Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/120

Denmark in the middle ages. It is a work which had no sooner become generally known than it became the object of an equally general admiration. It is a masterpiece in style, both on account of the exceptional elegance and tasteful use of the Latin language according to the standard of the times, the circumstance which gave the author the honorable surname Grammaticus, and also on account of the fascinating, graphic manner in which the facts are related. Svend Aageson, whose work is in all respects far inferior, cheerfully acknowledges Saxo as his master in style; and the Zealand chronicle, which belongs to the second half of the thirteenth century, praises the singular beauty and elegance of Saxo's diction. But as the culture and love of learning gradually died out in the convents and cathedral chapters, the faculty of appreciating Saxo's style was by degrees lost, and about the middle of the fifteenth century, or perhaps earlier, the monk Thomas Gheysmer undertook the timely, and in fact meritorious task of replacing his work, which had well-nigh ceased to be read, with a compendium more suited to the times, and of completing it by adding a continuation. He alleges as a reason for assuming this task, that "Saxo was in many places too discursive, and had said much rather for the sake of adornment than in behalf of truth," and furthermore, that "his style is obscure on account of its verbosity." and that "his inserting fragments of poetry was out of keeping with modern times;" remarks which furnish abundant evidence of the intellectual decline which had taken place in the course of a few centuries. Fortunately, however, the work of Saxo did not perish, though it cost the canon Christiern Pederson much trouble in his day to secure a single copy, according to which the first edition was printed in Paris in 1514. There scarcely ever existed many written copies of this work, which so greatly surpassed the productions of its own time and of the centuries immediately following, and at present we have only a few parchment leaves of it. The Paris edition was soon followed by two others, and as soon as