Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/216

198 rollicking mirth and fun. To this poet, who had received the talent of song as a gift from heaven, (1712-79) forms a complete contrast. After producing a countless number of tasteless, soulless rhymes, saturated with classical learning, he became professor of rhetoric in the University of Copenhagen, and at the same time censor of all Danish poetical compositions that were produced by the press. But his was the kind of "poetry" that was demanded by the taste of that age.

The strong puritanic tendency of the age was peculiarly favorable for the composition of religious songs, but the poems produced were mostly of a very inferior quality. The songs of, a truly remarkable poet (1694-1764), constitute a solitary exception. They give evidence of genuine poetical talents, and are characterized by deep feeling, at times they even rise to the solemn, sublime heights of Kingo. Through his whole life Brorson had to struggle with severe afflictions, which contributed materially to his natural disposition for melancholy musings, and which his deep piety and firm faith alone enabled him to bear. This sadness is distinctly stamped on the uniformly deep elegiac character of his psalms. He belongs decidedly to the puritanic school, and this circumstance imparts a somewhat polemic character to his psalms, but as a rule, warm, humane feeling pervades them. The sentiment bursts forth so fresh and vivid, and in a key so deep, that it touches our inmost soul. Brorson to this very day justly occupies the front rank among the poets of the Danish church, a place he at once attained in the estimation of the public, and which, moreover, received a public recognition in the fact that it was on account of his psalms that he was promoted to a high position in the church. He died as bishop in Ribe.

During the Holberg period the modern