"Yet neither is the _Nibelungen_ without its wonders; for it is poetry and not prose; here too a supernatural world encompasses the natural, and, though at rare intervals and in calm manner, reveals itself there. It is truly wonderful with what skill our simple untaught poet deals with the marvellous, admitting it without reluctance or criticism, yet precisely in the degree and shape that will best avail him. Here, if in no other respect, we should say that he has a decided superiority to Homer himself. The whole story of the Nibelungen is fateful, mysterious, guided on by unseen influences; yet the actual marvels are few, and done in the far distance: those Dwarfs, and Cloaks of Darkness, and charmed Treasure-caves, are heard of rather than beheld; the tidings of them seem to issue from unknown space. Vain were it to inquire where that Nibelungen-land specially is: its very {P. xiv} name is Nebel-land or Nifl-land, the land of Darkness, of Invisibility. The Nibelungen Heroes, that muster in thousands and tens of thousands, though they march to the Rhine or Danube, and we see their strong limbs and shining armour, we could almost fancy to be children of the air. Far beyond the firm horizon, that wonder-bearing region swims on the infinite waters, unseen by bodily eye, or at most discerned as a faint streak, hanging in the blue depths, uncertain whether island or cloud. And thus the Nibelungen Song, though based on the bottomless foundations of Spirit, and not unvisited of skyey messengers, is a real, rounded, habitable earth, where we find firm footing, and the wondrous and the common live amicably together. Perhaps it would be difficult to find any poet, of ancient or modern times, who in this trying problem has steered his way with greater delicacy and success." As a drama of action and of destiny, the poem rises to real greatness. To quote Carlyle again: "The _Nibelungen_ has been called the Northern Epos; yet it has, in great part, a dramatic character: those thirty-nine _Aventiuren_ (Adventures) which it consists of, might be so many scenes in a Tragedy. The catastrophe is dimly prophesied from the beginning; and, at every fresh step, rises more and more clearly into view. A shadow of coming Fate, as it were, a low inarticulate voice of Doom falls, from the first, out of that charmed Nibelungen-land: the discord of two women is as a little spark of evil passion, which ere long enlarges itself into a crime: foul murder is done; and now the Sin rolls on like a devouring fire, till the guilty and the innocent are alike encircled with it, and a whole land is ashes and a whole race is swept away."