literary work, and indicates
why these poems cannot fail to live:

What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world in its turn will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.

Balder is the creation of Old Norse poetry that is most popular with
contemporary English writers, and Matthew Arnold first made him so. As
Bugge points out, no deed of his is "celebrated in song or story. His
personality only is described; of his activity in life almost no
external trait is recorded. All the stress is laid upon his death; and,
like Christ, Baldr dies in his youth."[21]

SIR GEORGE WEBBE DASENT (1820-1896).

Among the scholars who have labored to give England the benefit of a
fuller and truer knowledge of Norse matters, none will be remembered
more gratefully than Sir George Webbe Dasent. Known to the reading
public most widely by his translations of the folk-tales of Asbjoernsen
and Moe, he has still a claim upon the attention of the students of
Icelandic. As we have seen, he gave out a translation of the _Younger
Edda_ in 1842, and during the half century and more that followed he
wrote other works of history and literature connected with our subject.
Two saga translations were published in 1861 and 1866, _The Story of
Burnt Njal_, and _The Story of Gisli the Outlaw_, which will always rank
high in this class of literature. _Njala_ especially is an excellent
piece of work, a classic among translations. The "Prolegomena" is rich
in information, and very little of it has been superseded by later
scholarship. In 1887 and 1894 he translated for the Master of the Rolls,
_The Orkney Saga_ and _The Saga of Hakon_, the texts of which Vigfusson
had printed in the same series some years before. The interest of the
government in Icelandic annals connected with English history is
indicated in these last publications, and England is fortunate to have
had such enthusiastic scholars as Vigfusson and Dasent to do the work.
These men had been collaborators on the Cleasby Dictionary, and in this
work as in all others Dasent displayed an eagerness to have his
countrymen know how significant England's relationship to Iceland was.
He was as certain as Laing had been before him of the preeminence of
this literature among the mediaeval writings. Like Laing, too, he would
have the general reader turn to this body of work "which for its beauty
and richness is worthy of being known to the greatest possible numb