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Richard Hole was a graduate from Oxford University, who considered a military
career, but was eventually ordained in the Church of England. He held
the curacy of Sowton, and later Buckerell, both near Exeter. He
contributed to several periodicals, such as the Monthly
Review, British Magazine, and Gentleman’s Magazine, and, most notably, a series of
satirical dialogues to the
London Magazine during 1782. In 1789, Hole published a
paraphrase of a passage from Njals saga, which he
entitled “The Tomb of Gunnar”. The source was a Latin
translation by Thomas Bartholin. In Hole’s adaptation, Gunnar,
a famous warrior of outstanding prowess, awakes in his tomb to raise a
“loud-resounding song”. When Hogner, Gunnar’s son,
arrives with his friend Sarhedine (versions of the Saga-names Högni and Skarpheðinn) to investigate, Gunnar delivers a poetic
clarion call to martial fortitude: “Unmanly flight the brave
despise/ Conquest of death is the warrior’s prize!”Gentleman’s
Magazine
(October 1789): 937.
Hole was a founding member of a literary society at Exeter, whose members
included Richard Polwhele, Hugh Downman, and William Jackson. Hole
wrote a number of Miltonic odes that appeared in the society’s
publication Poems Chiefly by Gentlemen of Devonshire and
Cornwall
(1792). This also included a new version of “The Tomb of
Gunnar”, which was printed alongside a number of other Norse
translations concerned with the heroic (including Regnar’s Death
Song). The collection was partly a response to the debates over the
French Revolution; and the Norse poems were surrounded by several
patriotic and alarmist pieces. The collection was edited by Richard
Polwhele, who would later emerge as a prolific anti-Jacobin.
Hole’s major work, Arthur, or, The Northern
Enchantments, is a romance epic in seven books, written in
imitation of both Ariosto and Ossian. It is an Arthuriad, focussing on how
Arthur’s Britons encountered the invading Saxons and
Scandinavians in the fifth century. An essential part of the action
concerns the magician Merlin’s daughter, who is betrothed to Arthur.
However, Hengist, the legendary leader of the Germanic invasion,
according to the Venerable Bede, also woos her. However, Anglo-Saxon
practices are confounded with Scandinavian ideals of the Viking age.
Hole further assumes that Scandinavians were part of the invasion force,
placing the Danish leader Valdemar as a cohort of Hengist (perhaps
inspired by James Macpherson’s description of Anglo-Saxon
culture through the use of examples taken from Old Norse literature in An Introduction to the History of Great Britain and
Ireland (1771; rev. ed, 1772, 1773). However, in the
scholarly preface to Arthur, Hole repeats the argument
made by Thomas Percy that the medieval romance tradition originated in
Scandinavia: the ideals of chivalry and Scandinavian manners were
“really and originally the same”.Arthur, pp. xi–xii.
Hole’s romance is an examination of early heroism in Britain. He shows how the Anglo- Saxon/Scandinavian warriors were motivated by their superstition: the conviction of heavenly rewards for the fallen warrior and the fear of a terrible abode for those who die an unheroic death. The poem is awash with references to magic and incantations, pitting Merlin against Urda, the Norse goddess of fate, who assists Hengist and Valdemar. Much Gothic horror emerges from the use of magic.
The extract below is taken from Book four of the poem, in which Valdemar, king of Denmark, and the northern chieftains are feasting in Calisle, when Urda adopts the form of Odin and appears to them. She exhorts the Scandinavian warriors to show the death-defying courage for which they were known and march against the Britons, who are marching towards them.
***
END OF BOOK FOURTH.
Source: Richard Hole,