They perceived no heresy and felt themselves no less edified by the
address than did the two young Copenhagen graduates.
XXII.
My first newspaper articles were printed in _The Fatherland_ and
the _Illustrated Times_; the very first was a notice of Paludan-
Mueller's _Fountain of Youth_, in which I had compressed matter for
three or four lectures; a commissioned article on Dante was about the
next, but this was of no value. But it was a great event to see one's
name printed in a newspaper for the first time, and my mother saw it not
without emotion.
About this time Henrik Ibsen's first books fell into my hands and
attracted my attention towards this rising poet, who, among the leading
Danish critics, encountered a reservation of appreciation that scarcely
concealed ill-will. From Norway I procured Ibsen's oldest dramas, which
had appeared there.
Frederik Algreen-Ussing asked me to contribute to a large biographical
dictionary, which he had for a long time been planning and preparing,
and which he had just concluded a contract for with the largest Danish
publishing firm of the time. A young man who hated the August
Association and all its deeds could not fail to feel scruples about
engaging in any collaboration with its founder. But Algreen-Ussing knew
how to vanquish all such scruples, inasmuch as he waived all rights of
censorship, and left it to each author to write as he liked upon his own
responsibility.
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