Norwegian Poetry Since 1814

( Originally Published 1896 )

IT seems a pity that our knowledge of neighbouring countries should be limited so closely to their topo-graphical features. We travel through them by rail or steamer, we talk a little broken English with postboys and boatmen, and we presume that we know something of the nations. But in truth it is but the outermost shell that we can see; of the thought and passion of the people of their pursuits, and ambitions, and desires we know no more than the birds do when they fly over the land and rest on their migratory journeys. When a language is limited to a race inconsiderable in numbers, the isolation of its thought from foreigners is, of course, vastly increased. Here in England it is not worth while that many of us should learn such a language as the Dano-Norwegian, spoken by a population less than that of London. Life is too short for many such toilsome lessons, and hence we remain greatly in ignorance of what is being wrought in art and literature among such near neighbours as the Norsemen. Still, I say again, it is a pity, since doubtless in many comparatively small communities there is an intellectual activity, and a positive success in execution, which it would interest us to become acquainted with. I shall endeavour to show that such is the case among the Norwegians.

It would be hard to point out any country in Europe whose condition at the present moment presents a more satisfactory aspect than Norway. It is not perhaps universally known that its constitution is the only one that survives out of all those created or adapted to suit the theories of democracy that prevailed in the beginning of the century. Though accepting the King of Sweden as titular monarch, Norway really rules itself, sends to Christiania a parliament (the Storthing), elected from all classes of society, and has not scrupled, on occasion, to overrule the King's especial commands, even at the risk of civil war. There is no hereditary nobility in Norway ; no political restriction on the press; hardly any class distinction; and yet, so conservative, so dignified, is the nation, that freedom hardly ever lapses into licence, and the excesses which larger republics permit themselves would be impossible here. It is necessary to preface my remarks on the poetry of Norway with this statement, because the poets there, where they have been poets worth considering, have been also politicians; and I shall be obliged, on this account, to refer now and again to political developments, though I shall hope to make these references as short as possible. The political life of Norway would be in itself a fertile subject to dwell upon.

It is no more than an arbitrary dictum that fixes the rise of Norwegian literature at the date of the Declaration of Independence of 1814. For two centuries past the country had been producing eminent writers, who had attained distinction both as poets and as men of science. The great naturalists of Norway require, and deserve, an abler pen than mine ; it is with the poets that I propose to deal. A few of these, such as Peder Dass and Dorthe Engelbrechtsdatter, had preserved in the old days their national character, and sung to the Northmen only; but for the most part the writers of Norway looked to Denmark for their audience and are to this day enrolled among the Danish poets. Holberg, Wessel, Tullin, Frimann, and a score of others were as truly Norwegians as Welhaven and Ibsen are, but Copenhagen was the scene of their labours, Danes were their admirers and patrons, and it is in Danish, not Norwegian, literature that they find their place. Hence it has been the habit of the Scandinavian critics to commence their histories of Norwegian bibliography with the demonstration at Eidsvold, when Norway asserted her independence, and finally separated from Denmark.

The Norske Selskab (" Norwegian Society "), that evil genius and yet, in a measure, protector of the literature it presumed to govern, had now for more than forty years scattered thunderbolts from its rooms at Copenhagen, and ruled the world of letters with a rod of iron. But this singular association, that had nourished Wessel, snubbed Edvard Storm, and hunted Ewald to the death, no longer possessed its ancient force. The glory was departing, and when the rupture with Denmark came about, the Norske Selskab began to feel that Copenhagen was no longer a fit field of action, and, gathering its robes about it, it fled across the sea to Christiania, where it dwindled to a mere club, and may, for aught I know, still so exist, a shadow of its former self. But though the Selskab, once dreaded as the French Academy was, no longer had fangs to poison its opponents, its traditions of taste still ruled the public. Accordingly the aspect of affairs in the literary world of Christiania in the proud year of 1814 is at this distance of time neither inspiriting nor inviting. Newspapers hurriedly started and ignorantly edited, a theatre where people went to see dull tragedies of Nordal Brun's, or, worse still, translations of tawdry dramas of the Voltaire school, a chaos of foolish political pamphlets : these meet us on every hand, and every sort of writing seems to abound, save that which is the result of fine criticism and good taste. The Selskab admitted but two kinds of poetry the humorous and the elegiac. Every one knows what elegies used to be, what a plague they had become, and how persistently " elegant " and " ingenious " writers poured them forth. And, indeed, according to the journals of that time in Christiania, every verse-writer was ingenious and every tale-writer elegant. There was a total want of discrimination ; every man wrote what was pleasing in his own eyes, and had it printed too ; for the newspapers were open to all comers, and no poems were too stupid to be admitted. The whole country went wild with the new-found liberty; like an overdose of exhilarating tonic, freedom threw Norway into a sort of delirium, and all was joyous, confused, and irrational. Out of all this arose a new class of poetry that ran side by side with the elegiac, and after a while overwhelmed it. This has been called "Syttendemai-Poesi," or poesy of the 17th of May the day on which Christian was proclaimed King of Norway, and the Storthing was finally instituted. This poesy, of course, was intensely patriotic, taking the form of odes to Eidsvold, hymns to Old Norway, and defiance to the world at large. It is tedious, and sometimes laughable if read now; but then it had its significance, and was the inarticulate cry of a young, unsatisfied nation.

Out of the froth and whirl of the " Syttendemai-Poesi" the works of three poets rise and take a definite shape. These claim particular notice, mainly because of their real worth, but they gained it at the time perhaps more by the extraordinary zeal with which they stood by and puffed one another. They have been called the Trefoil, so impossible is it to consider them separately; and in this triplicity of theirs they formed a considerable figure in their day. I speak of Schwach, Bjerregaard, and M. C. Hansen. The first-mentioned was the most admired then and is the least regarded now. C. A. Schwach was born in a village by the shores of Lake Miösen in 1793, and after holding a high official position at Trondhjem for a great many years, died at Skien in 1860. His poems, originally printed in stray newspapers, were collected in three great volumes. They are very dull, being for the most part occasional verses called forth by events which are now entirely forgotten. Schwach, once the idol of the clubs and the popular poet of the day, is now seldom read and never reprinted; he exists mainly as the author of one or two popular songs that have not yet lost their charm. Bjerregaard was a man of far higher talent than Schwach ; there was more melody in his heart than on his tongue; his lyrics have still some music about them, and some dewiness and sparkle. His countrymen usually class him as a poet below Hansen, and if we include, as they do, novels and all sorts of aesthetic writing as part of a poet's vocation, they are doubtless right, for Hansen won great fame as a writer of romances ; but in poetry proper I must, for my own part, set Bjerregaard far higher than his friends as a master of the art. He had greater reticence than they, and a brighter touch ; he even had some desire for novelty in the matter of versification, and wrote in tersa rima and other new metres. He produced a tragedy too, Magnus Barfods Sonner (" Magnus Barefoot's Sons "), which, I am bound to say, I have found wonder-fully dreary. He was happiest in lyrical writing. I may point in passing to his pretty verses, Vinterscener ("Winter Scenes"), in the small collected edition of his works. He was born in the same village as Schwach was, but a year earlier, and died in 1842. M. C. Hansen, a prolific writer of novels, published exceedingly little verse, of an artificial and affected kind. Glancing down his pages we notice such titles as " The Pearl," "The Rainbow," "Nature in Ceylon," and we easily gather the unreal and forced nature of the sentiment he deals in.

His romances are said to be of a better character, and he led the van of those happy innovators who turned to the real life of their humbler countrymen for a subject for their art. For this discovery, the beauty that lies hidden in a peasant's life, we must thank Hansen, and forgive his poetical sins. He died a few days before his friend Bjerregaard, and Schwach collected his works in eight huge volumes.

If there were nothing better in Norwegian poetry than the writings of these three friends, it would not be worth while to catalogue their tedious productions, and the reader might wisely turn away to more inspiriting themes. But it is not so. This early period of Syttendemai-Poesi is but the ridge of light blown sand over which the traveller has to toil from his boat till he reaches the meadows and the heathery moorlands beyond. We come now to a poet whose genius, slowly developing out of the chaotic elements around it, took form, and colour, and majesty, till it lifted its possessor to a level with the noblest spirits of his time.

Henrik Arnold Thaulov Wergeland was born at Christianssand in 1808, and was the son of a political pamphleteer who attained some prominence in the ranks of the popular party. The father was one of the original members of the Storthing, and consequently the earliest years of the poet were spent at Eidsvold, in the very centre of all the turmoil of inexperienced statesmanship. Eidsvold was the vortex into which the bombast and false sentiment of the nation naturally descended, and it is impossible to doubt that the scenes of his boyhood distinctly infused into Wergeland's nature that strong political bias that he never afterwards threw off. By-and-by the lad went up to the University of Christiania, and entered heart and soul into the caprices of student life ; his excesses, however, seem to have been those of eccentricity and mischievousness, for neither at this time nor ever after through his chequered life did he lose that blameless character, the sweetness of which won praise even from his enemies. It was about this time that he fell in love with a young lady whom he had seen once only, and that in the street. He named her Stella, and being unable to find her address, wrote daily a letter to her, tore it up, and threw it out of window. His landlady remarked that the apple-blossom was falling early that year. This ideal love for "Stella" woke the seeds of poetry in him. He began to versify, and soon forgetting Stella, worshipped a still less tangible but more important mistress, the Muse Thalia herself.

The first work published by the afterwards eminent poet was Ah a farce. It is usual with his admirers to pass over this and his other boyish productions in silence; but it is undoubtedly a fact that after the appearance of Ah/ in 1827, he wrote a great number of farces in quick succession. These farces were successful too, and the boy dramatist began to be talked of and admired. There were not wanting those even who called him " The Holberg of Norway," forgetting, it would seem, that Holberg himself, the inimitable, was a Norwegian. That Wergeland himself did not prize these trifles very highly would seem from his publishing them under an Arabic pseudonym " Siful Sifadda." Those who have read them speak of them as not altogether devoid of fun, but founded principally on passing events that have lost all interest now. But in 1828 he wrote a tragedy Sinclairs

("Sinclair's Death") and in 1829 issued some lyrical poems that showed he had distinct and worthy aims in art. These poems had an immense success. They were brimful of tasteless affectations and outrages of rhythm as well as reason ; but they were full too of Syttendemai enthusiasm, and they spread through the country like wild-fire. Wergeland became the poet of the people; his songs were set to music and sung in the theatres; they were reprinted in all the newspapers, and sold in halfpenny leaflets in the streets. Every 17th of May the people gathered to the poet's house and shouted, " Hurrah for Wergeland and Liberty !" His mild face, beaming behind great spectacles, his loose green hunting coat and shuffling gait, were hailed everywhere with applause. There are real and great merits about these early poems; they show some true knowledge of nature, some lyrical loveliness; but it was not for these, it was rather for the defiance of all laws of authorship that the people of Christiania adored him. In 1830 he published Skabelsen, Mennesket og Mesias (" The Creation, Man and the Messiah "), a drama of elephantine proportions. This portentous poem caused great diversion among the poet's enemies, and was the actual cause of an attack upon him, which ultimately divided the nation into two camps, and revolutionised the literature of Norway.

In 1831 there appeared in one of the papers a short anonymous poem, " To H. Wergeland," which was chiefly remarkable for the sharpness of its satire and the extreme polish of its style. It was not in the least degree bombastic or affected, and consequently was a novelty to Norwegian readers. It lashed the author of Skabelsen with a pitiless calmness and seeming candour that were almost insufferable.

For years past there had been developing in Christiania a section of society whose interests and aims lay in a very different channel from those of the great bulk of the populace. These persons, of conservative nature, saw with regret the folly of much of the noisy mock-patriotism current ; they sighed for the old existence, when the cliques of Copenhagen quietly settled all questions of taste, and if there was little fervour there was at least no bathos. The leading spirit of this movement, which may be called the Critical, was J. S. Welhaven, a young man who, born at Bergen in 1807, but early a student at the capital, had watched the career of Wergeland, and had conceived an intense disdain for his poetry and his friends. It was he who at last had let fly this lyric arrow in the dark, and who had raised such consternation among the outraged patriots. Wergeland replied by another poem, and a controversy insensibly sprang up. In 1832 Welhaven published a thin book H. Wergeland's Poetry which at once raised a howl from all the popular journalists, and marks an era in literature. It consists of a calm and exasperating anatomy of the poet's then published writings, as withering and quite as amusing as Lord Macaulay's Essay on Robert Montgomery. It is even more bitter than this, and far more unjust, since the subject of it was a real poet and not a mere charlatan in verse. Still, with all his absurdities extracted and put side by side, Wergeland does cut a pitiable figure indeed, and one is tempted to forgive the critic when, throwing all mercy to the winds, he pours forth a torrent of eloquent invective, beginning with the words, "Stained with all the deadly sins of poesy," and ending with a consignment of the author to the "mad-house of Parnassus." Among the numerous replies called forth by this attack, the most notable was one by the poet's father, N. Wergeland, but his pamphlet, though doubtless able in its way, has nothing of the brilliant wit of Welhaven's little brochure.

Meanwhile the outraged poet himself, who throughout the controversy seems to have behaved with great discretion, continued to attend to his own affairs. In 1832 he published Opium, a drama, and in 1833 Spaniolen, a charming little poem, which shows a great improvement in style, and proves the beneficial effect of the criticism brought to bear on him. Still the mild-eyed man sauntered dreamily about in his loose green coat, but now he was less often seen in the streets, for, having bought a small estate just out of Christiania, he gave himself up to a passion for flowers, and to a grotto of great size and ingenuity. Poetry was the business of his life, and his spare hours were given to his grotto and his flowers. The great controversy began to take a national character, and when, in 1834, Welhaven published his polemical poem of Norges Daemring ("Norway's Twilight") there was no longer any personal bitterness in his attacks. In that exquisite cycle of sonnets he laid bare all the roots of evil and folly that were deadening the heart of the nation, and with a pitiless censure struck at the darling institutions of the national party. He called for a wider patriotism and a healthier enthusiasm than the frothy zeal of the Syttendemai demonstrations could show, and in verse that was as sublime as it was in the truest sense patriotic, he prophesied a glorious future for the nation, when it should be led by calmer statesmen, and no longer beaten about like an unsteady ship by every wind of faction. Then Norwegians would estimate their own dignity justly ; then poetry and painting, journalism and statesmanship, all the arts and sciences, would join to form one harmonious whole, and the young nation grow up into a perfect man. Then, winding up his argument, he cries

" Thy dwelling, peasant, is on holy ground ;
What Norway was, that she again may be,
By land, by sea, and in the world of men ! "

The publication of Norges Daemring naturally enough called forth a still louder protestation from the popular leaders, and the battle raged more fiercely than ever. No longer was it the principal champions who led the fight ; these retired for a while, and their friends took up the cause. Sylvester Sivertson, a poor imitator of Wergeland, frantically attacked Norges Daemring, and Hermann Foss, a new convert to the critical party, as stoutly defended it ; and so matters went on till about 1838.

From this time misfortunes fell upon Wergeland in ever increasing severity. One by one the lights all faded out of his life, and left it wan and bare. First of all he lost an official position which brought him in a considerable income. The king, the unpopular John, in a moment of whim, deprived him of this office. Still the profits of his poems and the sums brought in by his theatrical writings were enough to keep him in comfort. The loose green coat was seen wandering about his garden more than ever; but in an unlucky moment King John repented of his haste, and ordered the poet a certain pension from the State. Wergeland consented to take the money only on the express condition that he was to be allowed to spend it all in the formation of a library for the poor; but alas! only half of this trans-action was known to the public, and in the newspapers of the next week Wergeland found himself stigmatised by his own friends as "the betrayer of the Fatherland." So intensely unpopular was King John, that to receive money from him was to receive money, it was considered, from an enemy of the nation, and by a sharp revolution of Fortune's wheel the popular poet became the object of general distrust and disgrace. It is vain to argue against a sudden fancy of this kind ; the remonstrances of Wergeland were drowned in journalistic invective ; and the grief and humiliation acted so injuriously on the poet's irritable nerves that he fell into confirmed ill-health, and from this time rapidly sank towards death. Other sorrows followed that made these inner troubles still less bearable. The poet became involved in a tedious law-suit, which drained his finances so completely that the pretty country house, the grotto, and the beloved flower-beds had to be relinquished, and lodgings in town received the already invalided Wergeland. Shattered in body and estate, forsaken and misjudged by his countrymen, it might have been expected that the mind of the man would have been depressed and weakened, but it was not so. In a poem of this very time he says

" My house and ground,
My horse and hound,
Have passed away and are not found!
But something yet within me lies
That law and lawyer's touch defies."

And it was just at this very time, when he was bowed down with adversity, that the singing faculty in him burst forth with unprecedented vigour, and found a purer and juster expression than ever before. The last five years of his life saw his genius scatter all the clouds and vapours that enwrapped it.

The first of these swan-songs was Jan van Huysums Blamsterstykke ("J. van Huysum's Flower-piece"), a series of lyrics with prose interjaculations. This is by far the most beautiful of his political poems for such it must be called, being thoroughly interpenetrated by his fiery republicanism. No poet, save Shelley, has decked the bare shell of politics with brighter wreaths than Wergeland; and it must be remembered that while in the mouth of an English poet these principles are dreamy and Utopian, to a Norwegian of that time they were matter of practical hope; and though Wergeland did not live to see it, there soon came a time when, King John having passed away, the high-minded Oscar permitted those very alterations in the Constitution which the popular party were sighing for. In Jan van Huysums Blomsterstykke the poet takes a flower-piece of that painter's cunning workmanship, and gazes at it till it seems to start into life, and the whole mass flowers, insects, and the porcelain jar itself becomes a symbol of passionate humanity to him. The blossoms are souls longing for a happier world; here the poppies cry for vengeance like bubbles of blood from the torn throat of some martyr for liberty; here the tulips flame out of their pale-green sheaths like men who burst their bonds and would be free ; roses, columbines, narcissi, each suggest some brilliant human parallel to the poet, and all is moulded into verse that is melody itself. We rise from reading the poem as from studying some exquisite piece of majolica, or a page of elaborate arabesques ; we feel it never can be as true to our own faith as it was to the writer's, but we regard it as a lovely piece of art, shapely and well proportioned. It was presented as a bouquet to Fredrika Bremer.

The next year saw the publication of Svalen ("The Swallow"), a poem suggested by the bereavement of the poet's excellent sister Augusta. It was " a midsummer morning story for mothers who have lost their children," and was sent to cheer the downcast heart of his sister. It is one of the most ethereal poems ever written ; a lyrical rhapsody of faith in God and triumph over death. A short extract will indicate the profuse and ebullient manner of its composition :

" Then I lifted
Up my soul, and saw the swallow
Sinking, floating, softly fly
Through the milk-white clouds on high,
And my heart rejoiced anew;
How she drifted !
Through the blue I scarce could follow
Her sun-gilded body, though
Sol lay in a dark cloud-hollow :
How she sprang ; and turned, in flashing,
As if weaving in mid-air
With her wing-points through and through
Some strange web of gold and blue.
With my thoughts I followed, dashing
Through the light with little care,
While the balsam-drops afar On her beak
Glittered like a double star."

By this time the author was himself upon his death-bed, but he lingered a few years yet, long enough to see his popularity slowly return, and to hear again the vivats of the people on the 17th of May. It was not his own troubles, but the grievances of a down-trodden people, that filled his last thoughts. By the laws of Norway no Jews whatever, under heavy penalties, might settle in the realm, and the hearts of high-minded men were exercised to put an end to this injustice. In 1842 Wergeland published Joden ("The Jew"), an idyllic poem "in nine sprays of blossoming thorn," or cantos, in which the cause of the Hebrew outcasts was eloquently pleaded. The work created a great deal of excitement, and, to clinch the nail he had struck in, the poet produced in 1844 Jodinden, ("The Jewess"), in "eleven sprays of blossoming thorn." These powerful poems, accompanied by prose writings of a similar tendency, produced the desired effect, and the restriction was, in the course of a few years, removed.

But it was not for Wergeland to watch this consummation. Already the darkness of death was gathering round his bed, though the strong brain lost none of its power and the swift hand increased in cunning. A few months before the end his last and greatest poem appeared Den engelske Lods (" The English Pilot ") in which all his early life of travel and excitement seems to have passed before his eyes and to have been photographed in verse. There is no trace here of depression or weakness; it is not the sort of book a man writes upon his death-bed; it is lively and full of incident, humorous and yet pathetic. The groundwork of the piece is a reminiscence of the poet's own visit to England many years before. Kent, Brighton, the Isle of Wight, and the " Hampshire Fjord" are drawn in rose-colour by an only too enthusiastic pen, and the idyllic story that gives title to the whole namely, the loves of Johnny Johnson and Mary Ann is inter-woven skilfully enough. The final episode, the return to the Norwegian province of Hardanger, is particularly vivid, and the descriptions of landscape singularly true and charming. Here is a fragment from the close of the poem, describing the native scenes

" Where in pale blue ranks arise
Alps that rim the mountain valley ;
Where above the crystal spring Blooms the snow-white apple-tree,
And in tracks of snow you see
Wild white roses blossoming ;
Where a stream begins its song
Like a wind-harp low and muffled,
Murmuring through the moss and stones;
Then among the alders moans,
Rushes out, involved and ruffled,
By a youthful impulse driven,
Foaming, till it reach the vale,
And, like David with his harp,
From a shepherd made a king
By the songs that it can sing,
Triumphs through the listening dale."

The only mistake is that the poet, whose English was defective, must needs preserve the local colouring by hauling bits of our language, or what he supposed it to be, bodily into his verse. Such a passage as this, coming in the middle of an excited address to Liberty in England, breaks down one's gravity altogether

" Ho ! Johnny, ho ! how do you do?
Sing, Sailor, oh !
Well ! toddy is the sorrows' foe !
Sing, Sailor, oh!"

It should be a solemn warning to those who travel and then write a book, not to quote in the language of the country.

He sank slowly but steadily. His death was in some respects very singular. All through life he had enjoyed the presence and touch of flowers in a more intimate way than even most lovers of such sweet things can understand ; and as he became unconscious of the attentions of his friends, and inattentive even to his wife's voice, it was observed that he watched a wall-flower, blossoming in the window, with extraordinary intensity. The last verses which he composed, or at least dictated, were addressed to this plant, and form as remarkable a parting word of genius as any that has been recorded. These beautiful stanzas I have attempted to render as follows:

" O Wall-flower, or ever thy bright leaves fade,
My limbs will be that of which all are made;
Before ever thou losest thy crown of gold
My flesh will be mould,

And yet open the casement; till I am dead,
Let my last look rest on thy golden head !
My soul would kiss thee before it flies
To the open skies.

Twice I am kissing thy fragrant mouth,
And the first kiss wholly is thine, in truth;
But the second remember, dear love, to close
On my fair white rose.

I shall not be living its spring to see,
But bring it my greeting when that shall be,
And say that I wished that upon my grave
It should bloom and wave.

Yes, say that I wished that against my breast
The rose should lie that thy lips caressed,
And, Wall-flower, do thou into Death's dark porch
Be its bridal torch."

At last, on July 12th, 1845, as his wife stood watching him, his eyes opened, and he said to her, " I was dreaming so sweetly; I dreamed I was lying in my mother's arms;" and so he sighed away his breath. His funeral was like that of a prince or a great general ; all shops were shut, the streets were draped with black flags, and a great multitude followed the bier to the grave. When the coffin was lowered a shower of laurel crowns was thrown in from all sides. So passed away the most popular of northern poets in the thirty-eighth year of his life.

Welhaven's poetical activity reached its climax during the ten years that followed the death of Wergeland. His poems were exclusively lyrical pieces of no great length; Norges Daemring; being the only long poem he attempted. He is singular, too, among Norwegian writers for having never at any part of his life written for the stage. His prose is as carefully elaborated as his verse, and is probably the most brilliant and finished in the language, or at least in Norwegian literature. His great mission seems to have been, like that of Lessing in Germany and Heiberg in Denmark, to revolutionise the world of taste, and to institute a great new school of letters, less by the production of fine works of art from himself than by the introduction of sound canons of criticism for the use of others. In 184o Welhaven became professor of philosophy at the University, and between 1839 and 1859 published a series of volumes of poetry, chiefly romances and those small versified stories that are called "epical" poems in Scandinavia. These verses are very polished and correct in form, and they move with dignity and a certain virile power characteristic of their author, but they are lacking in the highest forms of imaginative originality. His prose writings were of a more positive excellence ; they have not been approached by any of his countrymen, and one of them, a study of the Dano-Norwegian poetry of the last century, ranks high in the critical literature of all Scandinavia.

Welhaven had the personal attractiveness that marks most great movers of men; his grave and handsome figure, not unallied with a certain arrogance, usually retained a dignified reserve which melted into a geniality all the more charming by contrast, when he found himself in the circle of his intimate friends. He died October 21, 1873,, after a long period of shattered health. In him the critical, spirit comes to perfection, as in Wergeland the spontaneous;; the latter had much of the flabby mental texture of Cole ridge a soft woollen fabric shot through with gold threads, the former is all cloth of silver. Of the voluminous. writings of Wergeland, only his death-bed poems (forming; the latter half of the third volume of his collected works) may be read in future times ; the sparse words of Welhaven will all be prized and enjoyed. The former will inspire the greatest enthusiasm and the latter the deepest admiration.

An individual who deserves a few moments' attention before we pass on is M. B. Landstad, who was born as long ago as 1802, in a remote cluster of houses just under the North Cape. We regard the little town of Hammerfest as the most hyperborean place in the world, but to young Landstad in his arctic home Hammerfest must have seemed a centre of southern luxury. One needs to have glided all day, as I have done, among the barren creeks and desolate fjords of Finmark, to appreciate the vast expanse of loneliness a very Deadman's Land that lay between the lad and civilisation. I wish his poems were better, for the sake of the romance; but in fact he is a rather tame religious poet, and would in himself claim no notice at all, were it not that he has undertaken two great labours which have had a bearing on the poetical life of the country. From 1834 to 1848 Landstad was pastor of a parish in the heart of Thelemarken, the wildest of all the provinces of Norway, and he occupied his spare time in collecting as many as he could of the national songs (Folkeviser) which still float in the memories of the peasantry. He published a very large collection, in rather a tasteless form, in 1853; but though the work is too clumsy for common use, it has proved of the greatest service as a storehouse for more critical students of the old Norse language. Too much praise, however, must not be accorded to him even on this score, for Asbjörnsen and Moe were in the field ten years earlier, as we shall see farther on in our history. Another great labour of Landstad's was the compilation of a psalm-book for general use in churches, to supersede the various old collections. Our arctic poet, whose fault ever was to be too diffuse, produced his psalm-book, at Government expense, on a scale so huge as to be quite unfit for the use for which it was intended. Still, like the Folkeviser, it forms a useful storehouse for others to collect what is valuable from, and still continues to be the standard edition of religious poetry.

In Cowley's comedy of The Guardian a poet is introduced, who is so miserable that everything he sees reminds him of Niobe in tears. "That Niobe, Doggrell, you have used worse than Phoebus did. Not a dog looks melancholy but he's compared to Niobe." So it is with the person that meets us next upon our pilgrimage. Nothing ever cheers or enlivens him ; at the slightest excitement he falls into floods of genteel grief, and when other people are laughing he is thinking of Niobe, Andreas Munch, a son of the poet-bishop of Christians-sand, was born in 1811, and through a long life has been the author of a great many lyrical and dramatic volumes. After the turmoil of Syttendemai-Poesi and the rage of the great critical controversy, it was rather refreshing to meet with a poet who was never startling or exciting, whose song-life was pitched in a minor key, and whose personality seemed moist with dramatic tears. If he had no great depth of thought, he had at least considerable beauty of metrical form, and was always " in good taste." Andreas Munch basked for a while in universal popularity. He was called "Norway's first skald," but whether first in time or first in merit would seem to be doubtful. It was not till 1846 that he published any work of real importance, and in that year appeared Den Eensomme (" The Solitary "), a romance founded on the morbid but fascinating idea of a soul that, folding inward upon itself, ever increasingly shuns the fellowship of man-kind, while the agonies of isolation rack it more and more. The scene of the story is laid in modern times, and an additional horror is by that means given to an idea which, though it would hardly have presented itself to any but a sickly mind, is carried out with skill and effect. Shortly upon this followed another prose work of considerable merit Billeder fra Nord og Syd (" Pictures from North and South ") which had a great success. In 185o he printed Nye Digte (" New Poems "), which are the prettiest he produced, and mark the climax of his literary life. The melancholy tone of these poems does not reach the maudlin, and goes no farther than the shadowy pensiveness of which the Danish Ingemann had set the example. All through life Munch was strongly influenced by the works of Ingemann, whose most consistent scholar he was. Even here, however, we feel that there is want of power and importance ; these are only verses of occasion.

Miscellany Poems," as our great-grandfathers called them, the world has seen enough of; it is a grave error for an eminent writer to add to their number.

With the year 1852 begins Munch's period of greatest volubility. It would be a weariness to enumerate his works, but there are two that we must linger over, because of their extreme popularity, and because they are the very first works a novice in Norwegian is likely to meet with ; I mean the dramas Solomon de Caus and Lord William Russell. The first of these was published in 1855, and caused a sensation not only in Scandinavia, but as far as Germany and Holland. De Caus was the man who discovered the power of steam, and who was shut up in a mad-house as a reward for his discovery. There is decidedly a good tragical idea involved in this story, and Munch deserves praise for noticing it. But his treatment of the plot leaves much to be desired, and a religious element is dragged in, which is incongruous and confusing. The poem is fairly good, but when so much has been written about it, praising it to the skies, one is surprised, on a closer inspection, to find it so tame and unreal. Of a better order of writing is Lord William Russell, 1857 on the whole, perhaps, the best work of Andreas Munch's well considered, carefully written, and graceful. But there is, even here, little penetration of character, and the worst fault is that the noble figure of Rachel Russell is drawn so timidly and faintly that the true tragical heart of the story is hardly brought before us at all. Lady Russell, it is true, constantly walks the stage, but she weeps and sentimentalises, describes the landscape, and cries, " Fie, bad man!" does everything, in fact, but show the noble heroism of Russell's wonderful wife. The dialogue is without vigour, but it is purely and gracefully written; and, to give the author his due, the play is a really creditable production, as modern tragedies go. But no one that could read Ibsen would linger over Munch; we are about to introduce a dramatist indeed.

We have still a little way to go before we reach the real founder of the Norwegian drama. We must follow Niobe a little farther. Andreas Munch has continued to the present date to issue small volumes of lyrics in smart succession. Gradually he has lost even the charm of form and expression, and his best admirers are getting weary of him. In truth, he belongs to the class of graceful sentimentalists that Hammond and L. E. L. successively represented with us, and but few of his writings can hope to retain the popular ear. One of his latest labours has been to translate Tennyson's Enoch Arden very prettily. Indeed, in pretty writing he is unrivalled.

Andreas Munch fills up the interval of repose between the old political poetry and the new national school. For all their loud talk about patriotism, Wergeland and the rest had never thought of taking their inspiration from the deep well of national life around them, or from the wealth of old songs and sagas. But everything that was healthy and rich in promise was to come from the inner heart of the nation, and the real future of Norwegian art was to be heralded not by Munch's love-sick sonnets, but by the folk-songs of Moe, the historical dramas of Ibsen, and the peasant romances of Björnstjerne Björnson. The man that opened the eyes of students and poets, and heralded this revolution in art, was not a poet himself, but a zoologist P. C. Asbjörnsen.

This gifted man was born at Christiania in 1812; he early showed that bias for natural history which is so common among his countrymen, and, being of a brisk temperament, has spent most of his life in wandering over shallow seas, dredging and investigating. On this mission he sailed down the Mediterranean Sea, and has spent a long time in exploring the rich fields that lie before a zoologist on the coasts of Norway itself. But some part of every man's life has to be spent on shore, and these months Asbjörnsen dedicated to investigations of a very different kind; he searched among the peasants for stories. Just about that time there was a wide-spread desire to save the remnants of popular legend before it was too late. The Finnish scholars were collecting the Kalewala; the Russians were hunting up those wild songs of which Mr. Ralston has lately given us an English selection ; Magyar and Servian poetry was being carefully amassed. It occurred to Asbjörnsen to do the same with the mythology of Norway. Starting from Bergen, he strolled through the magnificent passes of the Justedal and the Romsdal, drinking in the wild beauty of the scenery till it became part of his being, and gossiping with every peasant he could meet with. When a boatman ferried him across the dark fjord, he would coax a story from him about the spirits that haunt the waters; the postboys had fantastic tales to tell about the trolls and the wood spirits ; the old dames around the fire would murmur ancient rites and the horrors of by-gone superstition. When the peasant was shy and would not speak, Asbjörnsen would tell a story himself; and that never failed to break the ice. When he had wandered long enough in the west, he crossed the Dovrefjeld, and explored the valleys of Osterdal, lying along the border of Sweden. The results of his labours, and those of the poet Jörgen Moe, were published jointly in 1841, as Norske Folkeeventyr ("Norwegian Popular Tales "), a book that made little impression at the time, but which has grown to be one of the bulwarks of Norwegian literature, and which, besides winning for its principal author a European fame, has had a profound influence on the younger poets of our day.

Dr. Jörgen Moe, now Bishop of Christianssand,1 whom we have just seen helping Asbjörnsen to collect folk-stories, is himself a poet of no mean order. His nature is not active and joyous like that of his associate; he would seem to be one of those diffident and sensitive natures, whose very delicacy prevents their pushing their way successfully into public notice. Violets, for all their ethereal perfume, are easily overlooked, and Jorgen Moe's works are as small, as unassuming, as exquisite as violets. The book he is best known by is a thin volume of poems, brought out in 1851; they have nothing about them to attract particular notice till one falls into the spirit of them, and then one is conscious of a wonderful melody, as of some Ariel out of sight a sense of perfect, simple expression. The reader is transported to the pine-fringed valleys; he sees the peasants at their daily work, he hears the cry of the waterfalls, and forgets all the humdrum existence that really lies about him. These verses have a power of quiet realism that is strangely refreshing; if any one would know what Norway and its people really are, let them read Moe's little lyrical poems.

In 1877 the Bishop of Christianssand issued his works in prose and verse, in two important volumes.

We now reach the name which stands highest among the poets of the new school, a star that is still in the ascend-ant, and on whom high hopes are built by all who desire the intellectual prosperity of Norway. Henrik Ibsen is a man who, through all difficulties from within and without, has slowly lifted himself higher and higher as an artist, and is now in the full swing of literary achievement. But I pass over the details of his career, since they form the entire subject of my next chapter.

Let us turn instead to his great rival and opponent. The name and fame of Björnstjerne Björnson have spread farther over the world's surface than that of any of his countrymen. Though he is still young, his works are admired and eagerly read all over the north of Europe, and are popular in America. It is as a romance-writer that he has met with such unbounded distinction. Who has not read Arne, and felt bis heart beat faster with sympathy and delight ? Who has not been refreshed by the simple story of the Fisher Girl? It seemed as though every kind of story-writing had been abundantly tried, and as though a new novel must fall upon somewhat jaded ears. But in Björnson we discovered an author who was always simple and yet always enchanting; whose spirit was as masculine as a Viking's, and as pure and tender as a maiden's. Through these little romances there blows a wind as fragrant and refreshing as the odour of the Trondhjem balsam-willows, blown out to sea to welcome the new comer ; and just as this rare scent is the first thing that tells the traveller of Norway, so the purity of Björnson's novelettes is usually the first thing to attract a foreigner to Norwegian literature.

But it is only with his poems that we have here to do, and we must riot be tempted aside into the analysis of his novels. They have, however, this claim on our attention, that they contain some of the loveliest songs in the language. Arne, published in 1858, is particularly rich in these exquisite lyrics, full of a mountain melancholy, a delicate sadness native to the lives of solitary and sequestered persons. In almost all his early poems, Björnson dwells on the vague longing of youth, the hopeless dream of a blue rose in life. Here is one of the lovely songs that Arne sings, rendered as closely as I find it possible :

" Through the forest the boy wends all day long,
For there he has heard such a wonderful song.

He carved him a flute of the willow tree,
And tried what the tune within it might be.

The tune came out of it sad and gay,
But while he listened it passed away.

He fell asleep, and once more it sung,
And over his forehead it lovingly hung.

He thought he would catch it, and wildly woke,
And the tune in the pale night faded and broke.

' O God, my God, take me up to Thee,
For the tune Thou hast made is consuming me.'

And the Lord God said, "Tis a friend divine,
Though never one hour shalt thou hold it thine.

Yet all other music is poor and thin
By the side of this which thou never shalt win !"'

While in his stories he deals with peasant life, so in his dramas he draws his afflatus from the rich hoard of antique sagas. Mellem Slagene ("Between the Battles") was the first of these saga-plays. It is very fine. Two married folk Halyard and Inga once deeply in love with one another, begin mutually to tire, and to long, the man for the old wild, fighting life; the woman for her pleasant maiden days with her father. They get entangled in misconceptions, and a reserve creeping in on both sides parts them more and more. "Silence slays more than sharp words do," is the motto of the piece a motto very suggestive to the undemonstrative people of the North. The two principal figures, and also that of King Sverre, are very keenly drawn. In 1858 there followed Halte Hulda ("Lame Hulda"), the story of a girl who has lived to be four-and-twenty, loveless and unloved, full of grief, and physically incapacitated by her lameness, and who suddenly falls into passionate and hopeless affection for a man she meets. Here again we have a dramatic situation, subtly chosen, original, and carefully worked out. Kong Sverre, 1861, was the next of these saga-dramas, wherein the King Sverre, who acted a secondary part in Mellem Slagene, becomes chief and centre of interest. Much of the latter, however, gathers around the bishop, Nicolaus, one of Björnson's most skilful pieces of figure-painting. Sigurd Slembe (1862) closes the list of saga-dramas. The author turned next to modern history, and published in 1864 Maria Stuart i Skotland (" Mary Stuart in Scotland"), a piece which unfortunately suggests comparisons with Vondel, Schiller, and Swinburne ; it is written in prose. It could be wished that Björnson had chosen some less hackneyed subject. His next effort was in quite a different line : De Nygifte (" The Newly-married Couple "), 1865, is a little prose comedy in high life. The hero, having fallen violently in love with a girl too young to understand his character, finds out too late that she has no notion of the responsibilities of married life, and still prefers her parents to himself. He tries to cure her by wrenching her suddenly from all old associations, and though she is very sullen for a while, he is victorious at last, and wins her love. Björnson has hardly allowed himself enough space in this little drama ; the evolution of character is hurried by the shortness of the scenes ; but it is nevertheless ably written. In 1869 he published a volume of Songs and Poems.

He now entered upon a second period, the end of which we have not yet seen, and the influence of which has, in my opinion, been extremely injurious to Björnson's reputation and to the literature of his country. He began his violent and jejune experiments in 1870, with the epic poem of Arnljot Gelline, written in a jargon so uncouth that it is sometimes almost impossible to comprehend it. In the midst of its eccentricity and barbarism, however, there are certainly fine passages to be found in this poem, which deals with the fall of Olaf the Saint at the battle of Stiklestad. The section, in particular, called "Arnljot's Longing for the Sea," is of a high order of lyric poetry, and worthy of Byron at his best. In 1872 Björnson tantalised and perplexed his readers with his saga-drama of Sigurd jorsalfar, a mere hasty sketch, with one magnificent scene in which Sigurd the Crusader, unannounced, presents himself, splendid and masculine, like a sea-eagle bathed in sunset colour, with the gold and silk of the East upon him, to Borghild, a noble woman long weary and ashamed with waiting for his love. The rest of the play is hurried and faulty; this single scene is Shakspearian. After a long silence, and much deplorable interference with the political factions of his fatherland, Björnson appeared in 1875 with two satirical comedies A Bankruptcy, a popular piece, in the German taste, and The Editor, a powerful but rabid and unjustifiable personal satire. Since then his ineptitudes have culminated in a democratic drama, The King, a really monstrous fiasco, unworthy of a poet of high reputation as a work of art, and, politically speaking, beneath discussion. In 1877 he produced a clever, but sickly and chaotic novel, Magnhild. He is evidently working out with pain and stress a fresh development of his remarkable genius.

Jonas Lie, whose novels of Norse life at sea rival Björnson's early mountain stories in popularity, has also written, but far less abundantly, in verse. He is indeed the author of a lyrical drama, Faustina Strozzi, 1875, which contains, with certain unfortunate irregularities in form and design, some exquisite beauties of detail. He was born in 1833, and first came before the public with a volume of verses as late as 1867. His sea-stories take a very high rank, and his most successful novel, The Pilot and his Wife, is perhaps the best sustained and the most accomplished romance that Norway has produced. In 1878 Lie published a curious and ingenious psychological study, Thomas Ross, which has not quite the same charm as his simpler stories.

With this writer we will draw our survey of Norwegian poetry to a close. Nothing has been said here about the verse written in the dialect of the peasants, of which the great linguist Ivar Aasen (born in 1813), by moulding with the old Norse, has made a sort of new language. This peasant Norse has had a galvanic life imparted to it by the exertions of its inventor, and a good poet (K. Janson, born in 1841) has been found enthusiastic enough to write exclusively in it. The chief objection to the movement seems to be that it would make Norwegian literature more remote and undecipherable than ever; on the other hand, it is no doubt an advantage that the peasant should understand when he is preached to and written for. The creator of this language of the future, Aasen, is a man of high and versatile genius, and has himself contributed several poems to the new literature. For the rest, its principal cultivators have been Vinje (1818-1870), the author, among other things, of a rather truculent book on English life, and Janson, who is a young writer of considerable activity. But this fancy language lies out of our province ; if worth the consideration of Englishmen at all, it should be studied as a branch of philology.