Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/213

Rh, the monumental relics and illustrative actualities of Norway, carefully scanning the best testimonies as to place and time which that country can still give him, carefully the best collateral records and chronologies of other countries, and who, himself possessing the highest faculty of a Poet, could, abridging, arranging, elucidating, reduce Snorro to a polished Cosmic state, unweariedly purging away his much chaotic matter! A modern 'highest kind of Poet,' capable of unlimited slavish labour withal; — who, I fear, is not soon to be expected in this world, or likely to find his task in the Heimskringla if he did appear here.