lluminated his whole career. It was certainly in this illumination
that he himself saw it, as the opening sentence of his autobiography
proves: "My life is a lovely fairy-tale, happy and full of incidents."

The softness, the sweetness, the juvenile innocence of Danish
romanticism found their happiest expression in him; but also the
superficiality, the lack of steel in the will, the lyrical vagueness and
irresponsibility. If he did not invent a new literary form he at all
events enriched and dignified an old one, and revealed in it a world of
unsuspected beauty. He was great in little things, and little in great
things. He had a heart of gold, a silver tongue, and the spine of a
mollusk. Like a flaw in a diamond, a curious plebeian streak cut
straight across his nature. With all his virtues he lacked that higher
self-esteem which we call nobility.

CONTEMPORARY DANISH LITERATURE

The late Romantic authors of Denmark who lived on the traditions of
Oehlenschlaeger's time and the aesthetical doctrines of J. L. Heiberg,
have gradually been passing away; and a new generation has grown up,
which, though it knows Joseph, has repudiated his doctrine. A period of
stagnation followed the disappearance of the Romanticists. The
Sleswick-Holstein war of 1866, and the consequent hostility to Germany,
cut off the intellectual intercourse between the two countries which in
the first half of the century had been lively and intimate; and as, for
a while, no new ties were formed, a respectable dulness settled upon the
little island kingdom. People lived for the concerns of the day, earned
their bread and butter, amused themselves to the best of their ability,
but troubled themselves very little about the battles of thought which
were being fought upon the great arena of the world. The literary
activity which now and then flared up spasmodically, like flames over a
smouldering ash-heap, flickered and half-expired for want of fresh
sustenance. A direfully conventional romanticist, H. F. Ewald
(1821-1892), wrote voluminous modern and historical novels, the heroines
of which were usually models of all the copy-book virtues, and the
heroes as bloodless as their brave and loyal prototypes in "Ivanhoe" and
"Waverley." Instead of individualizing his _dramatis personae_ this
feeble successor of Ingemann and Walter Scott gave them a certificate of
character, vouching for their goodness or badness, and trusting the
reader to take his word