[Footnote 173: Not translated, and said to require re-editing in the original, but very fully abstracted in _Northern Antiquities_, as above, pp. 321-339. The verse is in the _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_.] So much of the interest of a saga depends on small points constantly varied and renewed, that only pretty full abstracts of the contents of one can give much idea of them. On the other hand, the attentive reader of a single saga can usually give a very good guess at the general nature of any other from a brief description of it, though he must of course miss the individual touches of poetry and of character. And though I speak with the humility of one who does not pretend to Icelandic scholarship, I think that translations are here less inadequate than in almost any other language, the attraction of the matter being so much greater than that of the form. For those who will not take the slight trouble to read Dasent's _Njala_, or Morris and Magnusson's _Grettla_, the next best idea attainable is perhaps from Sir Walter Scott's abstract of the _Eyrbyggja_ or Mr Blackwell's of the Kormak's Saga, or Mr Gosse's of _Egla_. Njal's Saga deals with the friendship between the warrior Gunnar and the lawyer Njal, which, principally owing to the black-heartedness of Gunnar's wife Hallgerd, brings destruction on both, Njal and almost his whole family being burnt as the crowning point, but by no means the end, of an intricate series of reciprocal murders. For the blood-feuds of Iceland were as merciless as those of Corsica, with the complication--thoroughly Northern and not in the least Southern--of a most elaborate, though not entirely impartial, system of judicial inquiries and compensations, either by fine or exile. To be outlawed for murder, either in casual affray or in deliberate attack, was almost as regular a part of an Icelandic gentleman's avocations from his home and daily life as a journey on viking or trading intent, and was often combined with one or both. But outlawry and fine by no means closed the incident invariably, though they sometimes did so far as the feud was concerned: and there is hardly one saga which does not mainly or partly turn on a tangle of outrages and inquests. [Sidenote: Njala.] [Sidenote: Laxdaela.] As _Njala_ is the most complete and dramatic of the sagas where love has no very prominent part except in the Helen-like dangerousness, if not exactly Helen-like charm, of Hallgerd, of whom it might certainly be said that "Where'er she came, She brought Calamity";