Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/106

Rh  that he claims an honoured place in the literature of the country of whose culture, in other branches, he is one of the most distinguished ornaments.

We pause on the threshold of the romantic movement to record the name of a man of great genius, whose work was entirely independent of the influences around him. Jens Baggesen (1764-1826) is the greatest comic poet that Denmark has produced. As a dramatist he failed; as a philosophic and critical writer he has not retained the attention he once commanded; but as a satirist and witty lyrist he has no rival among the Danes. In his hands the difficulties of the language disappear; he performs with the utmost ease extraordinary tours de force of style. His astonishing talents were wasted on trifling themes and in a fruitless resistance to the modern spirit in literature.

Romanticism.—With the beginning of the 19th century the new light in philosophy and poetry, which radiated from Germany through all parts of Europe, found its way into Denmark also. In scarcely any country was the result so rapid or so brilliant. There arose in Denmark a school of poets who created for themselves a reputation in all parts of Europe, and would have done honour to any nation or any age. The splendid cultivation of metrical art threw other branches into the shade; and the epoch of which we are about to speak is eminent above all for mastery over verse. The swallow who heralded the summer was a German by birth, Adolph Schack-Staffeldt (1769-1826), who came over to Copenhagen from Pomerania, and prepared the way for the new movement. Since Ewald no one had written Danish lyrical verse so exquisitely as Schack-Staffeldt, and the depth and scientific precision of his thought won him a title which he has preserved, of being the first philosophic poet of Denmark. The writings of this man are the deepest and most serious which Denmark has produced, and at his best he yields to no one in choice and skilful use of expression. This sweet song of Schack-Steffeldt's, however, was early silenced by the louder choir that one by one broke into music around him. It was Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger (1779-1850), the greatest poet of Denmark, who was to bring about the new romantic movement. Oehlenschläger had already written a great many verses in the old semi-didactic, semi-rhetorical style, when in 1802 he happened to meet the young Norwegian Henrik Steffens (1773-1845), who had just returned from a scientific tour in Germany, full of the doctrines of Schelling. Under the immediate direction of Steffens, Oehlenschläger commenced an entirely new poetic style, and destroyed all his earlier verses. A new epoch in the language began, and the rapidity and matchless facility of the new poetry was the wonder of Steffens himself. The old Scandinavian mythology lived in the hands of Oehlenschläger exactly as the classical Greek religion was born again in Keats. After twelve years of ceaseless labour, and the creation of a whole library of great works, the vigour of Oehlenschläger somewhat suddenly waned, and he lived for nearly forty years longer, completely superseded by younger men, and producing few and mainly inferior works. Since and except Holberg no author has possessed so great an influence on Danish letters as Oehlenschläger. He aroused in his people the slumbering sense of their Scandinavian nationality.

The retirement of Oehlenschläger comparatively early in life, left the way open for the development of his younger contemporaries, among whom several had genius little inferior to his own. Steen Steensen Blicher (1782-1848) was a Jutlander, and preserved all through life the characteristics of his sterile and sombre fatherland. After a struggling youth of great poverty, he at length, in 1814, published a volume of lyrical poems; and in 1817 he attracted considerable attention by his descriptive poem of

The Tour in Jutland. His real genius, however, did not lie in the direction of verse; and his first signal success was with a volume of stories in 1824, which were rapidly followed by others for the next twelve years. Blicher is a stern realist, in many points akin to Crabbe, and takes a singular position among the romantic idealists of the period, being like them, however, in the love of precise and choice language, and hatred of the mere commonplaces of imaginative writing.

Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872), like Oehlenschläger, learned the principles of the German romanticism from the lips of Steffens. He adopted the idea of introducing the Old Scandinavian element into art, and even into life, still more earnestly than the older poet. There was scarcely any branch of letters in which Grundtvig did not distinguish himself; he was equally influential as a politician, a theologian, a poet, and a social economist.

Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1789-1862) was a man in every way unlike the last-mentioned poet. A mild, idyllic mind, delicately appreciative of the gentler manifestations of nature, and shrinking from violent expression of any sort, distinguished the amiable Ingemann. His greatest contributions to Danish literature are the historical romances which he published in middle life, strongly under the influence of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. Several of these, particularly Valdemar Seier and Prince Otto of Denmark, have enjoyed and still enjoy a boundless popularity. He is remarkable as the first importer into Scandinavia of the historical novel, since very generally cultivated.

Johannes Carsten Hauch (1790-1872) first distinguished himself as a disciple of Oehlenschläger, and fought under him in the strife against the old school and Baggesen. But the master misunderstood the disciple; and the harsh repulse of Oehlenschläger silenced Hauch for many years. He possessed, however, a strong and fluent genius, which eventually made itself heard in a multitude of volumes, poems, dramas, and novels. All that Hauch wrote is marked by great qualities, and by distinction; he had a native bias towards the mystical, which, however, he learned to keep in abeyance.

Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1860) as a critic ruled the world of Danish taste for many years, and his lyrical and dramatic works were signally successful. He had the genius of good taste, and his witty and delicate productions stand almost unique in the literature of his country.

The mother of J. L. Heiberg, the Countess Gyllembourg (1773-1856), was the greatest authoress which Denmark has possessed. She wrote a large number of anonymous novels, which began to appear in 1828 in her son's journal, The Flying Post. Her knowledge of life, her sparkling wit, and her almost faultless style, make these short stories, the authorship of which remained unknown until her death, master-pieces of their kind.

Ludvig Adolf Bödtcher (1793-1874) wrote only one single volume of lyrical poems, which he gradually enlarged in succeeding editions. He was a consummate artist in verse, and his impressions are given with the most delicate exactitude of phrase, and in a very fine strain of imagination. Most of his poems deal with Italian life, which he learned to know thoroughly during a long residence in Rome. He was the secretary of Thorwaldsen for a considerable time.

Christian Winther (1796-1876) made the island of Zealand his loving study, and that province of Denmark belongs to him no less thoroughly than the Cumberland lakes belong to Wordsworth. Between the latter poet and Winther there was much resemblance. He was, without compeer, the greatest pastoral lyrist of Denmark. His 