs and all his sons and nobles, and murdered them all save one, called Sigmund, who dwelt in the woods ; and how subsequently Sigmund took a fearful revenge upon the Goth folk, by burning the King and all his nobles in the palace, and those that escaped from the fire he slew. The book closes with the death of Sigmund. This first book is, in our opinion, the least satis- factory portion of the poem, and is in truth but introductory to the real subject ; and here, again, we see a great difference between Mr. Morris's epic and its great predecessors, whether Greek, Italian, or English, for there appears to have been a general consensus of opinion amongst the great epic poets that the chief personages in the poem should be introduced at the beginning. Fancy what the Iliad would be if Achilles and Agamemnon did not appear till the fifth book, or Milton's Paradise Lost if Satan were kept waiting for three thousand lines, as Sigurd is here. However, after the first book, the real story of Sigurd begins, and is continued for the two following books, when the hero is murdered by his wife's kindred, and the remaining part of the poem relates the fall of the Niblungs. We pass briefly over the events' of the second book, from the childhood of Sigurd to his manhood,—how the smith, Begin, the master of masters, fashions for him the miracu- lous sword, called hereafter "the Wrath of Sigurd ;" and how Sigurd slays Fafnir the serpent, Regin's brother, upon the glitter- ing heath, and afterwards Begin himself ; and finally, how he rides through the waves of fire up Hindfell, and finds Brynhild asleep upon the crest of the mountain, and delivers her from the magical slumber. This latter part of the second book is very fine, particularly the description of the wall of flame which the Volsung rides through, and which (like the quick-set hedge in Mr. Tennyson's Day-Dream) opens to let the Prince pass. One quo- tation we must give from this second book, which forms part of the lament of the dwarf smith, Begin, for the ingratitude of the folk amongst whom he had lived for centuries :— " Then unto this land I came, and that was long ago,

As men-folk count the years, and I taught them to reap and sow, And a famous man I became but that generation died, And they said that Frey had taught them, and a god my name did hide. Then I taught them the craft of metals, and the sailing of the sea, And the taming of the horse-kind and the yoke-beasts husbandry, And the building-up of houses : and that race of men went by, And they said that Thor had taught them, and a smithying carle weal.

Then I gave their maidens the needle, and I bade them hold the rock, And the shuttle-race gaped for them as they sat at the weaving- stock ; But by then there were waxen crones to sit dim-eyed by the door, It was Freyia had come among them, to teach the weaving-lore. Then I taught them the tales of old, and fair songs fashioned and true, And their speech grow into music of measured time and due, And they smote the harp to my bidding, and the land grew soft and sweet; But ere the grass of their grave-mounds rose up above my feet, It was Bragi had made them sweet-mouthed, and I was the wandering scald.

But green did my cunning nourish, by whatso name I was called, And I grew the master of masters. Think thou how strange it is That a sword in the hands of a stripling shall one day end all this ?"

The third book treats of the adventures of Sigurd in love and war, and finally of his death at the hands of his wife's kindred. This is by far the best book of the four, and is, indeed, the only part of the poem in which there is any completeness, for it must be said, once for all, of this Volsung epic, that its main defect is its lack of concentration. It would have been better had Mr. Morris omitted entirely the first book and a great deal of the second, and bestowed more labour upon this really interesting part of the story. As it is, the grief of Gudrun, when she wakes in the dawning, and discovers Sigurd dead by her aide, is one of the finest passages in the whole book :—

"Awake, 0 house of the Niblungs ! for my kin have slain ray lord.

Awake, awake, to the murder, and the edges of the sword I Awake, go forth and be merry ! and yet shall the day betide,

When ye stand in the garth of the foemen, and death is on every side. And ye look about and around you, and right and left ye look, For the least of the hour of Sigurd and his hand that the battle shook Then be your hope as mine is, then face ye death and shame, As I face the desolation and the days without a name."

This passage has almost the vigour of one of Macaulay's lays, and is quite the strongest piece of writing we have had from Mr. Morris's pen.

To sum up, then, our opinion of this poem. We think it, as a whole, a failure. We are of opinion that few people will be able to grasp the meaning of the story, or to realise with any distinctness the principal characters ; and in our opinion, these two faults are fatal to its pretensions as a successful epic. On the other side, there is, no doubt, a good deal to be said. There are many descriptive passages of considerable beauty, there is great dexterity in the handling of a most difficult and (in our opinion) unpleasant metre, and there are many graceful and imaginative lines, though through all of them rings the same sad strain which we have mentioned as being perceptible in all the previous works of our author. However, we can recommend Sigurd to Mr. Morris's admirers more than to the public generally, for in it all the author's peculiarities of diction and imagery are more conspicuous than ever, and these will prove even tiresome to those unfamiliar with his work. If the poem had been five thousand lines shorter, and the lines ten syllables instead of fifteen, the book would have gained much more in attractiveness than it would have lost in length.