an extremely violent reply ("Kirkens Gjenmæle ") to a work by Professor H. N. Clausen, on Catholicism and Protestantism. The result was a prosecution for damages that his work was supposed to have caused. He had to pay a fine, and his works were submitted to the censorship of the press. This sentence was for his whole life, but it was rescinded in 1838. He then resigned his clerical office, but in 1832 he was again permitted to preach, and in 1839 he became pastor of the charity hospital of Vartov, in Copenhagen, a position which he held until his death in 1872. At the fiftieth anniversary of his life as a pastor he received the title of bishop.
Grundtvig had early turned his attention to the antiquities of the north, and as he was a man who did with a will anything that his hands found to do, so he also pushed his researches in this department with great energy and perseverance. The abridged mythology mentioned above was thoroughly recast by him and republished in 1832 with the title changed to "Nordens Sindbilledsprog" (the symbolic language of the North). In this strangely interesting book the old myths are subjected to a most original historical-philosophical interpretation, which cannot of course be harmonized with the current conception of mythology, but which, nevertheless, is strikingly and skilfully used as the basis of the author's peculiar historic-poetic view of matters and things in general.
Of his historical works we ought especially to mention his large manual of general history. He translated Saxo's Chronicle of Denmark and Snorre Sturleson's Heimskringla into Danish, and was the first to call public attention to Anglo Saxon literature. He was the author of a free translation of the Anglo Saxon poem, "Beowulf."
Grundtvig's literary productiveness was well nigh unprecedented. In addition to a vast number of articles in many different periodicals, he wrote more than one hundred volumes. No branch of literature was foreign to him, and he furnished valuable contributions in all the more important fields touching the intellectual development of Denmark.
