This, in plain prose, is the invocation of our Litany, "O ever blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners." According to the Memoir prefixed to this poem, Sæmundar, author or compiler of the most antient Edda, from which the Song of the Sun is taken, was born in the southern quarter of Iceland, about the year 1054: left his country when a boy for the purpose of travelling in quest of information and learning; was discovered by St. Jonas, Bishop of Hola in Iceland, as he was on his journey to Rome; and was induced to accompany him in his tour, and to return with this prelate to his own country, in A. D. 1076. Hence it is probable that the prominent ideas of Sæmundar, in his "Song of the Sun," were not the fruit of invention which luxuriates in a new creation,' but were little more than the fancies which he had collected from the Italian priests: who, perhaps, suggested to Dante, in a subsequent period, the absurdities of his Inferno and Paradiso. As a curiosity, this poem may be intitled to some attention: but it is ushered in with too much parade; and its editor and translator appreciates it far beyond its intrinsic value. Its plan is given in a few words: The Author assumes the character of a Father, who, after his death, returns to Earth, for the purpose of delivering admonitions, reciting examples, and revealing the condition of departed Mortals, in the infernal and celestial worlds, to his Son. The above communications are supposed to be made through the medium of dream, or vision. With what precise view, the Poet has entitled his performance The Solar Song, or Song of the Sun, it is not very easy to determine. Among the reasons alleged by the Editor, or Annotators, the most probable appears to be the frequently recurring mention of that Luminary, in the course of the Poem; but, in the Translator's opinion, the true foundation of the title is to be found in the second line of the 78th stanza.' We should rather conclude that it was generally intitled Súlar-liód, solaris oda, er Song of the Sun, from the 81st and 83d stanzas, in which places it is expressly called the SolarSong. We copy a few stanzas, to enable our readers to judge how far our opinion of this composition is justified by the poem it * self: There, men all haggled o'er, in troops I saw, • There There saw I numbers, on the sands outcast; Those men I saw, who, at another's lot, With envious hate had teem'd, and fest'ring spleen : Those men I saw, whose hearts had entertain'd Those men I saw, whose work it was to spread, Were, from the sockets tearing out their eyes! • But all those horrors which the Damn'd endure Though we cannot extol the sublimity of Sæmundar's poetry, we very readily admit that it appears to advantage when contrasted with those later performances of the Northern Muse to which Mr. Beresford adverts; and the conceits and obscurity of which he very judiciously exposes. As this subject cannot be better treated than it is by Mr. B. in his preface, we shall avail ourselves of his representation: The most striking feature, to a modern eye, of the less ancient songs of the North, of such, I mean, as were composed by those Scalds Scalds who had emigrated from Iceland, in search of patronage at the courts of other countries, and whose genius degenerated, together with their native dignity of spirit, is ob curity. Finding that the few poetical images which are supplied by a savage life were so entirely exhausted by their predecessors that no room was left for invention, they were tempted to condescend to such, mechanical tricks as will be presently shewn to my readers. The obscurity above-mentioned is stated by the learned in the Northern languages to have been sometimes voluntary, and sometimes necessitated. Whenever the obscurity was wilful, we are desired to believe that it was a stratagem of the poet, whereby to entrap the reverence of the unlettered, whose admiration was caught through the medium of their ignorance : - omne ignotum pro mirabili seems to have been, in all latitudes, the motto of the vulgar. The necessary obscurity, which may, in some sort, be considered as idiomatic, and which has been unconsciously much as sisted by the heedlessness, or stupidity, of transcribers, is twofold. In one way, it arose from the unexampled variety of synonyms, both direct, and circuitous, for which all the Northern languages are remarked. In the other way, it happened thus:-a word had, in many instances, the same sound and even the same letters, with wholly dif ferent meanings. These separate instruments of confusion, spontaneously offered by the bountiful Genius of the language, were, sometimes, in skilful hands, combined into a double engine, of prodigious execution. Thus, the word haf, signifying a horse's boof, denotes likewise, both decency, and understanding: to express, then, either of these latter ideas, the wily poet would use-not the word hof itself, which was common to the three senses, and which might therefore, have been taken in the right-but, (with a stroke of ambiguity which would have done honour to the Sphinx,) some one (or more) of the numerous paraphrastical appellations of a horse's hoof, which, even if his honest reader had heard it before, he might, happily have chanced not to comprehend: or, though comprehending it, not to apply-and thus was the poor wonderer, already half blind by nature, made double sure by being directed out of his way!-We see then, that if, in some instances, the bard was compelled to employ a circuitous synonym by the mere want of a simple term; in many more, he would use the former, in cold blood, and with a double plot of deception in his head, where the latter was to have been, as easily, had. I cannot resist the temptation of producing another very curi ous specimen, at more length, of this coincidence of necessity and inclination in the great business of confounding the reader: I find both instances in the "Letters on Iceland," written by Dr. Uno Von Troil, the Swedish traveller. The following is a sample of what an Icelandic Writer on the art of poetry, in his chapter of " 'figures," might, probably, have called the simple obscure, as opposed to the compound, which I have just illustrated from the instance of the horse's hoof. I will first exhibit the original passage, as taken from an Icelandic love-song-in which, by the way, it is stated that there oGcur no less than 147 designations of the single creature called woman. Varium et mutabile semper ! II • Heigni Heigni eg hamri kringdan The translation of this passage, (for the meaning, be it observed, is at two removes from the original,) is as follows:-"I hang the round, beaten, gaping snake on the end of the bridge of the mountain-bird, at the gallows of Odin's shield." For the solution of this serious riddle, the distracted reader is to learn that the round, gaping, beaten snake, is a ring; a snake with his tail received into his gaping mouth, representing a circle; and the metal of which the ring is formed having, of course, been beaten'into rotundity. The bridge of the mountain-bird, or falcon, is the hand; that is, the part on which the bird is received by the falconer; and the end of that bridge is the finger. The gallows of Odin's shield is the arm, i. e. the limb on which the shield is hung. The thought, then, when stripped naked from the cumbrous disguise in which it has been so carefully muffled by its parent, is found to be, really, no bigger, nor more beautiful, than this: I put a ring on my finger! Certainly the Solar Liod must be luminous when brought in contrast with compositions in which hieroglyphics are forced into a monstrous union with poetry, and fancy only exerts herself to produce deformed ænigmas. The Song of Sæmundar is "the light of the Sun when he shines in his strength," compared with such trash: but if this be the best specimen of Hyperborean poetry, we surely have reason to congratulate ourselves that we are not left to form our taste on such models. ART. XII. War in Disguise: or the Frauds of the Neutral Flags. * Svo. pp. 215. 4s. 6d. Hatchard. 1865. WE E are sorry that this pamphlet, which is of high political moment, and which is written with corresponding ability, has been mislaid on our table till so late a period of the present month, that we are compelled to take rather a hasty notice of it. Yet we are so unwilling to delay to another number our endeavours to attract attention to its contents, that we shall make the best use in our power of our remaining time and space. The writer's manner is such as impresses his reader with the idea that he is master of his subject, that he has well as certained his facts, and that he has matured his reflections with care. If he be founded in his allegations, and warranted in his conclusions, a system is not only forming, but has reached its consummation, which is much more dangerous to the vital interests of Great Britain, than any effort which she has to REV. DEC. 1805. Ee fear fear from the enmity, the activity, and the power of Bonaparte. Many of our readers may have imagined that the plantations of our enemies have for some time been lying fallow; that their colonial warehouses groan with produce, which the dread of capture confines within them; or that, when committed to the ocean, it has enriched British adventurers, and increased the British revenue; and that our foes have partaken sparingly of West India commodities, excepting such as we allowed them, and as passed through our hands. What, then, will be their surprize, when they learn from this apparently well informed author, that the hostile colonies were never more flourishing; that their produce never flowed to the parent states in greater abundance; that it never travelled in greater security; that it is conveyed at a considerably cheaper rate than the equidistant and similar commodities of Great Britain; and that it swells their revenue, animates their manufactures, and feeds their commerce with other powers, as in times of the most profound peace. We are here told, also, that a description of subjects of the British crown ensures the arrival of the precious articles of hostile colonies in the several ports of the enemy at a less premium than they will guarantee the transport of the produce of our island into our own harbours; and that these persons are men of high name and character, who affect prominent patriotism. These commercial phænomena appear to owe their existtence and progress to recent partial surrenders of our maritime rights, which the clamours and threats of neutrals extorted from us; they are here indeed traced to our departure from those principles which, in past wars, we made the guides of our conduct towards states who were at peace: In the war of 1756, France, hard pressed by our maritime superiority, and unable to send the requisite supplies to her West India islands, or to bring their produce to the European market under her own mercantile flag, relaxed her colonial monopoly, and admitted neutral vessels, under certain restrictions, to carry the produce of those islands to French, or foreign ports in Europe.-During the whole of that war, the prize courts of Great Britain, regarding this new trade as unwarranted by the rights of neutrality, condemned such vessels as were captured while engaged in it, together with their cargoes; however clearly the property of both might appear to be in those neutral merchants, on whose behalf they were claimed. As these vessels were admitted to a trade, in which, prior to the war, French bottoms only could be employed, they were considered as made French by adoption; but the substantial principle of the rule of judgment was this, "that a neutral has no right to deliver a belligerent from the pressure of his enemy's hostilities, by trading with |