The prose or younger Edda, usually, but perhaps erroneously, ascribed to Snorro Sturleson, has also many of these chivalric or mytho-historical lays. Of this venerable monument of antiquity the world could form no just notion prior to the year 1818, when that admirable scholar professor Rask published his edition. The edition of Resenius—the only one previously known to Europe—is an imperfect work, derived from corrupted MSS. and the notes of the Scalds are often confounded with the text. It consists of several parts. The _Formali_, which is the introduction, has many legends and fables respecting the descent of nations, especially of the Scandinavian. They are evidently from both Asiatic and European sources. After the introduction, comes the _Gylfa-ginning_, or deception of Gylfa. This personage was a king of Swithiof (part of Sweden) and a famous magician,—the head of the native magical college which the Aser were endeavouring to subvert. To account for their superior power, the result of their superior wisdom, he determined to assume a disguise, and proceed at once to the cradle of the Aser in the east. Under the name of Gangler (the traveller), he reaches the celestial city, and finds an oracle capable of resolving all his doubts, of removing all his ignorance. To each of his questions the reply is in full, explaining the mythology of the elder Edda, illustrated by extracts from the Voluspa, the Hava-mâl, and the predictions of the Scalds. This part of the work is, in its design, and partly in its execution, so similar to the Vafthrudnis-mâl in the elder Edda, that it must have been derived from it, or from a source common to both. The _second_ part of the prose Edda, called _Braga-raedar_, contains the recitation of his best pieces by the divine Braga, at the banquet of the sea-god Ægir. The _Eptirmali_ is a kind of epilogue written by Icelandic poets immediately prior to Snorro, or possibly by Snorro himself. It is an attempt to explain many of the fables in the Edda, by the circumstances of the Trojan war. In addition to all these subjects, we have the _Skalda_, which is a kind of _ars poetica_, for the use of poetical students.