In the progrefs of fociety, the genius and manners of men undergo a change more favourable to accuracy than to fprightlinefs and fublimity. As the world advances, the understanding gains ground upon the imagination; the understanding is more exercifed; the imagination, lefs. Fewer objects occur that are new or furprizing. Men apply themselves to trace the caufes of things; they correct and refine one another; they fubdue or difguife their paffions; they form their exterior manners upon one uniform ftandard of politeness and civility. Human nature is pruned according to method and rule. Language advances from fterility to copioufnefs, and at the fame time, from fervour and enthufiafm, to correctnefs and precifion. Style becomes more chafte; but lefs animated. The progrefs of the world in this refpect refembles the progrefs of age in man. The powers of imagination are moft vigorous and predominant in youth; thofe of the understanding ripen more flowly, and often attain not their maturity, till the imagination begin to flag. Hence, poetry, which is the child of imagination, is frequently moft glowing and animated in the firft ages of fociety. As the ideas of our youth are remembered with a peculiar pleasure on account of their liveliness and vivacity; fo the most ancient poems have often proved the greatest favourites of nations. Poetry has been faid to be more ancient than profe: and however paradoxical fuch an affertion may feem, yet, in a qualified fenfe, it is true. Men certainly never converfed with one another in regular numbers; but even their ordinary language would in ancient times, for the reafons before affigned, approach to a poetical style; and the firft compofitions tranfmitted to pofterity, beyond doubt, were, in a literal fenfe, poems; that is, compofitions in which imagination had the chief hand, formed into fome kind of numbers, and pronounced with a mufical modulation or tone. Mufick or fong has been found coæval with fociety among the most barbarous nations. The only fubjects which could prompt men, in their firft rude ftate, to utter their thoughts in compofitions of any length, were fuch as naturally affumed the tone of poetry; praises of their gods, or of their ancestors; commemorations of their own warlike exploits; or lamentations over their miffortunes. And before writing was invented, no other compofitions, except fongs or poems, could take fuch hold of the imagination and B 2 memory, memory, as to be preferved by oral tradition, and handed down from one race to another. Hence we may expect to find poems among the antiquities of all nations. It is probable too, that an extenfive fearch would difcover a certain degree of refemblance among all the mosft ancient poetical productions, from whatever country they have proceeded. In a fimilar ftate of manners, fimilar objects and paffions operating upon the imaginations of men, will ftamp their productions with the fame general character. Some diverfity will, no doubt, be occafioned by climate and genius. But mankind never bear fuch refembling features, as they do in the beginnings of fociety. Its fubfequent revolutions give rife to the principal diftinctions among nations; and divert, into channels widely feparated, that current of human genius and manners, which defcends originally from one fpring. What we have been long accustomed to call the oriental vein of poetry, becaufe fome of the earlieft poetical productions have come to us from the Eaft, is probably no more oriental than occidental; it is characteristical of an age rather than a country; and belongs, in fome measure, to all nations at a certain period. Of this the works of Offian feem to furnish a remarkable proof. Our prefent fubject leads us to inveftigate the ancient poetical remains, not fo much of the eaft, or of the Greeks and Romans, as of the northern nations; in order to difcover whether the Gothic poetry has any refemblance to the Celtic or Galic, which we are about to confider. Though the Goths, under which name we ufually comprehend all the Scandinavian tribes, were a people altogether fierce and martial, and noted, to a proverb, for their ignorance of the liberal arts, yet they too, from the earliest times, had their poets and their fongs. Their poets were diftinguished by the title of Scalders, and their fongs were termed Vfes. Saxo Grammaticus, *Olaus Wormius, in the appendix to his Treatife de Literatura Runica, has given a particular account of the Gothic poetry, commonly called Runic, from Runes, which fignifies the Gothic letters. He informs us that there were no fewer than 136 different heads of meafure or verfe ufed in their Vyfes; and though we are accustomed to call rhyme a Gothic invention, he fays exprefly, that among all the fe measures, rhyme, or correfpondence of final fyllables, was never employed. He analyfes the ftructure of one of these kinds of verfe, that in which the poem of Lodbrog, afterwards quoted, is written; which exhibits a very fingular fpecies of harmony, if it can be allowed that name, depending neither upon rhyme nor maticus, a Danish Hiftorian of confiderable note, who flourished in the thirteenth century, informs us that very many of these fongs, containing the ancient traditionary ftories of the country, were found engraven upon rocks in the old Runic character; feveral of which he has tranflated into Latin, and inferted into his Hiftory. But his verfions are plainly fo paraphrastical, and forced into fuch an imitation of the style and the measures of the Roman poets, that one can form no judgment from them of the native fpirit of the original. A more curious monument of the true Gothic poetry is preferved by Olaus Wormius in his book de Literatura Runica. It is an Epicedium, or funeral fong, compofed by Regner Lodbrog; and tranflated by Olaus, word for word, from the original. This Lodbrog was a king of Denmark, who lived in the eighth century, famous for his wars and victories; and at the fame time an eminent Scalder or poet. It was his misfortune to fall at last into the hands of one of his enemies, by whom he was thrown into prison, and condemned to be deftroyed by ferpents. In this fituation he folaced himself with rehearsing all the exploits of his life. The poem is divided into twenty-nine ftanzas, of ten lines each; and every ftanza begins with these words, Pugnavimus Enfibus, We have fought with our fwords. Olaus's verfion is in many places fo obfcure as to be hardly intelligible. I have fubjoined the whole be nor upon metrical feet, or quantity of fyllables, but chiefly upon the number of the fyllables, and the difpofition of the let ters. In every ftanza was an equal number of lines: in every line fix fyllables. In each diftich, it was requifite that three words fhould begin with the fame letter; two of the correfponding words placed in the first line of the diftich, the third, in the fecond line. In each line were alfo required two fyllables, but never the final ones, formed either of the fame confonants, or fame vowels. As an example of this meafure, Olaus gives us thefe two Latin lines, conftructed exactly according to the above rules of Runic verfe; Chriftus caput noftrum low, and Coronet, make the three correfpond- The curious on this fubject may con- The initial letters of Chriftus, Caput has given from the work of one of the Danish low, exactly as he has published it; and fhall tranflate as much as may give the English reader an idea of the fpirit and ftrain of this kind of poetry. "We have fought with our fwords.I was young, when, to"wards the east, in the bay of Oreon, we made torrents of blood "flow, to gorge the ravenous beaft of prey, and the yellow"footed bird. There refounded the hard fteel upon the lofty hel "mets of men. The whole ocean was one wound. The crow "waded in the blood of the flain. When we had numbered "twenty years, we lifted our fpears on high, and every where fpread our renown. Eight barons we overcame in the east, be"fore the port of Diminum; and plentifully we feasted the eagle 8. Altum mugierunt enfes Antequam in Laneo campo Ad terram proftratorum dimicandum Tenuimus Clypeos in fanguine Telorum nubes difrumpunt clypeum 12. Ruit pluvia fanguinis de gladiis Pallidum corpus pro accipitribus In conflictu Odini Pileus Galea Cucurrit arcus ad vulnus "in |