wolves,
become wolves, and pass through hideous adventures. The story reeks with
blood, and ravins with lust of blood. But when Sigurd arrives at full
years of manhood, the barbarism yields place, the Saga becomes human and
conscious.

These legends deal little with love. But in the "Volsunga Saga" the
permanent interest is the true and deathless love of Sigurd and Brynhild:
their separation by magic arts, the revival of their passion too late,
the man's resigned and heroic acquiescence, the fiercer passion of the
woman, who will neither bear her fate nor accept her bliss at the price
of honour and her plighted word.

The situation, the _nodus_, is neither ancient merely nor modern merely,
but of all time. Sigurd, having at last discovered the net in which he
was trapped, was content to make the best of marriage and of friendship.
Brynhild was not. "The hearts of women are the hearts of wolves," says
the ancient Sanskrit commentary on the Rig Veda. But the she-wolf's
heart broke, like a woman's, when she had caused Sigurd's slaying. Both
man and woman face life, as they conceive it, with eyes perfectly clear.

The magic and the supernatural wiles are accidental, the human heart is
essential and eternal. There is no scene like this in the epics of
Greece. This is a passion that Homer did not dwell upon. In the Iliad
and Odyssey the repentance of Helen is facile; she takes life easily.
Clytemnestra is not brought on the stage to speak for herself. In this
respect the epic of the North, without the charm and the delightfulness
of the Southern epic, excels it; in this and in a certain bare veracity,
but in nothing else. We cannot put the Germanic legend on the level of
the Greek, for variety, for many-sided wisdom, for changing beauty of a
thousand colours. But in this one passion of love the "Volsunga Saga"
excels the Iliad.

The Greek and the Northern stories are alike in one thing. Fate is all-
powerful over gods and men. Odin cannot save Balder; nor Thetis,
Achilles; nor Zeus, Sarpedon. But in the Sagas fate is more constantly
present to the mind. Much is thought of being "lucky," or "unlucky."
Howard's "good luck" is to be read in his face by the wise, even when, to
the common gaze, he seems a half-paralytic dotard, dying of grief and
age.

Fate and evil luck dog the heroes of the Sagas. They seldom "end well,"
as people say,--unless, when a brave man lies down to die on the bed he
has strewn o