[155] The often-quoted statement that in 659 Mummolinus or Momolenus was made Bishop of Noyon because of his double skill in "Teutonic" and "Roman" (not "Latin") speech.
[156] Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1872.
[157] Ed. Paulin Paris. Paris, 1879.
[158] Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1874.
[159] Frequently edited: not least satisfactorily in the Nouvelles Françaises du XIIIme Siècle, referred to above. In 1887 two English translations, by Mr Lang and Mr Bourdillon, the latter with the text and much apparatus, appeared: and Mr Bourdillon has recently edited a facsimile of the unique MS. (Oxford, 1896).
[160] Iceland began to be Christian in 1000.
[161] It is almost superfluous to insert, but would be disagreeable to omit, a reference to the Sturlunga Saga (2 vols., Oxford, 1879) and the Corpus Poeticum Boreale (2 vols., Oxford, 1883) of the late Dr Vigfusson and Professor York Powell. The first contains an invaluable sketch, or rather history, of Icelandic literature: the second (though one may think its arrangement a little arbitrary) is a book of unique value and interest. Had these two been followed up according to Dr Vigfusson's plan, practically the whole of Icelandic literature that has real interest would have been accessible once for all. As it is, one is divided between satisfaction that England should have done such a service to one of the great mediæval literatures, and regret that she has not done as much for others.
[162] Dr Vigfusson is exceedingly severe on the Heimskringla, which he will have to be only a late, weak, and rationalised compilation from originals like the oddly termed "Great O.T. Saga." But it is hard for a man to think hardly of the book in which, though only a translation, he first read how Queen Sigrid the Haughty got rid of her troublesome lovers by the effectual process of burning them en masse in a barn, and how King Olaf died the greatest sea-death—greater even than Grenville's—of any defeated hero, in history or literature.
[163] The Story of Burnt Njal. Edinburgh, 1861.
[164] Included in the Bohn edition of Mallet's Northern Antiquities.