228° 
joining my own version of the poetical 
quotations, and the commentary which 
you will find below, I thought it might 
not be an unacceptable ingredient, as 
adding, at least, to the variety of that 
literary table d’héte, which you are in 
the habit of spreading, on the Ist of 
every month, before the public. 
“ Balder, Fils d’Qdin,? $c.—Balder, 
the Son of. Odin—a Scandinavian Poem, 
in Six Cantos ; with Notes on the History, 
Religion and Manners of the Celtic 
Nations, by the Editor, M. L. De St. 
Géniés. Paris. , 
Tue notes attached to this new 
poetical work of M. L. de St. Géniés, 
which are, in general, interesting and 
instructive, are contrasted, by their 
number and length, with the shortness 
of the cantos to which they are intended 
to serve as commentaries. , It is one of 
the principal inconveniences of subjects 
taken from the Scandinavian mythology, 
that they require so much explanation. 
Most of the gods and heroes of the north 
are unknown to us—their names do not 
awaken in us the idea of any particular 
attribute or event, and, therefore, ne- 
cessarily call for notes, which inform 
us of that of which we are ignorant.* 
* How true soever all this may be with 
respect to the literati of France, even whose . 
professed critics upon the subject do not 
appear to have been very accurate in their 
researches ; we trust it is not exactly the 
case with respect to those of England: at 
least, it will be admitted that it ought not 
so to be—since not only we are ourselves, 
in reality, both as primitive Saxons, and as 
admixt with. Norman alloy, of Scandina- 
yian origin ; but since we derive also many 
of our customs, and no small portion of 
our yet not entirely obsolete superstitions, 
from the sources of Scandinavian mytho- 
logy. How imperfectly French writers are 
acquainted with this subject, is, in fact, appa- 
rent, even in the very title-page of the pre- 
sent article, in which the Scandinavians 
are directly coxfounded with the Celtic 
nations; although their races were not 
only distinct, but their very superstitions 
and mythologies in evident hostility with 
each other: the sacred misletoe of the 
Celtic Druids (to mention at present no 
other circumstance) being an evident ob- 
ject of abhorrence to the worshippers of 
Balder, and the theogeny of Odin; and 
the deities and mythological fables of the 
two (as far as we can trace them) being 
evidently as distinct in circumstances as in 
names. ~Mailet, in his “‘ Antiquités des 
Nords,”” commits the same error: which 
» Dr. Percy, in his translation of that work, 
had, accordingly, to reetify; as he had also 
Northern Mythology. 
{April 1, 
Hence arises the almost unavoidable 
constraint attached to the compositions 
wherein these persons are celebrated, 
and from which, even the beautiful 
poems of Ossian, or of Macpherson, 
are not exempt.* This it is, perhaps, 
more than either its obscurity or its 
monotony, which has so quickly worn 
away all traces of the wonderful religion 
of Odin.—M. de St. Géniés has well 
said, and in very good language—, 
“ Olympus and Tartary have reigned 
long; Valhalla and Nastmus [Niftheim] 
came opportunely to replace them. It was 
time that Odin should reclaim the thunder 
from Jupiter,} tired of its weight. It ye 
or 
to do with some other errors of the gallic 
author. So that, by an occurrence not 
very common in literary history, the trans- 
lation is much better than the original— 
the sauce than the meat: the principal 
value of the work, as we now have it, be- 
ing derived from the sources of the trans- 
lator’s own erudite mind. Something has, 
of late, been done among us, even to popu- 
larize the traditions of this ancient and 
wildly magnificent system of superstition : 
from which, indeed, our immortal Milton 
had derived many of his sublimest images, 
and from which Shakspeare, through what- 
ever channels, had caught many glimpses 
of that imaginative and sublime super- 
naturalism with which he has invested his 
weird sisters — exalting them in poetic 
portraiture so immeasureably beyond the 
vulgar conceptions of broom-striding 
witches, upon whose supposed existence, 
nevertheless, he rests his claim on popular 
credulity. Our poetry, and even our stage, 
is becoming, of late, familiar with the imagery 
and the fables, which constituted once so 
large a portion of the religion of our fore- 
fathers; and the traditions of which re- 
main, to this day, so indelibly impressed on 
the tables of our calendars, and the neces- 
sary language of familiar life, 
* If the Poems of Ossian had any ge- 
nuine claim.to so remote an antiquity as 
has been pretended, they would undouLt- 
edly have been marked with more distinct 
traces either of the Celtic, or of the Scan- 
dinavian superstition, or probably with an 
admixture of both (for the Northmen and 
the Celts had been freely mingled at the 
time of the supposed Fingal): but we look 
through those poems in vain, for any un- 
equivocal evidence of familiarity with the 
mythology of either of those superstitions. 
The poet and his heroes seem to have had 
a sort of dim-descried religion of their 
own, of which little evidence is to be found 
in any other record, or remote composition. 
+ Which. thunder, however, . Odin, or 
Woden, never is represented as wielding: 
that was entrusted to the hand of cs 
‘ e 
