=1720=. Keysler. _Antiquitates selectæ septentrionales et Celticæ quibus plurima loca conciliorum et capitularium explanantur, dogmata theologiæ ethnicæ Celtarum gentiumque septentrionalium cum moribus et institutis maiorum nostrorum circa idola, aras, oracula, templa, lucos, sacerdotes, regum electiones, comitia et monumenta sepulchralia una cum reliquiis gentilismi in coetibus christianorum ex monumentis potissimum hactenus ineditis fuse perquiruntur._ _Autore_ Joh. Georgio Keysler. Hannoveræ. 1720. =1755=. Mallet. _Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc où l'on traite de la Réligion, des Lois, des Moeurs, et des Usages des Anciens Danois. Par_ M. Mallet. Copenhague. 1755. Discussed later. =1756=. Mallet. _Monumens de la Mythologie et la Poësie des Celtes et particulièrement des anciens Scandinaves ... Par_ M. Mallet. Copenhague. 1756. =1763=. Percy. _Five Pieces of Runic Poetry translated from the Islandic Language_. London. 1763. This book is described on a later page. =1763=. Blair. _A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, the Son of Fingal_. [By Hugh Blair.] London. 1763. =1770=. Percy. _Northern Antiquities: or a description of the Manners, Customs, Religion and Laws of the ancient_ _Danes, and other Northern Nations; including these of our own Saxon Ancestors. With a translation of the Edda or System of Runic Mythology, and other Pieces from the Ancient Icelandic Tongue. Translated from M. Mallet's Introduction à l'Histoire de Dannemarc_. London. 1770. =1774=. Warton. _The History of English Poetry_. By Thomas Warton. London. 1774-81. In this book the prefatory essay entitled "On the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe" is significant. It is treated at length later on. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE (1628-1699). From the above list it appears that the earliest mention in the English language of Icelandic literature was Sir William Temple's. The two essays noted above have many references to Northern customs and songs. Macaulay's praise of Temple's style is well deserved, and the slighting remarks about the matter do not apply to the passages in evidence here. Temple's acknowledgments to Wormius indicate the source of his information, and it is a commentary upon the exactness of the antiquarian's knowledge that so many of the statements in Temple's essays are perfectly good to-day. Of course the terms "Runic" and "Gothic" were misused, but so were they a century later. Odin is "the first and great hero of the western Scythians; he led a mighty swarm of the Getes, under the name of Goths, from the Asiatic Scythia into the farthest northwest parts of Europe; he seated and spread his kingdom round the whole Baltic sea, and over all the islands in it, and extended it westward to the ocean and southward to the Elve."[6] Temple places Odin's expedition at two thousand years before his own time, but he gets many other facts right. Take this summing up of the old Norse belief as an example: