Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/296

278 of Shakespeare by Foerson (1777-1817), of Homer and Euripides by (1797-1840), and of Shakespeare and a part of Byron by  (born 1815), it is the best of what has hitherto been translated from the foreign classics into Danish.

(born 1823) is to be mentioned less on account of his poetical productions than on account of his really valuable work on Baggesen and Oehlenschläger.

Among the prose writers of recent times, the two pseudonyms, and, have addressed themselves to the public at large, and must be regarded as popular writers in the best sense of that word. The former, (born 1807), has published a number of novels, mostly treating of popular heroes, such as Tordenskjold, Niels Juel and others, and presenting faithful, vivid pictures of the same. These books have had a very wide circulation, and have contributed much to awakening among the people a taste for national history. The latter, (born 1820), describes in his numerous tales episodes from Danish history, or scenes from the popular life of Jutland, with which he is almost as familiar as Blicher, and thus he may in one sense be regarded as his successor. He has a lively, sometimes even an unbridled, imagination, and a fresh and fluent style which makes his works both attractive and amusing. His most successful works are a series of descriptions from the middle of the seventeenth century, when Denmark was threatened with the Swedish yoke. Among these are "Dronningens Vagtmester" and "Gjöngehövdingen" (the chief of the Gjonges), a small clan in northern Scania. He has also written several sketches of modern life with its social conflicts, but in these he has not been successful.