d. He conceived of his life as a
fairy-tale, and delighted in living up to his own ideal of living. The
very title of his autobiography in Danish (_Mit Livs Eventyr_) shows
this conclusively; and it ought to have been rendered in English "The
Fairy-Tale of My Life." "The Story of My Life," as Mr. Scudder has
translated it, would have been in the original "Mit Livs Historie," a
very common title, by the way, for an autobiography, while _Mit Livs
Eventyr_ is entirely unique.

The feeling of the marvellous pervades the book from beginning to end.
The prose facts of life had but a remote and indistinct existence to the
poet, and he blundered along miserably in his youth, supported and
upheld by a dim but unquenchable aspiration. He commiserated himself,
and yet felt that there was something great in store for him because of
his exceptional endowment. Every incident in his career he treated as if
it were a miracle, which required the suspension of the laws of the
universe for its performance. God was a benevolent old man with a long
beard (just as he was depicted in old Dr. Luther's Catechism) who sat up
in the skies and spent his time chiefly in managing the affairs of Hans
Christian Andersen as pleasantly as possible; and Hans Christian was
duly grateful, and cried on every third or fourth page at the thought of
the goodness of God and man. Sometimes, for a change, he cried at the
wickedness of the latter, and marvelled, with the _naivete_ of a spoiled
child, that there should be such dreadful people in the world, who
should persist in misunderstanding and misrepresenting him. Those who
were good to him he exalted and lauded to the skies, no matter how they
conducted themselves toward the rest of humanity. Some of the most
mediocre princes, who had paid him compliments, he embalmed in prose and
verse. Frederick VII. of Denmark, whose immorality was notorious, was,
according to Andersen, "a good, amiable king," "sent by God to Danish
land and folk," than whom "no truer man the Danish language spoke." And
this case was by no means exceptional. The same uncritical partiality
toward the great and mighty is perceptible in every chapter of "The
Fairy-Tale of My Life." It was not, however, toward the great and mighty
alone that he assumed this attitude; he was uncritical by nature, and
had too soft a heart to find fault with anybody--except those who did
not like his books. Heine's jocose description of heaven as a place
where he