common with Virgil, or Tasso, or Milton. With whom, then, is Homer to be compared? A hundred years ago, Voltaire, with all his wit, could not have answered that question--the whole age of European criticism of which Voltaire was the oracle and the god could not have answered it; but thanks--after the Percy Ballads, and Cowper, and Wordsworth, and Southey, and Burns--to Frederick Augustus Wolf, that question we can answer now in the simplest and most certain way in the world, by pointing to the famous Spanish CID, and the old Teutonic LAY of the NIEBELUNGEN. To the Cid, we may presume that those of our readers who love popular poetry, and are not happy enough to know the sonorous old Castilian, have been happily introduced by the great work of Southey. But, with respect to the other great popular Epos of Western Europe, we suspect Mr LETTSOM is only too much in the right when he says, that this venerable monument of the old German genius is "so little known amongst us, that most ordinary readers have not so much as heard of it. Even amongst the numerous and increasing class of those who are acquainted with German, few pay attention to the ancient literature of Germany: they are generally conversant only with the productions of the day, or, at farthest, with those of the most celebrated authors." So, indeed, it must be; the necessary business and amusements of life leave but few of us at liberty to follow the example of the learned Germans, and refuse to look at Helen before we have critically investigated the history of Jove's amours, and of Leda's egg. So much the more are we beholden to gentlemen like the present translator, who, by the patient exercise of those pious pains which are the pleasure of poets, put us into the condition of being able to hear the notes of that strange old Teutonic lyre prolonged through the aisles of an English echo-chamber. Mr Lettsom has done a work, much wanted for the English lover of poetry, honestly and well: this we can say from having compared it in various places with a prose translation of the old German poem, published at Berlin in 1814;[15] also from the distinct recollection which we have of the character and tone of the modern German version of Marbach, which we read for the first time several years ago. But Mr Lettsom's translation bears also internal evidence of its excellence: there is a quiet simplicity and easy talkative breadth about it, characteristic no less of the general genius of the Germans than of the particular mediæval epoch to which it belongs. With a perfect confidence, therefore, in the trustworthiness of the present English version, we proceed to lay before our readers a rapid sketch of the Epic story of the Niebelungen, accompanied with such extracts as may serve to convey an idea of the general tone and character of the composition.