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710 VON TROIL’s LETTERS ON ICELAND.
oufly, that the opinion of thefe men is of very little importance, when they alledge no
grounds for it. He therefore believes himfelf entitled to maintain with certainty, that
Sturlefon has falfely been thought the author of the Edda. ‘To fupport his opinion, he
mentions three arguments in different places, which I muft now examine more clofely.
The firft argument is to be met with in p. 39, where Mr. Schloczer fubmits it to
confideration, whether the ferious Snorre, overcharged with ftate affairs, could be fup-
pofed to have had time, and did not think it beneath his dignity to write Aerarium poe-
ticum, and become the predeceflor of Weinreich ? Here I will only obferve, that Snorre
was not conftantly lagman, and that he might have compiled this work before he ob-
tained this dignity, or in the interval between the firft and fecond adminiftration of this
confiderable charge; and la(tly, even in its vacancies. Neither Mr. Schloczer nor I
are able to determine how much time the management of a lagman’s office requires.
‘They hold feveral yearly court-days or aflizes, after which I have always underftood
that they are entirely free and difengaged ; fo that I may fairly infer that the lagmen
are not troubled with the examination of tedious records, or are employed in any extra-
ordinary works. We find many Icelandic lagmen who have been poets laureats in
Sweden and Norway, as Marcus Skaggafon, Sturle ‘Thordarfon, and others. If Mr.
Schloczer’s argument was conclufive, he might go {till farther, and prove that Sturle-
fon could neither have written the Heimikringla, or hiftory of the northern kings, which
required ten times more time, and more laborious difquifitions, than the Edda.
Mr. Schloczer founds his fecond argument on his believing it incredible, that any one
in the golden age of poetry in Iceland fhould prefume to advance fuch abfurd things as
I have done in my letter. He therefore believes the Edda to be a production of later
times, when poetry was in its decline in Iceland.
To underftand the whole force of this argument, it muft be known that Mr. Schloczer
divides the Icelandic literature into three periods ; the fimpler period, from the begin-
ning to the introduction of Chriftianity; the golden period, from the introduction of
Chriftianity to the clofe of the thirteenth century, when: the black death or the great
plague, as well as the fubjection of the Icelanders to the crown of Norway, checked the
progrefs of poetry ; and the laft, from that period to the prefent. I will not ftri€tly ex-
amine this divifion, though I cannot comprehend that the introduction of Chriftianity
could contribute to the improvement of poetry ; and {till lefs, if the diger-death, which
raged in the middle of the fourteenth century, produced the fame effect on the furviving
poets, as on the cultivation of the country and its population. But this I am clear of,
that any one who would attempt to clafs the Icelandic poets with any degree of cer-
tainty, muft be perfeClly well acquainted with their language, and be able to weigh the
faculties of their minds again{t each other.
It fignifies very little under what particular dynafty the poetry of the Chinefe moft
flourifhed, fo long as we are able to underftand their poems without the affiftance of an
interpreter.
As to the paflages of Icelandic poets, which I have quoted in different places, they
prove not a tittle of what Mr. Schloczer pretends they do. For Lopt Gutormffon’s
verfes are not in the Edda; and though the other fong is to be met with in Refenius’s
edition of it, yet it is not in the Upfala manufcript. It is therefore not known to what
period they belong; and they cannot by any means be made ufe of as proofs to fhew
that Snorre was not the author of the Edda. It is highly proper to be well acquainted.
with a fubjeét before one ventures to treat of it.
I will by no means prefume to defend all the phrafes I have made ufe of; though it
is well known that cuftom has introduced them into every language, which were they
tranflated
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