country, arc well known to the lower ranks
of people, and the comparatively few, who
are not able to read, commit them to memory
; the delight of a winter’s evening m
Iceland being for the old to repeat them to
their infant posterity, by which means they
are continually handed down from generation
to generation, as the Poems of Ossian
among the natives of the Hebrides. That
learning in Iceland has been in a state of
decline for some centuries past is allowed
even hy the present inhabitants » but there
are still among them able scholars and great
theologians who would do honor to any age
or country. Poetry is to this day much
cultivated, and it is customary, as often as
strangers of rank visit the island and confer
upon it, or upon its inhabitants, any signal
benefit, to celebrate their actions in poems
written upon the occasion. The liberality
of Sir Joseph Banks, which I have so repeatedly
had occasion to mention, has enabled
me to offer to my readers * some ©f
their Latin versions of poems of this description,
together with one or two spe*
See Appendix D.
cimens of their epistolary composition. How
little this poetical talent has suffered by a
lapse of hearly forty years, since the period
of Sir Joseph Banks’ visit, will be seen by
the last article of the same Appendix, where
Captain Jones has kindly permitted me to
insert the ode written and presented to him,
by an eminent scholar of the present day,
FinnUr Magnusen, which has been already
noticed at page 41 of this journal.
Previously to our departure from Iceland,
another change in the government took
place, which will be more fully detailed in
the Appendix A., before alluded to; yet,
nevertheless, as I have, in the early part of
my narrative, noticed the seizure and deposition
of Count Tramp, and the elevation of
Mr. Jorgensen to the dignity of Stiftsampt-
man, it may not be improper here to add,
that an agreement was now entered into between
Captain Jones, Mr. Phelps, and the
principal Icelanders, by which it was settled
that the former government sould be restored,
and that it should be held responsible for
the persons and property of all British
subjects. It was still farther stipulated, that