Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/26

with a large number of other writers who are eminent in the modern literature of the North. But the old Norse literature also deserves to he known outside of the circle of scholars, to whom alone it has hitherto been really accessible. An account of the historical development of this ancient and modern literature, not merely a nomenclature, but a description, combined with the necessary bibliography, of the literary phenomena, independently, as well as in connection with those streams of culture in foreign lands with which they are more or less interwoven, will therefore be both interesting and useful. By the frequent use of side-lights we shall strive to distinguish what is original and what is borrowed or imitative.