means the most sensible. Better even to
have fallen ill. An author by his quarrel with the public, whether the
reading or theatrical public, can gain nothing for himself but added
torment. The more vehemently he contests and resents, the louder is the
laugh against him. Whether the right is upon his side, time alone can
show; time alone can redress his wrongs. When the poet has written his
best, he has done all his part. If he cannot feel perfectly tranquil as
to the result, let him at least affect tranquillity--let him be silent,
and silence will soon bring that peace it typifies.

Henceforward, however, upon the whole, the career of Andersen is
prosperous, and his life genial. We find him in friendly intercourse
with the best spirits of the age. The lad who walked about Odense with
long yellow locks, bare-headed, and bare-footed, and who was half
reconciled to being a tailor's apprentice, because he should get plenty
of remnants to dress his puppets with--is seen spending the evening with
the royal family of Denmark, or dining with the King of Prussia, who
decorates him with his order of the Red Eagle! He has exemplified his
text--"people have a deal of adversity to go through, and then they
become famous."

Those who have read "The Improvisatore," the most ambitious of the
works of Andersen, and by far the most meritorious of his novels, will
now directly recognise the materials of which it has been constructed.
His own early career, and his travels into Italy, have been woven
together in the story of Antonio. So far from censuring him--as some of
his Copenhagen critics appear to have done--for describing himself and
the scenes he beheld, we are only surprised when we read "The True Story
of his Life," that he has not been able to employ in a still more
striking manner, the experience of his singular career. But, as we have
already observed, he betrays no habit or power of mental analysis; he
has not that introspection which, in the phrase of our poet Daniel,
"raises a man above himself;" so that Andersen could contemplate
Andersen, and combine the impartial scrutiny of a spectator with the
thorough knowledge which self can only have of self. So far from
censuring him for the frequent use he makes of the materials which his
own life and travels afforded him, we could wish that he had never
attempted to employ any other. Throughout his novels, whenever he
departs from these, he is either commonplace or extravagant,--