Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/20

xvi tortuous, confused, altogether inexplicable and even dreary aspect; and the class of “well-informed persons” now find themselves in that uncomfortable position, where they are obliged to profess admiration, and at the same time fee] that, except by name, they know not what the thing admired is. Such a position towards the venerable “Nibelungen,” which is no less bright and graceful than historically significant, cannot be the right one. Moreover, as appears to us, it might be somewhat mended by very simple means. Let anyone that had honestly read the “Nibelungen,” which in these days is no surprising achievement, only tell us what he found there, and nothing that he did not find: we should then know something, and, what were still better, be ready for knowing more. To search out the secret roots of such a production, ramified through successive layers of centuries, and drawing nourishment from each, may be work, and too hard work, for the deepest philosopher and critic; but to look with natural eyes on what part of it stands visibly above ground, and record his own experiences thereof, is what any reasonable mortal, if he will take heed, can do.

Some such slight service we here intend proffering to our readers: let them glance with us a little into that mighty maze of Northern Archæology; where, it may be, some pleasant prospects will open. If the “Nibelungen” is what we have called it, a firm sunny island amid the weltering chaos of antique tradition, it must be worth visiting on general grounds; nay if the primeval rudiments of it have the antiquity assigned them, it belongs specially to us English Teutones as well as to the German.

Far be it from us, meanwhile, to venture rashly, or farther than is needful, into that same traditionary chaos, fondly named the “Cycle of Northern Fiction,” with its Fourteen Sectors (or separate Poems), which are rather Fourteen shoreless Limbos, where we hear of pieces containing “a hundred thousand verses,” and “seventy thousand verses,” as of a quite natural affair! How travel through that inane country; by what art discover the little