Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/37

 Rh the spirit of antiquity, that a continual antagonism between the past and the present, or rather, I should say, between the imaginary and the real, existed in his breast.

'He was two gentlemen at once. Though a sincerely religious man, still I cannot help suspecting that in his heart of hearts he looked on Christianity as a somewhat parvenu creed, and deemed that Thor, Odin, Freya, etc., were the proper objects of worship. In dull fact he was an excellent citizen, a householder, paying rates and taxes, an affectionate husband, and the good father of a family; but in the dream, the fancy—"the spirit, Master Shallow"—he was a Berserker, a Norse pirate, ploughing the seas in his dragon-shaped barque, making his trusty falchion ring on the casques of his enemies, slaying, pillaging, burning, ravishing, and thus gratifying a laudable taste for adventure. I fear he preferred the glorious dream to the sober reality. I think he inwardly pined at his own respectability, that he considered himself misplaced in the narrow sphere of duties. But he was a most agreeable comrade.

'Third was Ragner, Lord Lodbrog, an Irish peer, and then a student at the University. He derived his descent from a chieftain of that name, who had slain a dragon after encasing himself in impenetrable hairy breeches; and it was still a custom in his family, out of respect to this ancestor, to wear hirsute nether garments.

'How gay was Lodbrog! the life and soul of our company: his cheerfulness never failed. As he cantered