INTRODUCTION
gold, or bags of minted money. The child's want of clear distinction between the seen and the unseen, the experienced and the impossible; its naive acceptance of animals and flowers, and even of the winds and the stars and the inanimate domestic objects around it, as creatures allied to itself, with which it may be in mutual comprehension, the dullest of which, in tact, is more in sympathy with it than an ordinary "grown-up person," — all this was realized by Andersen with a clairvoyance which becomes almost supernatural when we recollect that no previous writer had ever seriously dreamed of it, and that this was a little chamber of literature into which even Shakspere had never forced his way.
It has taken the world sixty years to become perfectly assured that Andersen, in his own best line, is an author of the very highest originality, that — given the particular genre — he is as great in it as Milton or — shall we say? — Molière in his. Nothing less than this can be claimed for Andersen, — absolute supremacy in his own special field. Only one man perceived this fact, however, at first. This was the Dane, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, the acutest critic of Northern Europe in those years, who, though hitherto not well affected to Andersen's writings, told him bluntly as soon as he had read "The Princess and the Pea," that here he had struck at last into the road that leads to immortality. But the excellent Frederika Bremer could only wish that "The Little Mermaid" had been brought down to the level of a young child's apprehension, and most of what were considered the "best judges" of that age were shocked at the humor which gives the very salt of life to the fairy tale, which, without it, is apt to be a little mawkish. Andersen's autobiography is full, perhaps over full, of instances of want of appreciation of his writings by those from whose praise he anticipated the most pleasure. But the children soon took up the matter themselves, and paid him an abundant and enthusiastic devotion which dragged their elders along with it.[1]
There can be little doubt that one peculiarity of Andersen's imagination especially endeared him to the minds of the children. A child is like a savage in its calm acceptance of incongruous elements, in the ease with which it passes over essential difficulties of tone and plane. Andersen's art consists largely of the adroitness with which he blends together ideas which in the real world cannot be conceived of in combination or even in relation. He is unique, for instance, in his mingling of images from the Christian religion and from primitive forms of superstition. When "The Traveling Companion," for example, opens, Johannes is at the parish church, and the people are singing a hymn. But in the tower of the old church a brownie or nisse is squatting, and it waves its red cap at him. He follows the bells through the forest, and with a good conscience enters another little church, listening to the word of God. This does not pre-
- ↑ For the facts of Andersen's life, the reader may be referred to Mr. R. Nisbet Bain's excellent "Biography," 1895, a work collected entirely from Danish sources.
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