Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/66

56 with great fidelity the princess Anne of Cleves, at Diiren near Cologne, whose form we still see depicted in the great picture of the Louvre. That he could render the features of his sitter without flattery is plain from this one example. Indeed, habitual flattery was contrary to his habits. His portraits up to this time all display that uncommon facility for seizing character which his father enjoyed before him, and which he had inherited in an expanded form. No amount of labour, no laboriousness of finish and of both he was ever prodigal betrayed him into loss of re semblance or expression. No painter was ever quicker at noting peculiarities of physiognomy, and it may be observed that in none of his faces, as indeed in none of the faces one sees in nature, are the two sides alike. Yet he was not a child of the 16th century, as the Venetians were, in substituting touch for line. We must not look in his works for modulations of surface or subtle contrasts of colour in juxtaposition. His method was to the very last delicate, finished, and smooth, as became a painter of the old school. Amongst the more important creations of Holbein s later time we should note his Duke of Norfolk at Windsor, the hands of which are so perfectly preserved as to compensate for the shrivel that now disfigures the head. Two other portraits of (Berlin and Vienna), the Falconer at the Hague, and John Chambers at Vienna, are noble specimens of portrait art ; most interesting and of the same year are the likenesses of Holbein himself, of which several examples are extant one particularly good at Fahna, the seat of the Stackelberg family near Riga, and another at the Uffizi in Florence. Here Holbein appears to us as a man of regular features, with hair just turning grey, but healthy in colour and shape, and evidently well to do in the world. Yet a few months only separated him then from his death-bed. He was busy painting a picture of Henry the VIII. confirming the Privileges of the Barber Surgeons (Lincoln s Inn Fields), when he sickened of the plague and died after making a will about November. His loss must have been seriously felt in England. Had he lived his last years in Germany, he would not have changed the current which decided the fate of painting in that country ; he would but have shared tlie fate of Diirer and others who merely prolonged the agony of art amidst the troubles of the Reformation.  HOLBERG,, (1684–1754), the greatest of Scandinavian writers, was born at Bergen, in Norway, on the 3d of December 1684. Both Holberg s parents died in his childhood, his father first, leaving a con siderable property ; and in his tenth year he lost his mother also. Before the litter event, however, the family had been seriously impoverished by a great fire, which destroyed several valuable buildings, but notwithstanding this, the mother left to each of her six children some little fortune. In 1694 the boy Holberg was taken into the house of his uncle, who sent him to the Latin school, and prepared him for the profession of a soldier ; but soon after this he was adopted by his cousin Otto Munthe, and went to him up in the mountains. His great desire for instruction, however, at last induced his family to send him back to Bergen, to his uncle, and there he remained, eagerly studying, until the destruction of that city by fire in 1702, when he was sent to the university of Copenhagen. But he soon exhausted his resources, and, having nothing to live upon, was glad to hurry back to Norway, where he accepted the position of tutor in the house of a rural dean at V.oss. He soon returned to Copenhagen, where in 1704 he took his degree, and worked hard at French, English, and Italian. But he had to gain his living, and accordingly he accepted the post of tutor once more, this time in the house of Dr Smidt, vice-bishop of Bergen. The good doctor had travelled much, and the reading of his itineraries and note-books awakened such a longing for travel in the young Holberg that at last, in 1706, having scraped together 60 dollars, he went on board a ship bound for Holland. He proceeded as far as Aix-la-Chapelle, where he fell sick of a fever, and suffered so much from weakness and poverty, that he made his way to Amsterdam, and came back to Norway. Ashamed to be seen so soon in Bergen, he stopped at Christianssand, where he lived through the winter, support ing himself by giving lessons in French. In the spring he travelled, in company with a student named Brix, through London to Oxford, where he studied for two years, gaining his livelihood by giving lessons on the violin and the flute. He mentions, with gratitude, the valuable libraries of Oxford, and it is pleasant to record that it was while he was there that it first occurred to him, as he says, &quot; how splendid and glorious a thing it would be to take a place among the authors.&quot; Through London and Elsinore he reached Copenhagen a third time, and began to lecture at the university ; his lectures were attended, but he got no money. He was asked in 1709 to conduct a rich young gentleman to Dresden, and on his return journey he lectured at Leipsic, Halle, and Hamburg. Once more in Copen hagen, he undertook to teach the children of Admiral Gedde. Weary with this work, he took a post at Borch College in 1710, where he wrote, but did not print, his first work, A Universal History, and was permitted to present to King Frederick IV. two manuscript essays on Christian IV. and Frederick III. The king soon after presented him with the Rosenkrantz grant of 100 dollars for four years, the holder of which was expected to travel. Holberg accordingly started in 1715, and visited, chiefly on foot, a great portion of Europe. From Amsterdam he walked through Rotterdam to Antwerp, took a boat to Brussels, and on foot again reached I aris. Walking and skating, he pro ceeded in the depth of winter to Marseilles, and on by sea to Genoa. On the last-mentioned voyage he caught a fever, and nearly died in that city. On his recovery he pushed on to Civita Vecchia and Rome. When the spring had come, being still very poor and in feeble health, he started homewards on foot by Florence, across the Apennines, through Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, Turin, over the Alps, through Savoy and Dauphind to Lyons, and finally to Paris, where he arrived in excellent health. After spending a month in Paris, he walked on to Amsterdam, took sail to Hamburg, and so went back to Denmark in 1716. He spent the next two years in extreme poverty, and published his Introduction to Natural and Popular Law. But at last, in 1718, his talents were recognized by his appointment as professor of metaphysics at the university of Copenhagen ; and in 1720 he was promoted to the lucrative chair of public eloquence, which gave him a seat in the consistory. His pecuniary troubles were now at an end. Hitherto he had written only on law, history, and philology, although in a Latin controversy with the jurist Andreas Hover of Flensborg his satirical genius had flashed out. But now, and until 1728, he created an entirely new class of humorous literature under the pseudonym of Hans Mik. kelsen. The serio-comic epic of Pedtr Paars, one of the great classics of the Danish language, appeared in 1719. This poem was a brilliant satire on contemporary manners, and enjoyed an extraordinary success. But the author had offended in it several powerful persons who threatened his life, and if Count Danneskjold had not personally interested the king in him, Holberg s career might have had an un timely close. During the next two years he published five shorter satires, all of which were well received by the public. The great event of 1721 was the erection of the first Danish theatre in Gronnegade, Copenhagen ; Holberg took the direction of this house, in which was played, in September 1722, a Danish translation of L Avare. Until 