Northern Antiquities/Volume 2/Supplement
SUPPLEMENT.
ADVERTISEMENT.
WE have now seen the end of M. Mallet’s Introduction a l’ Histoire de Dannemark, and here the present Work might properly enough have been concluded: but as this Second Volume falls short in size of the preceding, the English Translator thought he should make a very acceptable present to the learned Reader, if he subjoined by way of Supplement, the Latin Version of the Edda by Mr. Goranson, whom our Author has mentioned in the Introduction to this Volume. By comparing this Version with the preceding one from the French, the genuine literal sense of the original will the more compleatly be attained: And in illustrating so ancient and so peculiar a Composition, no kind of assistance will be found superfluous. It may be a farther recommendation of the following pages, that Mr. Goranson’s Latin Version, (which, however barbarous and unclassical, is yet esteemed literally exact) is in itself a great curiosity, as his own book will probably fall into the hands of very few Readers in this kingdom. This Latin Version was published a few years ago at the foot of a correct edition of the Edda in 4to, accompanied with another translation into the Swedish language, and prefaced with a long Swedish dissertation, “De Eddæ antiquitate, et indole, &c. ut et de antiquissimis et genuinis Skythis, Getis, Gothis, Atlantis, Hyperboreis, Cimbris, Gallis, eorumque Satore Gomero.”
If the preceding Version from M. Mallet should be found in some places to differ pretty much from this of Mr. Goranson, we probably must not attribute it wholly to the freedom, with which the former has sometimes paraphrased the original in order to accommodate it to the modern taste, but in many instances to the different copies of the Edda which they each of them respectively followed; and for this our Author has himself apologized in the Introduction. They also differ in their several divisions of the work but for this also M. Mallet has already accounted[1]. In the following Version Mr. Goranson’s Own Divisions are preserved in the Text; but those of M. Mallet are carefully noted in the Margin. T.
- ↑ See above, pag. 24.