Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 094.djvu/470

 460 writer of essays, who, when somewhat advanced in life, accepted an appointment in the Danish West India colony of St. Thomas, which he held until his death, about the year 1818.

Captain Abrahamson, an officer of artillery, who devoted himself much to the service of the Muses, and was a clever writer on many subjects, became a contributor to this periodical; and it was well supported both by authors and the public for a number of years. The Minerva was made the receptacle of political, as well as of literary articles; it became the champion of freedom; and one of those who wrote for it, the Rev. Mr. Birckner, at length ventured to publish a separate work on the liberty of the press. This was so favourably received by the nation at large, that the author escaped the censure of the government; not so, however, the reviewer of his book, Mr. Collet. Perhaps he expressed his sentiments too freely ; but at any rate he gave so much offence to the higher powers, that he was dismissed from his office—that of a judge in Copenhagen. Upon this he went to the West Indies; and in the Danish island of St. Croix obtained a lucrative legal situation, which the home government was not so vindictive as to take from him.

But his disgrace in Copenhagen did not prove a sufficient warning to others; for the elder Heiberg, a popular dramatist, and one of the wittiest men of the day, introduced such satirical political allusions on the stage, as well as giving his sentiments so freely through the medium of the press, that he made himself liable to a prosecution; and the result was his banishment, in 1800, from Denmark. Another distinguished Danish writer was banished from a similar cause, about the same time. This was Malthe Conrad Bruun, who, under the name of Malte Brun, has acquired European celebrity as an eminent geographer. The little work of his which gave such umbrage as to decide his doom, was entitled, "The Catechism of the Aristocrats," and was probably written in consequence of his having adopted too warmly the republican principles which, emanating from France during the first French revolution, spread rapidly among the têtes exaltées of other and more sober countries.

Bruun and Heiberg both repaired to Paris, where the latter speedily obtained a situation in the Foreign Office, in consequence of his being an admirable linguist; and the former also won his way to employment and to fame. It is odd that Denmark should thus have discarded her greatest astronomer, Tycho Brahe; and, at a later period, her greatest geographer, Malte Brun. Malte Brun died in 1826, at the age of fifty-one; Heiberg did not die till 1841, and was then in his eighty-fourth year.

Frederick Hugh Guldberg, son of the Guldberg before mentioned, and a contemporary of Malte Brun, was a poet of some reputation; but, being a professor, and a tutor in the royal family, he did not deal in seditious pamphlets. His poetry was of a serious cast, as will be seen by the following specimen, which is an extract from an ode written in a churchyard:

Home of the happy dead, all hail! In thee

A refuge for each rank, sex, age, we see.

The sun awakes them to no tearful morrow,

Nor gleams the moon on nights of sleepless sorrow.