Muller, Bishop of Zealand, and finished after his death by Johan Velschow, Professor of History at Copenhagen, where the first part of the work, containing text and notes, was published in 1839; the second, with prolegomena and fuller notes, appearing in 1858.The standard edition, containing bibliography, critical apparatus based on all the editions and MS.fragments, text, and index, is the admirable one of that indefatigable veteran, Alfred Holder, Strasburg, 1886.
Hitherto the translations of Saxo have been into Danish.The first that survives, by Anders Soffrinson Vedel, dates from 1575, some sixty years after the first edition.In such passages as Ihave examined it is vigorous, but very free, and more like a paraphrase than a translation, Saxo's verses being put into loose prose.Yet it has had a long life, having been modified by Vedel's grandson, John Laverentzen, in 1715, and reissued in 1851.The present version has been much helped by the translation of Seier Schousbolle, published at Copenhagen in 1752.It is true that the verses, often the hardest part, are put into periphrastic verse (by Laurentius Thura, c.1721), and Schousbolle often does not face a difficulty; but he gives the sense of Saxo simply and concisely.The lusty paraphrase by the enthusiastic Nik.Fred.Sev.Grundtvig, of which there have been several editions, has also been of occasional use.No other translations, save of a scrap here and there into German, seem to be extant.
THE MSS.
It will be understood, from what has been said, that no complete MS.of Saxo's History is known.The epitomator in the fourteenth century, and Krantz in the seventeenth, had MSS.before them; and there was that one which Christian Pedersen found and made the basis of the first edition, but which has disappeared.Barth had two manuscripts, which are said to have been burnt in 1636.
Another, possessed by a Swedish parish priest, Aschaneus, in 1630, which Stephenhis unluckily did not know of, disappeared in the Royal Archives of Stockholm after his death.These are practically the only MSS.of which we have sure information, excepting the four fragments that are now preserved.Of these by far the most interesting is the "Angers Fragment."This was first noticed in 1863, in the Angers Library, where it was found degraded into the binding of a number of devotional works and a treatise on metric, dated 1459, and once the property of a priest at Alencon.In 1877 M.Gaston Paris called the attention of the learned to it, and the result was that the Danish Government received it next year in exchange for a valuable French manuscript which was in the Royal Library at Copenhagen.This little national treasure, the only piece of contemporary writing of the History, has been carefully photographed and edited by that enthusiastic and urbane scholar, Christian Bruun.In the opinion both of Dr.Vigfusson and M.
Paris, the writing dates from about 1200; and this date, though difficult to determine, owing to the paucity of Danish MSS.of the 12th and early lath centuries, is confirmed by the character of the contents.For there is little doubt that the Fragment shows us Saxo in the labour of composition.The MSS.looks as if expressly written for interlineation.Besides a marginal gloss by a later, fourteenth century hand, there are two distinct sets of variants, in different writings, interlined and running over into the margin.These variants are much more numerous in the prose than in the verse.The first set are in the same hand as the text, the second in another hand: but both of them have the character, not of variants from some other MSS., but of alternative expressions put down tentatively.If either hand is Saxo's it is probably the second.He may conceivably have dictated both at different times to different scribes.No other man would tinker the style in this fashion.A complete translation of all these changes has been deemed unnecessary in these volumes; there is a full collation in Holder's "Apparatus Criticus".The verdict of the Angers-Fragment, which, for the very reason mentioned, must not be taken as the final form of the text, nor therefore, despite its antiquity, as conclusive against the First Edition where the two differ, is to confirm, so far as it goes, the editing of Ascensius and Pederson.There are no vital differences, and the care of the first editors, as well as the authority of their source, is thus far amply vindicated.
A sufficient account of the other fragments will be found in Holder's list.In 1855 M.Kall-Rasmussen found in the private archives at Kronborg a scrap of fourteenth century MS., containing a short passage from Bk.vii.Five years later G.F.
Lassen found, at Copenhagen, a fragment of Bk.vi believed to be written in North Zealand, and in the opinion of Bruun belonging to the same codex as Kall-Rasmussen's fragment.Of another longish piece, found in Copenhagen at the end of the seventeenth century by Johannes Laverentzen, and belonging to a codex burnt in the fire of 1728, a copy still extant in the Copenhagen Museum, was made by Otto Sperling.For fragments, either extant or alluded to, of the later books, the student should consult the carefully collated text of Holder.The whole MS.material, therefore, covers but a little of Saxo's work, which was practically saved for Europe by the perseverance and fervour for culture of a single man, Bishop Urne.
SAXO AS A WRITER.
