"An opinion was fixed and general among them, that death was but the entrance into another life; that all men who lived lazy and inactive lives, and died natural deaths, by sickness, or by age, went into vast caves under ground, all dark and miry, full of noisom creatures, usual in such places, and there forever grovelled in endless stench and misery. On the contrary, all who gave themselves to warlike actions and enterprises, to the conquests of their neighbors, and slaughters of enemies, and died in battle, or of violent deaths upon bold adventures or resolutions, they went immediately to the vast hall or palace of Odin, their god of war, who eternally kept open house for all such guests, where they were entertained at infinite tables, in perpetual feasts and mirth, carousing every man in bowls made of the skulls of their enemies they had slain, according to which numbers, every one in these mansions of pleasure was the most honoured and the best entertained."[7] Thus before Gray was born, Temple had written intelligently in English of the salient features of the Old Norse mythology. Later in the same essay, he recognized that some of the civil and political procedures of his country were traceable to the Northmen, and, what is more to our immediate purpose, he recognized the poetic value of Old Norse song. On p. 358 occurs this paragraph: "I am deceived, if in this sonnet (two stanzas of 'Regner Lodbrog'), and a following ode of Scallogrim there be not a vein truly poetical, and in its kind Pindaric, taking it with the allowance of the different climates, fashions, opinions, and languages of such distant countries." Temple certainly had no knowledge of Old Norse, and yet, in 1679, he could write so of a poem which he had to read through the Latin. Sir William had a wide knowledge and a fine appreciation of literature, and an enthusiasm for its dissemination. He takes evident delight in telling the fact that princes and kings of the olden time did high honor to bards. He regrets that classic culture was snuffed out by a barbarous people, but he rejoices that a new kind came to take its place. "Some of it wanted not the true spirit of poetry in some degree, or that natural inspiration which has been said to arise from some spark of poetical fire wherewith particular men are born; and such as it was, it served the turn, not only to please, but even to charm, the ignorant and barbarous vulgar, where it was in use."[8]