quisite strains, in which pure imagination is blended with most accurate and realistic descriptions of scenery and rural life, have an extraordinary charm not easily described.
The youngest of the great poets born during the last twenty years of the 18th century was Henrik Hertz (1798-1870). He was the most tropical and splendid lyrist of the period, a sort of troubadour, with little of the Scandinavian element in his writing. It is true that in some of his dramas, particularly in Svend Dyring's House, 1837, the theme and plot were taken from Danish history, but the spirit of his poems was distinctly southern. As a satirist and comic poet he followed Baggesen, and in all branches of the poetic art stood a little aside out of the main current of romanticism. In his best pieces, at the same time, he is the most modern and most cosmopolitan of the Danish writers of his time.
It is noticeable that all the great poets of the romantic period lived to an advanced age. Of the ten writers last considered, five died at an age of more than eighty, and the briefest life lasted to the confines of seventy years. This prolonged literary activity—for some of them, like Grundtvig, were busy to the last—had a slightly damping influence on their younger contemporaries, and since their day fewer great names have arisen. Four poets of the next generation, however, deserve most honourable mention.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), the greatest of modern fabulists, was born in very humble circumstances at Odense in Funen. His life was a struggle for existence, in the course of which he suddenly found himself famous. He attempted lyrical and dramatic poetry, novels, and travels, before he discovered the true bent of his genius. In all these branches of literature he escaped failure, but without attaining brilliant success. In 1835 there appeared the first collection of his Fairy Tales, and won him a world-wide reputation. Almost every year from this time forward until near his death he published about Christmas time one or two of these unique stories, so delicate in their humour and pathos, and so masterly in their simplicity. He also wrote, later in life, some excellent novels, The Two Baronesses, Only a Player, and others; his early story of The Improvisatore, 1835, has also considerable charm. Andersen was an incessant wanderer over Europe, and the impressions of his travels form a series of interesting, if egotistical, memoirs.
Carl Christian Bagger (1807-1846) published volumes in 1831 and 1836 which gave promise of a great future,—a promise broken by his early death. Frederik Paludan-Müller (1809-1876) survived much longer, and slowly developed a magnificent poetical career. He is one of the greatest names of Danish literature. His mythological dramas, his great satiric epos of Adam Homo (1841-48), his comedies, his lyrics, and above all his noble philosophic tragedy of Kalanus, prove the immense breadth of his compass, and the inexhaustible riches of his imagination.
The poets completely ruled the literature of Denmark during this period. There were, however, some eminent men in other departments of letters, and especially in philology. Rasmus Christian Rask (1787-1832) was one of the most original and gifted linguists of his age. His grammars of Old Frisian, Icelandic, and Anglo-Saxon were unapproached in his own time, and are still admirable. Niels Matthias Peterson (1791-1862), a disciple of Rask, was the author of an admirable History of Denmark in the Heathen Antiquity, and the translator of many of the Sagas. Christian Molbech (1783-1859) was a laborious lexicographer, author of the first good Danish dictionary, published in 1833. In Joachim Frederik Schouw (1789-1852), Denmark produced a very eminent botanist, author of an exhaustive Geography of Plants. In later years he threw himself with zeal into politics. His botanical researches were carried on by Frederik Liebmann (1813-1856). The most famous zoologist contemporary with these men was Salomon Dreier (1813-1842.)
The romanticists found their philosopher in a most remarkable man, Sören Aaby Kierkegaard (1813-1855), one of the most subtle thinkers of Scandinavia, and the author of some brilliant philosophical and polemical works. A learned philosophical writer, not to be compared, however, for genius or originality to Kierkegaard, was Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785-1875).
Of novelists who were not also poets, only one was great enough to demand notice,—Andreas Nikolai de Saint-Aubain (1798-1865), who, under the pseudonym of Carl Bernhard, wrote a series of charming romances. We close our brief sketch of the romantic period with the mention of two dramatists, Peter Thun Foersom (1777-1817), who produced an excellent translation of Shakespeare, 1807-1816, and Thomas Overskou (1798-1873), author of a long series of successful comedies.
Latest Period.—Three living writers connect the age of romanticism with the literature of to-day. Parmo Carl Ploug (born 1813) is a vigorous politician and poet, violently Pan-Scandinavian, and editor of the newspaper Fædrelandet. Meyer Aron Goldschmidt (born 1818) the life-long opponent of Ploug in politics and journalism, is the author of some novels written in the purest Danish, and with great vivacity and art. Jens Christian Hostrup (born 1818) is by far the best of the younger dramatists, having produced between 1843 and 1855 a series of exquisite comedies, unrivalled in delicacy and wit.
Hans Vilhelm Kaalund (born 1818) is a lyrist of much sweetness and force. He has lately published a good tragedy, Fulvia. Erik Bögh (born 1822) is the author of inimitable songs, vaudevilles, and jeux d'esprit. Christian Richardt (born 1831) is the man of most decided genius among the younger poets. His four volumes of lyrical poems include some exquisite and many admirable pieces. Holgar Drachmann (born 1847) is a young poet, novelist, and painter of amazing fecundity, and great, though still uncertain, promise.
The greatest living Danish zoologist is Johannes Japetus Smith Steenstrup (born 1813). Jens Jakob Armussen Worsaae (born 1821) is an eminent antiquarian. Johan Nikolai Madvig (born 1804) is celebrated as a philologist, and particularly as one of the most eminent of modern Latinists. A young disciple of Madvig, Vilhelm Thomsen, has distinguished himself by his researches into the Sclavonic languages. Rasmus Nielsen (born 1809) and Hans Bröchner (born 1820) are the two most eminent philosophers who have proceeded from the school of Kierkegaard. In aesthetic criticism no recent writer has approached—in knowledge, catholicity, and eloquence—Georg Brandes (born 1842), who stands alone among the writers of his country as an advocate for the most liberal culture and the most advanced speculation.
Fine Arts.—Within the present century the fine arts have been successfully cultivated in Denmark. In painting there has been displayed of late years an increased power and variety. The father of Danish painting, Nikolaj Abildgaard (1744-1809), was a man of great but rhetorical talent, taught in the French school of his day. Jens Juel (1745-1802), a portrait-painter of the same age, is a great favourite among the Danes. It was, however, Eckersberg (1783-1853) who gave the first real stimulus to the art of the nation. He was the pupil, first of Abildgaard, afterwards of David in Paris. In a distant and imperfect way he may be said to hold a position analogous to that of Turner in England. The influence of this genius has not been entirely beneficial, and while the Danish painters reproduce what they see around them with photo-
