ABSTRACT

Mr. Morris's Norse epic has come upon us quietly. While attention is clamorously invited to inferior and ephemeral works, and dissension is rife over much which is hardly worth the reading, a great poenl of almost solitary beauty, profound, complete, intensely interesting and significant by virtue of its subject to all who have a trace of Scandinavia in their speech and lineage, arises upon the world of letters with all the familiar mystery of a new day. Sigurd, the Volsung, is the second great English epic of our generation (let us pause and reflect how rich we are), and it ranks after Tennyson's 'Arthuriad' in order of time only. It fully equals that monumental work in the force and pathos of the story told, while it surpassesit in unity and continuity of interest, and may fairly divide with the Idyls ~f the King the suffrages of the reading world on the question of poetical form.