Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/235

Rh written under conditions which would seem to make poetical composition of any kind utterly impossible. Ewald died after a painful illness on March 17, 1781, scarcely thirty-eight years old.

Ewald is one of the greatest lyric poets of the North, perhaps even the very greatest. Many of his songs belong to the most beautiful productions of northern literature, and the heights of sublimity to which his greater poems climb have seldom been attained by any poet. His language is pure, clear, and noble, and in his verses particularly he shows an unsurpassed mastery of form. In his best prose work, "Johannes Ewalds Levnet og Meninger," he has given us an excellent autobiography, which he, unfortunately, did not complete.

The second great poet which this period produced is the Norwegian, (born 1742). In sketching Ewald's poetical activity it was necessary to call attention to the German influence, to which he was for a long time subject, but from which he, fortunately, was at length able to free himself. Ewald came less in contact with the French element which at that time invaded Danish literature, and but little French influence is to be traced in his writings. Wessel's great merit consists in having fearlessly attacked the excrescences and soulless imitations of the French element in Denmark, and he effectually checked them by making them thoroughly ridiculous.

The Danish Theatre had been reopened not long before Holberg's death, but was eking out a miserable existence. Holberg had had no successors who were able to nourish the popular taste for good Danish plays, or who could have satisfied the taste had it been present. Mainly through the example of the court, there soon developed such a preference for French tragedies and Italian operas, that all other things were thrown into the background. After the theatre had for