NIBELUN'GEN, LAY OF TILE, the name given to the most ancient existing monument of German epic poetry. The origin of this poem is veiled in great ob scurity ; it is supposed to have existed, in substance at least, two centuries before the reign of Charlemagne, and, like the early compositions of poets in all ages, to bare consisted originally of detached ballads and poems, which were afterwards gradually collected, and at length mould ed into the complete form in which they at present exist. The last of the modifi cations which it underwent took place towards the end of the 12th century, and is attributed to the Minnesinger Hen rich von Ofterdingen. The story turns neon the adventures of Chritnhild of Burgundy, who is first won by the valiant Siegfried, and after he is treacherously murdered gives her hand to Attila, king of the Huns, chiefly in the hope that through his power and influence she may be revenged on the murderers of her for mer lord. The Nibelungen Lied formed for many centuries the chief traditionary record of the romantic deeds and senti ments of the German nation, hut at the era of the Reformation it sank wholly into oblivion; from which, however, it has within the last thirty years been rescued, and permanently placed by the labors and commentaries of Hagen, Zeune, Sim rock, and Schlegel, among the most con spicuous monuments of human genius. All the questions relating to its origin, nature, and characteristics are discussed with great interest by the German lite rati, to many of whom, indeed, it forms a distinct branch of study. In the Nibelun
gen hied, in the same manner as in the legends of Troy and of Iceland, the inter est turns on the fate of a youthful hero, who is represented as invested with all the attributes of beauty, magnanimity, and triumph, bat dearly purchasing all these perishable glories by the certainty of an early and predicted death. In his person, as is usual, we have a living type both of the splendor and the decline of the heroic world. The poem closes with the descrip tion of a great catastrophe borrowed from a hall'-historieal incident in the early tra ditions of the north. In this respect also, as in many others, we cannot fail to per ceive a resemblance to the Iliad. If the last catastrophe of the German poem be one more tragical, bloody, and Manic than anything in Homer, the death of the German hero, on the other hand, has in it more solemnity and stillness, and is withal depicted with more exquisite touches of tenderness than any similar scene in any heroic poem with which we are acquainted. The Nibelungen Lied is, moreover, a poem abounding in vari ety; in it, both sides of human life, the Joyful its well as the sorrowrul, are de picted in all their reality.