GENERAL LITERARY CULTURE. 



G07 



feet, if they were not admirably shod. To every church a 

 smithy is attached, and as the church is the chief place of resort 

 of the peasantry, the pastor has constant employment in 

 keeping the shoes of his parishioners' horses in good order. 



Though their lot is one of great poverty and hardship, yet 

 ~mong these devoted men instances of learning and even of genius 

 are not uncommon. As a striking instance of this the pastor 

 of Thingvalla, Jon Thor- 

 lakson, may be mentioned. 

 He is a poet, and in a few 

 Icelandic verses has thus 

 touchingly alluded to his 

 condition : 



" Ever since I came into 

 this world I have been 

 wedded to poverty. 



"She has now for sev- 

 enty years, less two, clasped 

 me to her bosom. 



"Only to him who 

 joined us, is it known 

 whether we shall ever be 

 parted." 



Though his income from 

 his pastorate amounted to 

 less than thirty dollars a 

 year, and he was consequently forced to supplement his income 

 by continuous hard physical labor, yet he translated into Ice- 

 landic verse Pope's Essay on Man, and at seventy years of age 

 completed a metrical version of Milton's Paradise Lost. 

 During his lifetime only the three first books were printed by 

 the Icelandic Literary Society, when its completion was pre- 

 vented by the dissolution of the society, and the publication was 

 not fully made until 1828, some years after his death. 



JON THORLAKSON. 



