Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/196

178 which were received with great favor. Scarcely thirty years old, he became bishop of Throndhjem, but only a few years later he was deposed from his office "on account of his frivolous conduct." The young bishop was fond of a gay life, and, an enemy of the rigid rules prescribed for the clergy, he did not shrink "from beating time to the dance on the drum when he was present on festive occasions, or even from taking part in the dance with the others or singing his own songs to the tunes of the popular ballads without scrupulously weighing his own words;" and as he at the same time did not lack enemies, his position soon became untenable, although he can scarcely be charged with really improper conduct. After some time he was, however, again permitted to enter the priesthood, and he died as a preacher in Vordingborg in Zealand, honored and beloved by his parishioners. Soon after his deposition his translation of the psalms of David was published. It soon became very popular and long continued to be a favorite volume. His great and lasting renown he gained by his celebrated poem "Hexaëmeron," on account of which he was styled "the father of Danish poetry." It is a free imitation of the French poem by Bartas on the creation of the world, but many parts of it are wholly original. There are many passages of genuine poetic beauty, and the author frequently falls unconsciously into the style of the popular ballad, of which he was a perfect master. But Arrebo's greatest merit and that by which he really made himself worthy of his surname, is his effort to introduce into Danish poetry the renaissance which had spread from Italy throughout Europe. Already in his translation of the psalms of David he had made an irresolute attempt at a metrical reform, and in his "Hexaëmeron" he entirely abandoned the old method, which contented itself with a definite number of syllables, and adopted the system set forth by Marten Opitz in his "Prosodia Germanica," according to which the metre depends on the number of accented syllables. The first part of the "Hexaëmeron" is written in hexameters with rhymes