to which they chanced to belong, as directed against themselves personally, and the matter might easily have resulted in serious consequence to Holberg himself. A certain Frederik Rostgaard, a landed proprietor on the island of Anholt, happened to be among those most incensed, though he was, according to the standard of the time, a man of great culture and a profound student of art. Frederik Rostgaard was particularly offended at Holberg's description of the inhabitants of Anholt, of whom he had said that they lived a Christian life and maintained themselves honestly by shipwrecks,—just as so many of the dwellers on the seaboard had done in the good times of yore. Rostgaard complained in person to King Frederik IV on the appearance of the first canto, and insisted that the poem should be burnt by the hangman, as a libellous and indecent book, and that the author should be punished according to the full rigor of the law as a frivolous satirist "who had scandalized the poor country of Anholt, including its priest and bailiff, with a false, unchristian description, thus disgracing their ancestors, fellow citizens and descendants." Still the matter ended more satisfactorily than it promised in the beginning. The King caused the book to be read to him, and found that it was "a harmless, amusing work," and the state council acquitted the author by a message, in which it was stated, however, that it would have been better if the book had never been written.
In 1722 Holberg began the composition of his plays, that part of his poetical work, in which his talents shone to the greatest advantage. Plays were at that time but little known in Denmark. The school comedies which had had their bloom in the sixteenth century, gradually went out of fashion, and besides, they were not intended for the people at large, especially as the most of them were written in Latin. At the court they kept French and Italian dramatic companies, and the people had to put up with the conventional state plays of the German actors, with the rape of Helen, the
