The same false manner is retained throughout the poem. In many places it reads well—it is often an excellent story. But it can lay no claim to historic or poetic fidelity to the Beowulf.
Reception of the Book.
The book fell dead from the press. Grundtvig himself tells us that it was hardly read outside his own house[6]. Thirty years later he learned that the book had never reached the Royal Library at Stockholm. A copy made its way to the British Museum, but it was the one which Grundtvig himself carried thither in 1829. This was doubtless the copy that was read and criticized by Thorpe and Wackerbarth. Both of these scholars spoke of its extreme freedom, but commended its readableness.
[1.] This volume I have never seen. My information regarding it is from a scribe in the British Museum.
[3.] Translation by scribe in British Museum.
[4.] Several variations in meter occur in the translation.
[6.] See Beowulfs Beorh, p. xix.