As if Providence had intended to teach the old man that we must hope to the last, he soon after received the unexpected visit of Mr. Henderson, an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, who thus relates his interview:
“Like most of his brethren at this season of the year, we found him in the meadow assisting his people in hay-making. On hearing of our arrival, he made all the haste home which his age and infirmity would allow, and bidding us welcome to his lowly abode, ushered us into the humble apartment where he translated my countrymen into Icelandic. The door is not quite four feet in height, and the room may be about eight feet in length by six in breadth. At the inner end is the poet’s bed, and close to the door, over against a small window, not exceeding two feet square, is a table where he commits to paper the effusions of his Muse. On my telling him that my countrymen would not have forgiven me, nor could I have forgiven myself, had I passed through this part of the island without paying him a visit, he replied that the translation of Milton had yielded him many a pleasant hour, and often given him occasion to think of England.”
This visit was followed by agreeable consequences for the venerable bard. The Literary Fund soon afterwards sent him a present of £30, a modest sum according to our ideas, but a mine of wealth in the eyes of the poor Icelandic priest. His life, however, was now near its close, as it is stated in a short view “Of the Origin, Progress, and Operations of the Society,” dated March 3d, 1821, that “the poet of Iceland is now in his grave; but it is satisfactory to know that the attention, in this instance, of a foreign and remote society to his gains and his fortunes was highly gratifying to his feelings, and contributed not immaterially to the comfort of his concluding days.”
He wrote a letter in very elegant Latin, expressing his heartfelt gratitude for the kindness and generosity of the Society, so accordant with the character of the British nation, and accompanied it with a MS. copy of his translation. The latter was first printed in Iceland in 1828, but his own original poems did not appear before 1842.
The school where most of the Icelandic clergymen, so poor and yet generally so respectable in their poverty, are educated, is that of Reykjavik, as few only enjoy stipends which enable them to study at Copenhagen. There they live several years under a milder sky, they become acquainted with the splendor of a large capital, and thus it might be supposed that the idea of returning to the dreary wastes of their own land must be intolerable. Yet this is their ardent desire, and, like banished exiles, they long for their beloved Iceland, where privation and penury await them.
In no Christian country, perhaps with the sole exception of Lapland, are the clergy so poor as in Iceland, but in none do they exert a more beneficial influence.
Though the island has but the one public school at Reykjavik, yet perhaps in no country is elementary education more generally diffused. Every mother teaches her children to read and write, and a peasant, after providing for the wants of his family by the labor of his hands, loses no opportunity, in his leisure hours, of inculcating a sound morality. In these praiseworthy efforts the parents are supported by the pastor.
He who, judging from the sordid condition of an Icelandic hut, might imagine its inhabitants to be no better than savages, would soon change his opinion were he introduced on a winter evening into the low, ill-ventilated room where the family of a peasant or a small landholder is assembled. Vainly would he seek a single idler in the whole company. The women and girls spin or knit; the men and boys are all busy mending their agricultural implements and household utensils, or else chiselling or cutting with admirable skill ornaments or snuff-boxes in silver, ivory, or wood. By the dubious light of a tallow lamp, just making obscurity visible, sits one of the family, who reads with a loud voice an old “saga” or chronicle, or maybe the newest number of the “Northurfari,” an Iceland literary almanac, published during the last few years by Mr. Gisle Brinjulfsson. Sometimes poems or whole sagas are repeated from memory, and there are even itinerant story-tellers, who, like the troubadours and trouvères of the Middle Ages, wander from one farm to another, and thus gain a scanty livelihood. In this manner the deeds of the ancient Icelanders remain fixed in the memory of their descendants, and Snorre Sturleson, Sämund, Frodi, and Eric Rauda are unforgotten. Nine centuries have elapsed; but every Icelander still knows the names of the proud yarls who first peopled the fiords of the island; and the exploits of the brave vikings who spread terror and desolation along all the coasts of Europe still fill the hearts of the peaceful islanders of our days with a glow of patriotic pride.
Where education is so general, one may naturally expect to find a high degree of intellectual cultivation among the clergy, the public functionaries, and the wealthier part of the population. Their classical knowledge is one of the first things that strike the stranger with astonishment. He sees men whose appearance too frequently denotes an abject poverty conversant with the great authors of antiquity, and keenly alive to their beauties. Travelling to the Geysirs, he is not seldom accosted in Latin by his guide, and stopping at a farm, his host greets him in the same language.
I have specially named Jon Thorlakson, but Iceland has produced and still produces many other men who, without the hope of any other reward but that which proceeds from the pure love of literature, devote their days and nights to laborious studies, and live with Virgil and Homer under the sunny skies of Italy and Greece. In the study of the modern languages, the Icelanders are as far advanced as can be expected from their limited intercourse with the rest of the world.