ideals of literary men, the heroic narrative in prose, the prose epic. For this was once a favourite ambition, one of the abstract ideas that tempted many writers, along with the perfect form of Tragedy and the pattern of an Epic Poem. Cervantes in Don Quixote has given one of the best descriptions of this ideal by the mouth of the Canon of Toledo, explaining what might be made of prose romances if they were taken up by the right kind of author. The prose story, says the Canon, offers a large free field for all kinds of adventures, descriptions, and characters, for the craft of Ulysses, the valour of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector, and so on. A web woven of many various strands—that shall be the new kind of romance; a story written without exaggeration of style, and drawn truly; using the freedom of prose narrative so as to include among other things both tragedy and comedy, 'with all those parts that are included in the most delightful and pleasant sciences of poetry and oratory; for the epic may be written not less in prose than in verse'. Something of what is here outlined had been accomplished long before in the Icelandic Sagas—the wisdom of Njal, the valour of Gunnar and Skarphedin, the misfortunes of Grettir the Strong. Those Northern books are written sometimes with a spirit like that of Cervantes himself, with dialogue unmatched except in the great novelists.
This rich imaginative history had its source in real life. Njal and Egil and their adventures were kept in traditional memory, their stories were the property of no one in particular, handed down from one age to another till the time came for them to be put into shape and written out in their present form. Icelandic prose is very near to the spoken language; it is rich in idiom and in conversation, and the artistic form given
