Royal. He had a good friend too in Professor Weyse, and a year and a half were spent in elementary instruction. But a new misfortune now befell him; he lost his beautiful voice, and Siboni counselled him to put himself to some handicraft trade. He once more seemed abandoned to a hopeless fate. Casting about in his mind who might possibly befriend him, he bethought himself of the poet Guldborg, whose brother the colonel had been so kind to him in Odense. To him he went, and in him he happily found a friend; although poverty still pursued him, and his sufferings, which no one knew, almost overcame him.
He wrote a rhymed tragedy, which obtained some little praise from Oehlenschlager and Ingemann—but no debut was permitted him on the theatre. He wrote a second and third, but the theatre would not accept them. These youthful efforts fell, however, into the hand of a powerful and good man, Conference Counsellor Collin, who, perceiving the genius that slumbered in the young poet, went immediately to the king, and obtained permission from him that he should be sent,
