Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/147

140 former, probably, being the most valuable. He stood high as a critic and a reviewer, and was the principal editor of a clever periodical entitled The Minerva, and another called The Danish Spectator. He was the editor of his friend Samsöe's works, and of some of Holberg's; and he published editions of Wessel's, Thaaruss's, Pram's works, and those of other writers. Between the years 1812 and 1814, Professor Rahbek published, in conjunction with Nyerup, a new edition of the old Kiæmpeviser—national songs and ballads—which, as has been related, were first collected by Vedel in the sixteenth century. He was celebrated as a good translator, both from the French and the German. He wrote for the stage, and was the author of several poems and prose works, which are held in much esteem in the north; among the latter may be mentioned his "Erindringer"—"Reminiscences"—in five volumes. These did not appear all at once, but in parts, between the years 1824 and 1829, and they abound in lively descriptions of the many scenes he had visited—for Rahbek had travelled a great deal—of the stirring times through which he had lived, and of the various celebrated individuals whom he had known, or with whom he had come in contact. He published a little work on "Style;" a sort of guide to composition, with examples from the best authors, and a collection of extracts from their works, which he modestly called "A Danish Reading Book." Rahbek was a man of a most amiable private character—liberal, hospitable, and kind-hearted ; and he and his accomplished wife drew around them a brilliant circle at their country-house near Copenhagen. In the literary firmament, Rahbek can neither be called a blazing meteor, or a star of the first magnitude ; but he was a shining and a steady light — always visible, until fate extinguished his useful career.

Leven C. Sander, born in 1756, who died in 1819, was a professor at the University of Copenhagen, and an author of various works on rhetoric and elocution; also of a favourite tragedy called "Niels Ebbesen," and some other dramas.

C. J. Boye, a pleasing writer, is principally known by his religious poetry; and religious poems, as all versifiers are aware, are the most difficult to write well. The following elegy, written amidst the ruins of a monastery, may give a tolerable specimen of this author’s style:

Already in the wave

Hath Phœbus quenched his light,

And from yon azure vault

Is Hesper beaming bright.

Whilst night, majestic, soars

Upon its dusky wings,

And from Death's distant home.

In silence, darkness brings—

The pale stars shine afar,

While my lone footsteps tread

Where yonder ancient oaks

Their sombre shadows spread.

Beneath their solemn shade

Behold yon ruins grey!

There the dark bird of night

Hides from the glare of day.

How to my fancy rise

Scenes of departed years;

Of times long past—alas!

My gaze is checked by tears.

For where now silence reigns

These gloomy walls among.

In day's gone by arose

The sound of holy song.

Now, in confusion heaped.

But mossy stones appear;

Yet there, the chancel stood—

The lofty altar, here!

Where, wearied with the pains

Of life, so many knelt.

And prayed for peace, which ne'er

'Midst the world's strife is felt.