Autograph manuscript in ink, neatly written on all four sides of a single folded sheet of 19th-century writing paper, approximately 110 x 180 mm when folded.  A complete autograph manuscript of Robert Lowe’s English verse translation of the Helgi and Sigrun episode from the Old Norse poem generally known as the Second Lay of Helgi Hundingsbane. The manuscript opens with Lowe’s prose summary, “King Hogni fell in battle by the hand of King Helgi”, before presenting the dramatic exchange between Dagr, Sigrun, Helgi and a maid. It concludes with the prose sentence, “Sigrun was shortlived from grief and sorrow.” The manuscript is unsigned, but is written in Lowe’s distinctive hand.
 
Near fine, with the original horizontal and central folds and a few very minor marks.
 
According to his biographer, Lowe’s translation was made in 1866, more than twenty-five years before its posthumous publication.  It appeared as “Helgi and Sigrun” in the Appendix to Chapter XXIII of Arthur Patchett Martin’s Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, volume II, 1893, pp. 417–420. The printed text closely follows the present manuscript.  Robert Lowe was a major Victorian statesman, educational reformer and classical scholar. After an early political and legal career in New South Wales, he entered the British Parliament and served under Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1868 to 1873 and Home Secretary from 1873 to 1874.