the volumes of their "Corpus", where those who seek may find. A
long and illustrious line of poets kept the old traditions, down
even to within a couple centuries, but the earlier great harvest
of song was never again equalled. After christianity had entered
Iceland, and that, with other causes, had quieted men's lives,
although the poetry which stood to the folk in lieu of music did
not die away, it lost the exclusive hold it had upon men's minds.
In a time not so stirring, when emotion was not so fervent or so
swift, when there was less to quicken the blood, the story that
had before found no fit expression but in verse, could stretch
its limbs, as it were, and be told in prose. Something of Irish
influence is again felt in this new departure and that marvellous
new growth, the saga, that came from it, but is little more than
an influence. Every people find some one means of expression
which more than all else suits their mood or their powers, and
this the Icelanders found in the saga. This was the life of a
hero told in prose, but in set form, after a regular fashion that
unconsciously complied with all epical requirements but that of
verse -- simple plot, events in order of time, set phrases for
even the shifting emotion or changeful fortune of a fight or
storm, and careful avoidance of digression, comment, or putting
forward by the narrator of ought but the theme he has in hand; he
himself is never seen. Something in the perfection of the saga
is to be traced to the long winter's evenings, when the whole
household, gathered together at their spinning, weaving, and so
on, would listen to one of their number who told anew some old
story of adventure or achievement. In very truth the saga is a
prose epic, and marked by every quality an epic should possess.
Growing up while the deeds of dead heroes were fresh in memory,
most often recited before the sharers in such deeds, the saga, in