Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/253

Rh the same sense as he was a Danish one. But the language of the works that he either originally wrote in German, or which he translated into that tongue is of such a quality that it is not strange that they are but little read outside of purely literary circles, and that they even here were not thought to be of much account. Good translations of his best works have, however, since then enabled the Germans to form a correct estimate of Oehlenschläger, but these translations came half a century too late to give him his true position, for the romantic period, to which he entirely belonged, is now a thing of the past.

Though he was thus unsuccessful in reaping any great laurels in Germany he secured all the greater recognition in his own country, and when he returned home in 1809 he was greeted as Denmark’s greatest bard. All the works he had sent home from abroad had produced an extraordinary sensation, both on account of their genuine poetic character and on account of Oehlenschläger’s enthusiastic advocacy of the significance of northern antiquities. The people began to grow conscious of their own national peculiarities, and the new era was in full progress.

During the first years after his return home Oehlenschläger published a large number of works, many of which are inferior to his principal works; and now there broke out between him, or rather between his adherents and Baggesen a violent feud that was destined to make a great stir in Danish literature for many years. At first both the poets were on the best of terms and when Baggesen left Denmark in 1800, never to return there again as he believed, he bequeathed to Oehlenschläger “his Danish lyre.” But during his stay abroad Oehlenschläger had frequent occasions to be displeased with Baggesen, while the latter, as the senior poet and enjoying an established reputation in literature, would assume a patronizing attitude toward the gifted beginner, whose superiority he was, however, secretly and reluctantly obliged to admit. Baggesen gave a striking and characteristic illustra-