ON THE MIDDLE OR DARK AGES. 30* 



different directions, they have also pursued the same triumphant career over 

 the kingdoms of Visapour and Golconda, in India ; the islands of Cyprus, of 

 Rhodes, and the Cyclades ; and have made large territorial acquisitions in 

 Tartary, Hungary, and Greece. 



Such is a brief but afflictive sketch of the history of the world, during 

 what has been appropriately denominated its dark ages, throughout which it 

 may correctly be said, that 



No liglit, but rather darkness visible, 

 Serv'd only to discover scenes of wo, 

 r Regions of horror, doleful shades. 



In effect, every thing concurred to introduce and establish a universal reign 

 of ignorance and gloom : and I shall next proceed to notice more particularly 

 a few of those causes which chiefly co-operated in producing so calamitous a 

 result. 



And the first that occurs in the course of the survey is, the sinister and 

 contracted views, and the general repugnance to all science and polite learn- 

 ing that so strikingly distinguish that particular set of the barbarous tribes of 

 the north, already noticed, by whom Europe was earliest overrun; all of 

 whom, by a generic term, may be denominated Scandinavians. Judging of 

 these from the only Scandinavian records which have descended to our own 

 times, the fabulous fragments collected by Saemond and Snorro, and which 

 are respectively called Eddas, all their arts and inventions were rude, and all 

 their passions and pursuits violent. They had poetry, but it was altogether 

 of the terrible kind ; the whole muster-roll of their mythology consisted of 

 not more than from forty to fifty gods and goddesses, while those of Greece 

 amounted, in Hesiod's time, to tliree thousand; and in that of Augustus, to 

 thirty thousand. The same power who, under the name of Loke, was their 

 Ahriman, or Principle of Evil, was also, for want of a larger establishment, 

 their Momus, and their Mercury. As they had their war-songs and their war- 

 speeches, they had also their Apollo ; but, like the rest, he, too, was (;apari- 

 soned with his javelin and his hauberk, and was a god of battles as well 

 as of eloquence. The beatitudes of their paradise, those with which the 

 most valiant of their heroes were rewarded after death, consisted, as we 

 learn from the same bloody legends, in daily encounters of more than 

 mortal fury : in the course of which the different combatants, mounted on fiery 

 steeds, and clothed in resplendent armour, mutually wounded, and were 

 wounded in return. Though, when the battle was over, they bathed in foun- 

 tains of living water ; and, being instantly healed, sat down to a sumptuous 

 banquet, at which Oden, their chief deity, presided, and passed the hours of 

 midnight in singing war-songs and drinking goblets of mead. Even the web 

 of future events, woven by their three Parc^, was manufactured of strings 

 of human entrails, the shuttles being formed of arrows dipped in gore, and 

 the weights of the sculls of gasping warriors. It is to this fiction Mr. Gray 

 alludes so finely, but, at the same time, so fearfully, in his Ode entitled " The 

 Fatal Sisters." 



Now the storm begins to lower 



(Haste ! the loom of hell prepare) ; 

 Iron sleet of arrowy shower 



Hurtles in the darken'd air. 



Glittering lances are the loom 

 '> 'Where the web of death we strain ; 

 Weaving many a soldier's doom, 

 Orkney's wo, and Randver's bane. 



See the gristly texture grow ! 



'T \s of human entrails made : — 

 And the weights that play below — 



Each a gasping warrior's head. 



Shafts for shuttles, dipp'd in gore, ^ 



Shoot the trembling cords along. 

 Sword ! — that once a monarch bore, 



Keep the tissue close and strong. 



u 



