A review article (labeled "Art. V" of the Appendix in the journal issue), unsigned, containing a prose summary of Beowulf with some passages in verse translation interspersed. The full title of the review is given thus:

Art. V. De Danorum Rebus Gestis, Secul. III. & IV. Poëma Danicum, Dialecto Anglo-saxonica, ex Bibliotheca Cottoniana Musæi Britannici edidit, Versione Lat. et Indicibus auxit, Grim Johnson Thorkelin. 4to. pp. 260. Hauniæ. 1815.

The review consists mainly of what Taylor calls an "epitome or analysis" (517), an alternation between prose summary ("canto" by "canto") and verse translation of select passages (517-22), with a few critical or expanatory interjections. Eight passages are given in verse translation: lines 1-5, 18-25, 26-40a, 53-83a, 710-19, 783b-89, 2724-51, and 3179b-82. The summary with selected passages in verse translation is preceded and followed by commentary (pp. 516-17, 522-23) which remarks on the manuscript, speculates about who and where the peoples mentioned in the poem are, and suggests that the Beowulf poet is Wiglaf, who received much of his information directly from a historical Beowulf.

The summary and its embedded verse translations are reproduced almost unaltered in Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry: Interspersed with Various Translations, vol. 1, pp. 78-90 (1828), from which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would later draw two excerpts (titled by Longfellow "Beowulf the Shyld" and "The Sailing of Beowulf") to use in his anthology The Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845).

Taylor's mixed summary and translation begins:

The shaper, or bard, thus commences:

"At the beginning
Who was the Dane's
King of the people;
Winner of glory,
Leading their nobles
The path of daring?
Shefing the Shyld.
Threat'ner of foes;
For many crews'
Dwellings he won."

In the eleventh line, mention occurs of an earl whose name is obliterated, but who is praised as a good king: in the thirtieth line, we have another anonymous monarch, whose name must have been Ægtheow; and these three princes seem to have been all the ancestors of Beowulf whom the poet could enumerate. The Saxon chronicle, under the year 854, mentions a Shefing, there said to be born in the ark of Noah, which merely means that memory or record reaches no farther back; so that, both according to the Saxon chronicle and to this poet, Shefing is, among the East-Danes, the eldest son of Fame. By East-Danes, we presume, are meant those who settled in East-Anglia, the modern Norfolk and Suffolk; and it is remarkable that the Saxon chronicle gives us, among the descendants of this Shefing, one Beaw Scheldwaing, which is very like to Beowulf the Shyld. In transcribing the Anglo-saxon names, we insert an h after c when it precedes e or i, because, in the Anglo-saxon alphabet, which was borrowed from the Italian, the h was in such circumstances always pronounced: thus our word witch is written in Anglo-saxon wice.

After this short catalogue of forefathers, the poet thus introduces his hero:

"Famous was Beowulf;
Wide sprang the blood,
Which the heir of the Shylds
Shed on the lands.
So shall the bracelets
Purchase endeavour,
Freely presented
As by thy fathers;
And all the young men,
As is their custom,
Cling round their leader
Soon as the war comes.
Lastly thy people
The deeds shall bepraise,
Which their men have performed." (517; italics as in original)

And ends:

["]Go look at the hoard
Below in the tower,
My beloved Wiglaf,
Now the circle of guards
Sit silently weeping,
That you may well know
What you are to find.
Go out of my sunshine.
When you are away,
I shall gladly abandon
The life and the kingdom
Allotted so long."

In the ensuing canto, Wiglaf inspects the treasury, and a long inventory is given of the plunder accumulated by Beowulf. On Wiglaf's return, he finds his father-in-law dying of his wound, and a moving farewell ensues. Cares of the funeral succeed; the barrow, or cairn, is heaped on Rone's Ness; and an encomium is chanted by a skald, which closes with these words:

"His hearth-mates said,
Of the kings of the world
He was the mildest man,
The strongest of hand,
The dearest to the people,
The most eager for fame." (522; italics as in original)

GR 1768—whose primary object is a chapter (§6) of Taylor's 1828 book (Historic Survey of German Poetry: Interspersed with Various Translations, vol. 1) and not this 1816 review of Thorkelin's translation, from which the book chapter is taken—is not incorrect in stating that the chapter was "printed earlier in part" as the 1816 review. However, the material reused by Taylor in 1828 is reproduced from this 1816 text nearly verbatim, with only minor changes of wording and one or two relocated sentences (Fry's and MO1's characterization of it as a "reprint" is more apt); and for the full chapter, all that is added to this 1816 material is a brief, separated coda of less than 1 page having no direct reference to Beowulf. MO2's representation of the relationship between the 1816 and 1828 texts, influenced by GR's "in part," is not in itself incorrect, but could invite a mistaken inference that this 1816 review's translated passages themselves were expanded in 1828.

Fry and MO2 note the presence of translated passages but not the full summary. MO1 and GR note the presence of the summary but not the passages of verse translation.

Fry, MO1, GR, and MO2 all incorrectly attribute to Longfellow, when they appear in Longfellow's Poetry and Poets of Europe (1845), 2 verse translation passages by Taylor that originally appeared here. Longfellow's Table of Contents in that work does attribute both to Taylor.

BAM.