or as he is generally called, Saxo Grammaticus, or the Grammarian, was descended from an illustrious Danish family, and was born about the middle of the twelfth century. Stephens, in his edition of Saxo Grammaticus, printed at Sorø, indubitably proves that he must have been alive in 1156; but he cannot ascertain the exact place and time of his birth. On account of his uncommon learning, Saxo was distinguished by the name of Grammaticus. He was provost of the cathedral church of Roskild, and warmly patronized by the learned and warlike Absalon, the celebrated archbishop of Lund, at whose instigation he wrote the History of Denmark. His epitaph, which is a dry panegyric in bad Latin verses, gives no account of the era of his death, which happened, according to Stephens, in 1204. His history, consisting of sixteen books, begins from the earliest account of the Danish annals, and concludes with the year 1186. It bears the title, Historia Regum Heronamque Danorum, and first gives the history of King Hamlet. According to the opinion of an accurate writer, the first part, which relates to the origin of the Danes, and the reigns of the ancient kings, is full of fables; but the eight last books, and particularly those which regard the events of his own times, deserve the utmost credit. He wrote in Latin; and the style, if we consider the barbarous age in which he flourished, is in general extremely elegant, but rather too poetical for history. Mallet, in his *Histoire de Danemark* (vol. i., p. 182), says that "Sperling, a writer of great erudition, has proved, in contradiction to the assertions of Stephens and others, that Saxo Grammaticus was secretary to Absalon, and that the Saxo, provost of Roskild, was another person, and lived earlier."