l's sad old age, and of many other
moving events. This has the most historic interest of any of the great
sagas, and not least of the personal appeal. Perhaps, indeed, it is
more like a really good historical novel than any other.

[Sidenote: Grettla.]

If, however, it were not for the deficiency of feminine character (a
deficiency which rehandlers evidently felt and endeavoured to remedy
by the expedient of tacking on an obvious plagiarism from _Tristan_ as
an appendix, ostensibly dealing with the avenging of the hero), the
fifth, Grettis Saga or _Grettla_, would perhaps be the best of all.

[Sidenote: _Its critics._]

It is true that some experts have found fault with this as late in
parts, and bolstered out with extraneous matter in other respects
beside the finale just referred to. The same critics denounce its
poetical interludes (see _infra_) as spurious, object to some traits
in it as coarse, and otherwise pick it to pieces. Nevertheless there
are few sagas, if there are any, which produce so distinct and
individual an effect, which remind us so constantly that we are in
Iceland and not elsewhere. In pathos and variety of interest it cannot
touch _Njala_ or _Laxdaela_: in what is called "weirdness," in wild
vigour, it surpasses, I think, all others; and the supernatural
element, which is very strong, contrasts, I think, advantageously with
the more business-like ghostliness of _Eyrbyggja_.

After an overture about the hero's forebears, which in any other
country would be as certainly spurious as the epilogue, but to which
the peculiar character of saga-writing gives a rather different claim
here, the story proper begins with a description of the youth of
Grettir the Strong, second son to Asmund the Grey-haired of Biarg, who
had made much money by sea-faring, and Asdis, a great heiress and of
great kin. The sagaman consults poetical justice very well at first,
and prepares us for an unfortunate end by depicting Grettir as, though
valiant and in a way not ungenerous, yet not merely an incorrigible
scapegrace, but somewhat unamiable and even distinctly ferocious.
That, being made gooseherd, and finding the birds troublesome, he
knocks them about, killing some goslings, may not be an unpardonable
atrocity. And even when, being set to scratch his father's back, he
employs a wool-comb for that purpose, much to the detriment of the
paternal skin and temper, it does not very greatly go beyond the
impishness of a na