Certainly, the strangest and most entertaining life ever written is that of a blacksmith of the olden north, a certain Volundr, or Velint, {65b} who lived in woods and thickets, made keen swords,--so keen, indeed, that if placed by a running stream, they would fairly divide an object, however slight, which was borne against them by the water--and who eventually married a king's daughter, by whom he had a son, who was as bold a knight as his father was a cunning blacksmith.

I never see a forge at night, when seated on the back of my horse at the bottom of a dark lane, but I somehow or other associate it with the exploits of this extraordinary fellow, with many other extraordinary things, amongst which, as I have hinted before, are particular passages of my own life, one or two of which I shall perhaps relate to the reader.
I never associate Vulcan and his Cyclops with the idea of a forge.

These gentry would be the very last people in the world to flit across my mind whilst gazing at the forge from the bottom of the dark lane.

The truth is, they are highly unpoetical fellows, as well they may be, connected as they are with Grecian mythology.

At the very mention of their names the forge burns dull and dim, as if snowballs had been suddenly flung into it; the only remedy is to ply the bellows, an operation which I now hasten to perform.
I am in the dingle making a horseshoe.