of Jacob Grimm is not a 'household word'. His General Grammar of all
the Teutonic Dialects from Iceland to England has proved the equality
of these tongues with their ancient classical oppressors. His
Antiquities of Teutonic Law have shown that the codes of the
Lombards, Franks, and Goths were not mere savage, brutal customaries,
based, as had been supposed, on the absence of all law and right. His
numerous treatises on early German authors have shown that the German
poets of the Middle Age, Godfrey of Strasburg, Wolfram von
Eschenbach, Hartman von der Aue, Walter von der Vogelweide, and the
rest, can hold their own against any contemporary writers in other
lands. And lastly, what rather concerns us here, his Teutonic
Mythology, his Reynard the Fox, and the collection of German Popular
Tales, which he and his brother William published, have thrown a
flood of light on the early history of all the branches of our race,
and have raised what had come to be looked on as mere nursery
fictions and old wives' fables--to a study fit for the energies of
grown men, and to all the dignity of a science.

In these pages, where we have to run over a vast tract of space, the
reader who wishes to learn and not to cavil--and for such alone this
introduction is intended--must be content with results rather than
processes and steps. To use a homely likeness, he must be satisfied
with the soup that is set before him, and not desire to see the bones
of the ox out of which it has been boiled. When we say, therefore,
that in these latter days the philology and mythology of the East and
West have met and kissed each other; that they now go hand and hand;
that they lend one another mutual support; that one cannot be
understood without the other,--we look to be believed. We do not
expect to be put to the proof, how the labours of Grimm and his
disciples on this side were first rendered possible by the linguistic