SCANDINAVIAN SCALDS. 467 leave time for a more ample development of the heathen poetical vein and seems to have created a less decided feeling of anti pathy (especially in Iceland) towards the extinct faith. 1 The poems and tales composing the Edda, though first committed to writing after the period of Christianity, do not present the ancient gods in a point of view intentionally odious or degrading. The transposition above alluded to, of the genealogical root from Odin to Noah, is the more worthy of notice, as it illustrates the genuine character of these genealogies, and shows that they sprung, not from any erroneous historical data, but from the turn of the religious feeling; also that their true value is derived from their being taken entire, as connecting the existing race of men with a divine original. If we could imagine that Grecian paganism had been superseded by Christianity in the year 500 B.C., the great and venerated gentile genealogies of Greece would have undergone the like modification ; the Herakleids, Pelopids, jEakids, Asklepiads, &c., would have been merged in some larger aggregate brandling out from the archaeology of the Old Testa- ment. The old heroic legends connected with these ancestral names would either have been forgotten, or so transformed as to suit the new vein of thought; for the altered worship, ceremo- nies, and customs would have been altogether at variance with them, and the mythical feeling would have ceased to dwell upon those to whom prayers were no longer offered. If the oak of Dodona had been cut down, or the Theoric ship had ceased to be sent from Athens to Delos, the mythes of Theseus and of the two black doves would have lost their pertinence, and died away. As it was, the change from Homer to Thucydides and Aristotle took place internally, gradually, and imperceptibly. Philosophy and history were superinduced in the minds of the superior few. but the feelings of the general public continued unshaken the sa- cred objects remained the same both to the eye and to the heart 1 See P. E. Miiller, Uber den Ursprung und Vcrfall der Islandischen Historiographie, p. 63. In the Leitfaden zur Nordischen Alterthumskunde, pp. 4-5 ( Copenhagen, 1837), is an instructive summary of the different schemes of interpretation applied to the northern mythes: 1, the historical; 2, the geographical; 3 the astronomical ; 4, the physical >, the allegorical,
