1825.] 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
Srr: 
S this.is a subject which certainly 
cannot be regarded as stale and 
exhausted, you will, perhaps, excuse me 
for so soon recurring to a favourite 
theme, 
tho’ Balder’s steed 
Scarce wets his fetlocks in the western wave, 
since my former lucubration appeared 
in your columns. 
M. Torker Baven, Professor of Lite- 
rature in the Academy of Fine Arts at 
Copenhagen, has lately published there, 
Von der Unbrauchbarkeit, etc. “ On the 
Inapplicability of Northern Mythology 
to the Purposes of the Fine Arts :”?— 
upon which M. Herserc* has the fol- 
lowing article, in the Revue Encyclopé- 
dique for January last :— 
* The author of this pamphlet belonging 
to a family well known in Danish literature, 
it may be naturally expected that his opinicn 
should have some weight. For some time 
past, the artists of the North, and many of 
those of Germany, having thought that the 
resources which the Fine Arts had hitherto 
derived from the Grecian and Latin mytho- 
logies, if not entirely exhausted, were, at 
least, very nearly so, have deemed it neces- 
sary to seek for materials for the exercise 
of their genius in the Mythology of Scan- 
dinayia. MM. Baden endeavours to shew, 
that this source is a bad one, because the 
Northern Mythology is too savage and bar- 
barous, and is utterly destitute of those 
graces which the ancient Greek and Latin 
poets have afforded to their imitators.— 
What M. Baden says of the divinities of 
* It is one of the many distinguishing 
excellences of this Parisian Review, that 
the respective articles are generally authen- 
ticated, either by the names at length, or 
the known signatures of the reviewers by 
whom they are furnished. How much 
cowardly malignity, impudent quackery, and 
base misrepresentation, would be precluded 
from our own Reviews, if this manly sys- 
tem of responsibility were here adopted ! 
What a vile and dastardly practice it is, to 
Jurk in a corner, wrapped up in the im- 
penetrable cloak of darkness, strike where 
we please, and be safe from all retaliation ! 
Yet, we are bold Britons /—frank, honest, 
open-hearted John Bulls, who scorn French 
finesse, duplicity and disguise!—who dare 
to utter what our hearts dictate !—who 
have neither shame nor fear, because we 
have no guile!!! 
Anonymous publications may fairly be 
as anonymously criticised; but, upon what 
principle of moral honesty any one can 
make free with the name of another, and 
yet conceal his own, I could never com- 
prehend. 
Northern Mythology. 
811 
the North—of the grossness of their attri- 
butes—is undeniable [?]; and we do not see 
how, in their present state, they can be 
usefully applied, above all, to the purposes 
of painting and sculpture. But another 
question presents itsel{—Would it not be 
possible to polish them up a little, without 
disguising the character of the climate to 
which they belong? M. Baden says nothing 
upon this subject; but he must know that 
genius is a creator: and the hope may yet 
be entertained, of seeing, one day, some 
man of genius succeed in presenting these 
wild, but sometimes sublime, fictions, in 
the forms of grace and attraction. M. 
Baden, himself, may live to see the com- 
mencement of such a revolution; and we 
are persuaded that he will not be sorry to 
retract an opinion which now seems to him 
to be founded on sufficient evidence.” 
This, Sir, appears to be going pretty 
far for a French critic—a worshipper, 
of course, of Boileau, the splendid but 
bigotted upholder of the exclusive ido- 
latry of arts and literature to the altars 
of Greece and Rome. My Northern 
devotion goes, however, a little farther. 
I am not ashamed even of some partial 
veneration, in a literary point of view, 
for the exploded superstitions of my 
ancestors; nor can I shut my eyes 
against the beauties as well as the 
sublimities of their wild and romantic, 
their splendid, as well as terrific fables. 
That the creative power of genius must 
be employed, whether by the poet or 
the artist, upon whatever materials his 
pen, his pencil, or his chisel is employed, 
will readily be admitted; or, instead of 
a creator, he sinks into a mere copyist, 
who may be admired, for the sweet 
mechanism of his rhyme, the truth and 
vividness of his line and colouring, or 
for the strong, or the delicate fidelity of 
his chisel, but will have no title to the 
higher claims of originality and imagina- 
tion. 
It is not by taking superstitions of 
any description, just as they have 
been handed down to us, that the tri- 
umphs of genius, whether plastic, pictu- 
resque, or poetical, are to be achieved. 
What a gross and ridiculous figure had 
the deyil of Christian credulity made 
among us, as handed down for genera- 
tions, in the descriptive tales of old 
women, and the mummeries of monks, 
till the concoctive and creative genius 
of Milton stripped him of his serpentine 
tail, his saucer-eyes, sea-horses’ teeth, 
goats’ horns and asses’ ears, and arrayed 
him in all the forms and attributes of 
a grand and terrific sublimity! And 
whence did that mighty genius—that 
creator 
