Protestantism carried it
against Roman Catholicism, the young Oehlenschlaeger against Baggesen,
Romanticism against Rationalism; Oehlenschlaeger as the Northern poet of
human nature against a certain Bjoernson, who, it was said, claimed to be
more truly Norse than he. In Mr. Driebein's presentment, no recognised
great name was ever attacked. And in his course, as in Thortsen's
History of Literature, literature which might be regarded as historic
stopped with the year 1814.
The order in which in my private reading I became acquainted with Danish
authors was as follows: Ingemann, Oehlenschlaeger, Grundtvig, Poul
Moeller, many books by these authors having been given me at Christmas
and on birthdays. At my grandfather's, I eagerly devoured Heiberg's
vaudevilles as well. As a child, of course, I read uncritically, merely
accepting and enjoying. But when I heard at school of Baggesen's
treatment of Oehlenschlaeger, thus realising that there had been various
tendencies in literature at that time, and various opinions as to which
was preferable, I read with enthusiasm a volume of selected poems by
Baggesen, which I had had one Christmas, and the treatment of language
in it fascinated me exceedingly, with its gracefulness and light,
conversational tone. Then, when Hertz's [Footnote: Henrik Hertz, a
Danish poet (1797-1870), published "Ghost Letters" anonymously, and
called them thus because in language and spirit they were a kind of
continuation of the long-deceased Baggesen's rhymed contribution to a
literary dispute of his day.
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