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consists, I have only chosen the following, as being what I thought the generality of my readers would peruse with most pleasure. I have not even always translated entire stanzas, but have sometimes reduced two stanzas into one, in order to spare the Reader such passages as appeared to me uninteresting and obscure[1].
- ↑ Our elegant Author having taken great liberties in his Translation of this and the following Odes, in order to accommodate them to the taste of French Readers; it was once intended here, instead of copying the French, to have given extracts from the more literal Version of all these Poems formerly published, which hath been so often quoted in the Notes to this work: viz. The Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, Translated from the Icelandic Language. 1763. 8vo. But an ingenious Friend having translated from the French this part of M. Mallet’s Book, I have got leave to insert his Version, and shall take the liberty to refer the more curious Reader to the pamphlet above-mentioned; which the Translator professes he occasionally consulted in the following pages. There the Odes here abridged may be seen at large, confronted with the Icelandic Originals, and accompanied with two other ancient Pieces of Northern Poetry. T.
