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the Hebrews. The Hebrew poetry abounded with acrostics of various kinds. The same are found in all the ancient Odes of our Icelandic Scalds. It is equally probable, that the verses of the Bards, those ancient British and Gallic Poets, were of the same kind: some few fragments which we have of the poetry of Gaul or Bas Bretagne, put this matter out of doubt. The fact is still more certain with regard to such verses of the Anglo-Saxons as have been handed down to us.
REMARKS on the foregoing PASSAGE.
[Our ingenious Author appears to me to have here thrown together several things, in their nature very different, without sufficient discrimination.
In the first place it may be remarked, that even if we should admit that the Logogryphs of the Icelandic Scalds[1], are composed in a taste not very different from that of the Hebrew Acrostics; yet these Acrostics ought by no means to be confounded with the Alliterations of the Runic or Scaldic Metre: for these are as natural to the Icelandic verse, as Dactyl and
- ↑ See Vol. I. p. 404.—Wormij Literatura Runica, p. 183. 4to.
