Also the first, when it is looked into 121 The Teutonic Lays are too individual to be conveniently fused into larger masses of narrative 122 III EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY Many of the old epic lays are on the scale of popular ballads 123 Their style is different 124 As may be proved where later ballads have taken up the epic subjects 125 The Danish ballads of _Ungen Sveidal_ (_Svipdag and Menglad_) 126 and of _Sivard_ (_Sigurd and Brynhild_) 127 The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and capable of progress 129 IV THE STYLE OF THE POEMS Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse 133 English and Norse 134 Different besetting temptations in England and the North 136 English tameness; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic poetry) 137 Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North; unable to compete with the lyrical forms 137 Lyrical element in Norse narrative 138 _Volospá_, the greatest of all the Northern poems 139 False heroics; _Krákumál_ (_Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok_) 140 A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances 141 V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter 144 The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni compared--_Atlakviða_, _Atlamál_, _Oddrúnargrátr_ 147 Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory of Kriemhild's revenge 149 The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in _Atlakviða_, apparently confused and ill recollected in the other two poems 150 But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its own which made it impossible to use the original story 152 _Atlamál_, the work of a critical author, making his selection of incidents from heroic tradition 153 the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of its school 155 The "Poetic Edda," a collection of deliberate experiments in poetry and not of casual popular variants 156 VI _BEOWULF_ _Beowulf_ claims to be a single complete work 158 Want of unity: a story and a sequel 159