222 SKETCH OF THE STATE OF LITERATURE 
emptiest conceits and cavilings of a puerile “ scholasticity.” There 
was a time when he who aspired to pass for a scholar and a gentle- 
man, was not obliged to understand the Greek philosophers and the 
Roman historians: his were held for rare accomplishments, if he 
had dabbled in the Entctates and Nominalitates, and other no less 
sublime conceptions. In that age, such questions as these were pro- 
pounded and seriously discussed. Whether any thing was God, or 
God was any thing? Whether God could know what he did not 
know, or could not know what he did know? Whether it was a 
greater sin to massacre a thousand men than to rob a poor man of a 
pair of shoes? Whether the pope can abolish the doctrine of the 
apostles? Whether his holiness can exercise authority over the 
angels? Whether, when Lazarus was raised from the dead, his 
heirs were obliged to restore his patrimony ? Thus it was settled, 
that the man must be a sage, who excelled in arguing on these pre- 
posterous sophistical notions, who could most dexterously reduce his 
adversary to an inextricable difemma, or embarrass him with a so- 
phism, or escape from him by an evasion. When, therefore, the 
poor Danes went so far in quest of those wonders of science, it need 
really be no hard matter to believe that their travels contributed 
little to the advancement of intelligence, in the land of their birth. 
Besides, many of them would be attracted to Paris much less by a 
predilection for knowledge than by a desire to visit a city where, 
during the twelfth century as in modern times, the spirit of fashion 
and frivolity sat enthroned. Hence, instead of attending lectures at 
the Sorbonne, the young deluded northmen would frequent thea- 
tres, taverns and clubs, and then retum to their families, like Hol- 
berg’s “ Parisian John,” with a ridiculous itching for exotic pleasure 
and a profound disdain for native enjoyment. 
Better prospects began to open upon Denmark, in the fifteenth 
century. In A.D. mccocLxx1v, after visiting Rome, Christiern I 
obtained a papal bull for founding a university at Copenhagen. 
He then wrote to all the bishops in his kingdom, directing them to 
promote the interests of the new institution. He himself undertook 
its especial patronage ; and, with a view to this patriotic object, he 
appointed Peter Albertsen, one of the most learned men of the age, 
to be its vice-chancellor. In the year mccccLxxviti, Albertsen 
travelled into Germany ; and, at Cologne, he engaged several pro- 
fessors to accompany him to the Danish capital. The university 
was consecrated on the sixteenth day of May, mccccixxrx ; and, 
with a view to increase the number of students, King John prohi- 
bited his Danish subjects from entering any foreign school until 
