soldier with it, to ascertain whether such a miracle was possible. If Odin
brought Letters among his people, he might work magic enough!

Writing by Runes has some air of being original among the Norsemen: not a
Phoenician Alphabet, but a native Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us
farther that Odin invented Poetry; the music of human speech, as well as
that miraculous runic marking of it. Transport yourselves into the early
childhood of nations; the first beautiful morning-light of our Europe, when
all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of a great sunrise, and our Europe
was first beginning to think, to be! Wonder, hope; infinite radiance of
hope and wonder, as of a young child's thoughts, in the hearts of these
strong men! Strong sons of Nature; and here was not only a wild Captain
and Fighter; discerning with his wild flashing eyes what to do, with his
wild lion-heart daring and doing it; but a Poet too, all that we mean by a
Poet, Prophet, great devout Thinker and Inventor,--as the truly Great Man
ever is. A Hero is a Hero at all points; in the soul and thought of him
first of all. This Odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to
speak. A great heart laid open to take in this great Universe, and man's
Life here, and utter a great word about it. A Hero, as I say, in his own
rude manner; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man. And now, if we still
admire such a man beyond all others, what must these wild Norse souls,
first awakened into thinking, have made of him! To them, as yet without
names for it, he was noble and noblest; Hero, Prophet, God; _Wuotan_, the
greatest of all. Thought is Thought, however it speak or spell itself.
Intrinsically, I conjecture, this Odin must have been of the same sort of
stuff as the greatest kind of men. A great thought in the wild deep heart
of him! The rough words he articulated, are they not the rudimental roots
of those English words we still use? He worked so, in that obscure
element. But he was as a _light_ kindled in it; a light of Intellect, rude
Nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights we have yet; a Hero, as I say: