登陆注册
25635300000014

第14章

Its portraits, like Homer's, are strongly individualized. The Sagas describe a monarchical republic like Sparta. The government disappears before the importance of citizens. In Norway, no Persian masses fight and perish to aggrandize a king, but the actors are bonders or landholders, every one of whom is named and personally and patronymically described, as the king's friend and companion. Asparse population gives this high worth to every man. Individuals are often noticed as very handsome persons, which trait only brings the story nearer to the English race. Then the solid material interest predominates, so dear to English understanding, wherein the association is logical, between merit and land. The heroes of the Sagas are not the knights of South Europe. No vaporing of France and Spain has corrupted them. They are substantial farmers, whom the rough times have forced to defend their properties. They have weapons which they use in a determined manner, by no means for chivalry, but for their acres. They are people considerably advanced in rural arts, living amphibiously on a rough coast, and drawing half their food from the sea, and half from the land. They have herds of cows, and malt, wheat, bacon, butter, and cheese. They fish in the fiord, and hunt the deer. A king among these farmers has a varying power, sometimes not exceeding the authority of a sheriff. A king was maintained much as, in some of our country districts, a winter-schoolmaster is quartered, a week here, a week there, and a fortnight on the next farm, -- on all the farmers in rotation. This the king calls going into guest-quarters; and it was the only way in which, in a poor country, a poor king, with many retainers, could be kept alive, when he leaves his own farm to collect his dues through the kingdom.

These Norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. But they have a singular turn for homicide; their chief end of man is to murder, or to be murdered; oars, scythes, harpoons, crowbars, peatknives, and hayforks, are tools valued by them all the more for their charming aptitude for assassinations. A pair of kings, after dinner, will divert themselves by thrusting each his sword through the other's body, as did Yngve and Alf. Another pair ride out on a morning for a frolic, and, finding no weapon near, will take the bits out of their horses' mouths, and crush each other's heads with them, as did Alric and Eric. The sight of a tent-cord or a cloak-string puts them on hanging somebody, a wife, or a husband, or, best of all, a king. If a farmer has so much as a hayfork, he sticks it into a King Dag.

King Ingiald finds it vastly amusing to burn up half a dozen kings in a hall, after getting them drunk. Never was poor gentleman so surfeited with life, so furious to be rid of it, as the Northman. If he cannot pick any other quarrel, he will get himself comfortably gored by a bull's horns, like Egil, or slain by a land-slide, like the agricultural King Onund. Odin died in his bed, in Sweden; but it was a proverb of ill condition, to die the death of old age. King Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in battle, as long as he can stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded with his dead men and their weapons, to be taken out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails spread;being left alone, he sets fire to some tar-wood, and lies down contented on deck. The wind blew off the land, the ship flew burning in clear flame, out between the islets into the ocean, and there was the right end of King Hake.

The early Sagas are sanguinary and piratical; the later are of a noble strain. History rarely yields us better passages than the conversation between King Sigurd the Crusader, and King Eystein, his brother, on their respective merits, -- one, the soldier, and the other, a lover of the arts of peace.

But the reader of the Norman history must steel himself by holding fast the remote compensations which result from animal vigor.

As the old fossil world shows that the first steps of reducing the chaos were confided to saurians and other huge and horrible animals, so the foundations of the new civility were to be laid by the most savage men.

The Normans came out of France into England worse men than they went into it, one hundred and sixty years before. They had lost their own language, and learned the Romance or barbarous Latin of the Gauls; and had acquired, with the language, all the vices it had names for. The conquest has obtained in the chronicles, the name of the "memory of sorrow." Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings.

These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates. They were all alike, they took every thing they could carry, they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until every thing English was brought to the verge of ruin. Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits, by assuming for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally resembled.

England yielded to the Danes and Northmen in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and was the receptacle into which all the mettle of that strenuous population was poured. The continued draught of the best men in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, to these piratical expeditions, exhausted those countries, like a tree which bears much fruit when young, and these have been second-rate powers ever since.

同类推荐
  • 活幼口议

    活幼口议

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 佛说不空罥索咒经

    佛说不空罥索咒经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 霏雪录

    霏雪录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 次柳氏旧闻

    次柳氏旧闻

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 净名玄论

    净名玄论

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
热门推荐
  • 把坐出来的痛做回去

    把坐出来的痛做回去

    《把坐出来的痛做回去》从基础篇、运动篇、饮食篇、自愈篇、心理篇、习惯篇、妙招篇几个方面,详细告诉你,如何把坐出来的痛做回去!如果你是坐着阅读这本书的,请立即暂停阅读,想想现在身体的感觉:是不是觉得颈椎有些痛?肩膀有些硬?腰部有些酸?大腿有些轻微的麻木?心情不太好?算算看,一天中,你有多少时间是站着或走动的?如果你觉得近来浑身上下的肌肉越来越僵硬,颈椎和腰椎开始隐隐作痛,胳膊腿也不如以前灵活了,相信我,这绝不是仅仅因为年龄关系,而是你的身体在对你发出报警讯号:你坐得太久了!一切问题都是由你久坐引起的!
  • 修药师仪轨布坛法

    修药师仪轨布坛法

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 须弥江湖

    须弥江湖

    以金古梁人物为铺垫的新态武侠。在当下武侠小说低迷的环境当中,此书用新态的方式让大家回味一下曾经的经典武侠,曾经的江湖。
  • 用自己最爱的方式过一生

    用自己最爱的方式过一生

    本书精选了众多励志小故事,让我们在这些美文中开始一段心灵的旅行,去发现最好的自己,屏弃内心的杂念,给灵魂喘息的机会。人生变幻,目前的困境只是暂时的,偶尔一两次的失败并不代表什么,挺起胸膛,还有更长的路要走。打破禁锢,开放自我,充分相信自己的未来充满阳光,不断超越自己,发现最好的自己,踏上更高、更广阔的舞台。
  • 嗜血狂妃:废柴要逆天

    嗜血狂妃:废柴要逆天

    她是21世纪的杀手,却穿越到一个白痴废柴身上,而且这个人还是一个真武大陆闻名花痴,被太子退了婚,赐婚于无能王爷。还要被自己的渣爹嫌弃,就连下人也敢欺负自己。白痴?废柴?总有一天她会让他们知道,得罪自己的下场!建立门派,当圣女,在真武大陆一样能过的风生水起。他是真武大陆的战神安王,十二岁就敢带兵上战场,单枪匹马从十万敌军之中将对方主帅斩于马下的安王。皇后的亲生儿子,差一点就要成为太子的人选。
  • 若说没奇缘,今生偏又遇着他:诗说红楼十二钗

    若说没奇缘,今生偏又遇着他:诗说红楼十二钗

    《若说没奇缘,今生偏又遇着他:诗说红楼十二钗》内容丰富,主要收录了梦中人,笑言频,春夏秋冬酒力轻、何必枉悲伤——《乐中悲》、傲世也因同气味——《供菊》、秋光荏苒休辜负——《对菊》、珍重暗香休踏碎——《菊影》等内容。
  • 活力上班族

    活力上班族

    本书不同于市场上一般简单拼凑的办公室健康书籍,以生动的语言,丰富的内容,从最系统的人体器官入手,系统解读了如何通过锻炼、保健、饮食摆脱办公室压力、改正不良习惯,由治病到养生塑性,最后每章节结束再配以相应器官的瑜伽健身指南,有效的针对办公室人群各方面的疾病,更能由表入本,用更积极健康的方式解决身体问题。
  • 凯源玺十年誓约

    凯源玺十年誓约

    三只在十年之约的道路上坎坎坷坷的走着,一路上的羁绊,数都数不完,算都算不清;但是,还有一群是那么爱他们的fans;只是,三只生命中的另一半已经浑然不知的进入了他们的生活,甚至住进了他们的心里……
  • 昔日的那一抹绿

    昔日的那一抹绿

    人生有千万种可能,但你不去尝试就永远不可能。属于自己的平凡生活,也许在他人眼里并不平凡,一个女大学生弃笔从戎,去追寻那向往已久的军旅生活,热切盼望穿上那身英姿飒爽的绿军装。部队是个大熔炉,如何施展满腔的热血,立足军营,建功立业,又怎样在梦想和现实的差异下,完成一次次人生角色的转换。最终的结果是怎样,得到了什么又失去了哪些,我们都在路上……
  • 健康宜忌1000问

    健康宜忌1000问

    本书从生活起居、卫生习惯、饮食健康、营养进补等11个方面讲解了健康知识,包罗了生活的方方面面。