Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/35

Rh of tradition, has, in a wonderful degree, possessed himself of what these could only strive after; and with his “clear feeling of fictitious truth,” avoided as false the errors and monstrous perplexities in which they vainly struggled. He is of another species than they; in language, in purity and depth of feeling, in fineness of invention, stands quite apart from them.

The language of the “Heldenbuch,” as we saw above, was a feeble half-articulate child’s-speech, the metre nothing better than a miserable doggerel; whereas here in the old Frankish (Oberdeutsch) dialect of the “Nibelungen,” we have a clear decisive utterance, and in a real system of verse, not without essential regularity, great liveliness, and now and then even harmony of rhythm. Doubtless we must often call it a diffuse diluted utterance; at the same time it is genuine, with a certain antique garrulous heartiness, and has a rhythm in the thoughts as well as the words. The simplicity is never silly: even in that perpetual recurrence of epithets, sometimes of rhymes, as where two words, for instance lip (body, life, leib) and wip (woman, wife, weib) are indissolubly wedded together, and the one never shows itself without the other following,—there is something which reminds us not so much of poverty, as of trustfulness and childlike innocence. Indeed a strange charm lies in those old tones, where, in gay dancing melodies, the sternest tidings are sung to us; and deep floods of Sadness and Strife play lightly in little curling billows, like seas in summer. It is as a meek smile, in whose still, thoughtful depths a whole infinitude of patience, and love, and heroic strength lie revealed. But in other cases too, we have seen this outward sport and inward earnestness offer grateful contrast, and cunning excitement; for example, in Tasso; of whom, though otherwise different enough, this old Northern Singer has more than once reminded us. There too, as here, we have a dark solemn meaning in light guise; deeds of high temper, harsh self-denial, daring and death, stand embodied in that soft, quick-flowing, joyfully-modulated verse. Nay farther, as if the implement, much more than we might fancy, had