iterary centre of the two countries.
To that city Norwegian writers had gravitated as naturally as French
writers gravitate to Paris. There had resulted from this condition of
things a literature which, although it owed much to men of Norwegian
birth, was essentially a Danish literature, and must properly be so
styled. That literature could boast, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, an interesting history comparable in its antiquity
with the greater literatures of Europe, and a brilliant history for at
least a hundred years past. But old literatures are sure to become
more or less sophisticated and trammelled by tradition, and to this
rule Danish literature was no exception. When the constitution of
Eidsvold, in 1814, separated Norway from Denmark, and made it into an
independent kingdom (save for the forced Swedish partnership), the
country had practically no literary tradition save that which centred
about the Danish capital. She might claim to have been the native
country of many Danish writers, even of Ludvig Holberg, the greatest
writer that the Scandinavian peoples have yet produced, but she could
point to nothing that might fairly be called a Norwegian literature.
The young men of the rising generation were naturally much concerned
about this, and a sharp divergence of opinion arose as to the means
whereby the interests of Norwegian literature might be furthered, and
the aims which it should have in view. One party urged that the
literature should break loose from its traditional past, and aim at the
cultivation of an exclusively national spirit. The other party
declared such a course to be folly, contending that literature must be
a product of gradual development rather than of set volition, and that,
despite the shifting of the political kaleidoscope, the national
literature was so firmly rooted in its Danish past that its natural
evolution must be an outgrowth from all that had gone before.

Each of these parties found a vigorous leader, the cause of
ultra-Norwegianism being championed by Wergeland, an erratic person in
whom the spark of genius burned, but who never found himself,
artistically speaking. The champion of the conservatives was Welhaven,
a polished writer of singular charm and much force, philosophical in
temper, whose graceful verse and acute criticism upheld by both precept
and practice the traditional standards of culture. Each of these men
had his followers, who proved in many