Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/220

202 old learned period, and yet in his historical work he employed to a great extent his own native tongue, although it was far more difficult for him to write Danish than Latin. Like so many of his contemporaries he was at first for some time wrapped up in prejudices and foolish pedantry to a point that made him blind to Holberg's great merits, and he was a violent opponent of the great dramatist; but later he acknowledged his mistake and became one of Holberg's staunchest friends.

Gram's pupil, Jakob Langebek (1710-75), also rendered conspicuous services to the development of historical studies. Like Gram he was the son of a priest, and from his early childhood he evinced a remarkable talent for history, combined with a considerable taste for languages, as appears from his undertaking on his own hook the study of Icelandic as soon as he became a student at the university. After having passed his examinations in theology, he was admitted to Gram's house, where his linguistic and historical studies assumed still wider proportions. In 1745 he founded the Royal Society of History and Danish Language, the purpose of which, as in the case of the Society of Sciences, was in part to publish the papers of the members in "Danske Magazin." This is an exceedingly valuable collection, for the first series (six volumes) of which Langebek himself furnished nearly all the contributions. But his most important work is his great collection of Danish historical documents from the Middle Ages, "Scriptores rerum Danicarum medii ævi," though he was not himself able to complete the publication of this work. Like Gram, Langebek has written no large connected work, but in his various publications, like the one above mentioned, he has given the results of a vast and most critical research, and he has thus done what was most needed in his time in the field of national history