OEHLENSCHLAGER, ADAM GOTTLOB. 



OEHLENSCHLAGER, ADAM GOTTLOB. 



650 



promises him a better career. An unceasing vivacity pervades the 

 whole, and there is Dot only pathos but humour ; nothing can be 

 further removed from the unvarying solemnity and systematic mono- 

 tony which have by some beeu thought essential to the character of 

 a tragic drama. 



Oeblcnschlager, before quitting Germany, was accidentally present at 

 Weimer on the day of the double battle of Auerstadt and Jena, and 

 was in some danger when the victorious French entered the town. 

 From Germany he went to Paris, where he composed what is by some 

 regarded as his finest tragedy, ' Pulnatoke,' and also ' Axel and Valborg,' 

 the former a sort of companion picture to 'Uakon Jarl,' in which 

 Odiui&m ia shown in a more favourable point of view, and the latter a 

 love tale of the middle ages. At Paris he was welcomed by Baggeseu, 

 who had before his own rise occupied the highest position in the Danish 

 Parnasaue ; and wheu Oehlenschlager read to him the ' Paluatoke ' the 

 impetuous poet filing himself at his feet in transports of admiration. 



From Franco he went to Italy, and at Rome, while in daily inter- 

 course with Thorvaldsen, composed his ' Correpgio,' which, reversing 

 his usual practice of writing his plays first iu Danish and then in 

 German, he wrote originally iu the German language. This ia of a 

 different kind from any of his previous works, it is the embodiment 

 of the feelings of the great painter who, labouring in obscurity and not 

 conscious of his own value, is subjected to all the emotions of which 

 artistic genius is capable, by a series of ingeniously contrived incidents 

 skilfully grouped on the known facts of Correggio's biography. The 

 introduction of Michel Angelo and Julio Romano as two of the persons 

 of the drama affords the dramatist an opportunity of painting more 

 than one variety of the artistic character. Few of Ochieuschliiger's 

 works have met with greater variety of judgments than this. Treated 

 with disdain by Gbthe, it was afterwards caustically criticised by 

 Tieck, and Cetta the publisher of Tubingen, after purchasing the 

 German copyright, kept the play by him for years unpublished. Mean- 

 while the writer, after staying some time iu Italy, beginning to feel home- 

 sickness, returned to Denmark after an absence of nearly five years, and 

 read this production in manuscript to many of the most select circles 

 of the capital, among others to the king and queen of Denmark, in 

 presence of the leading members of the court, in the queen's apart- 

 ments. The play when produced in Germany became one of the most 

 popular on the stage, and bad a run of success which caused it to be one 

 of the most frequently acted for thirty years ; and it also became a 

 favourite in Denmark. A translation of it iuto English, by Theodore 

 Martin, published in 1854, has met, we believe, with a general welcome, 

 and all Englith critics regard ' Correggio' as oue of Ochlenschlager's 

 principal titles to fame, 



Ouhlen&chlager had left Denmark in 1805, an eminent rising poet. 

 His reputation had risen higher and higher during every year of his 

 absence, and on his return in 1810 he was without a rival. Before ho 

 tc-t out on hia travels he hod engaged the hand of Christiana Heger, 

 the lister of Camma liahbek, the wife of Rahbek the theatrical writer, 

 whose House on the Hill (Bakkehuus) a short distance outside the 

 city walls, had been since 1800, and continued till 1830, the retoit of 

 the choicest literary society of Copenhagen. Rahbek himself had in a 

 fit of vexation just thrown up the post of professor of aesthetics at 

 the university, and Oehlentchliiger obtained it, with the privilege 

 from the king of being absent if he pleased during the summer term.*, 

 which was a privilege he did not neglect to make use of. Being thus 

 provided with an income, he celebrated his wedding in an unu-iu! 

 way, but precisely in the style that Rogers, the English poet, was 

 accustomed to say would have been his, if he had ever ceased to be a 

 bachelor. " On the 17th of May, 1810," sajs the Dane's ' Erindi inger,' 

 " I dined witli Christiana at her father's at Copenhagen, afterwards she 

 and 1 drove by ourselves to Gientofte, where Pastor Hugh, after I had 

 shown him the necessary papers, went with us to the church and 

 married us. We got into the vehicle again, man aud wife, and drove 

 off to the beautiful Christiansholm, to Solyst, which Count Schim- 

 melmann had I. ad the kindness to offer us for a summer residence." 

 The newly-married lady hud a notion that her husband had lost much 

 by hia dialings with the booksellers, aud under her advice he began 

 to isue his new plays and poems at his own risk, but Boon convinced 

 himvelf that he understood nothing of the publishing business, and his 

 wife no more, a conviction which he says, however, that his wife could 

 never be persuaded to share. 



During the next five years he wrote a number of plays of various 

 merit, but none that were equal to those he had composed abroad, and 

 his peace was disturbed by a singular literary feud. Baggesen, already 

 mentioned as formerly the head of the Danish Parna-sus, had left 

 Denmark a little before Oehleuscbliiger, with the deliberate intention, 

 although in receipt of a poetical pension from the government, of 

 never returning to the country, and of never writing another line of 

 Danish. He now changed his mind, came back, and, unable to see with 

 patience the throne of poetry occupied by another, though one whom 

 he had liimrelf applauded, commenced a series of critical onslaughts 

 on OehlcnacblUger, in which the animus was painfully apparent. The 

 public became disgusted, Baggesen found himself in general disfavour, 

 gain expatriated bimnlf, and finally died abroad. It must however 

 be owned, that Oeblemchlager stood in need of a little criticism not 

 too indulgent, and that he wrote better after these attacks than he 

 did at the time they commenced. Inl816,ho made a second foreign tour 



to Germany, and to France, still using his pen when he halted, but was 

 driven home by severe sickness after a twelvemonth. A long series of 

 plays and poems followed, among which, the most conspicuous was 

 Nordens Guder,' the ' Gods of the North' (published in 1819), an 

 attempt to combine into one convenient whole all the scattered 

 legends of the Eddas. The attempt has been pronounced successful ; 

 a translation of the work into English verse of very considerable merit 

 by W. E. Frye was published at Paris iu 1845, and the poem supplies 

 much of the material for Pilot's ' Manual of Northern Mythology;' a 

 novel, ' The Island iu the South Sea,' written originally in German, 

 was, on the contrary, of an unmistakeably inferior character. Oeh- 

 lenschlager, who at the age of seven-and-thirty took lessons in English 

 from Andersen Feldborg, a Dane long settled in Edinburgh, and well 

 known to Walter Scott, entered into correspondence with Sir Walter to 

 express his warm admiration of his novels; aud, on being encouraged, 

 sent the manuscript of his own novel to England to be translated by 

 Mr. Gillies, but in spite of the zealous exertions of Sir Walter, the 

 affair fell through from his inability to find a publisher who would 

 pay lOOt to the author and translator for copyright. The failure was 

 a fortunate one for the fame of Oehlenschliiger, which would have 

 suffered much in England from a work so unworthy of him. 



In 1829, when at the age of fifty, he lost his father. " He was vain 

 of his son," says the poet in the ' Eriudringer," " but, like a sensible 

 father, he never allowed me to see it; ouly sometimes I detected the 

 feeling when he had been reading my poems. It amused him to get 

 into conversation with strangers, and particularly with students, on 

 the bench at the hill at Frederiksberg, and lead the conversation to 

 bear on me ; when, if they said anything in my praise, it tickled him 

 much, as he used to think he remained incognito. Many good-natured 

 people were aware of this, and often afforded this innocent pleasure to 

 the old man." 



The death of his father, and the death of Camma Rahbek and her 

 husband about the same time, threw a gloom over OehlenschlUger's 

 spirits, but they were soon afterwards relieved by a singularly pleasing 

 incident. He took for the first time in his life, in 1829, a trip across 

 the Sound to the coast of Scania, thinking, as the steamer approached 

 the Swedish shore, how strange it was that, though it had always 

 greeted his sight over the waves from his earliest childhood at Frede- 

 riksberg, he had lived half a century, aud been to Rome, without ever 

 passing the straits. A brilliant reception awaited him from all ranks 

 in Sweden : addresses were presented to him ; the students at the 

 University of Lund met him in a body in the high road with a pro- 

 fessor at their head. He attended the ceremony of the inauguration 

 of a rector of the university at the cathedral of Lund iu company 

 with Tegner, the bishop of Wexio, who was acknowledged by all as 

 the first poet of Sweden, and was by many considered to have sur- 

 passed in his ' Frithiof ' any single work of Oehlenschliiger's. Tegner, 

 in the course of the delivery of a poetical address in hexameters, 

 suddenly pronounced the Hues 



" Skaldernai Adam ar bar, den Nordiske Saugarekungen 

 Thronarfvingcn i Diktningens verld ty Thronen ar Gocthcs." 



(The Adam of poets is here, the northern monarch of minstrels, 

 Ileir of the sceptre of Song, for now the sceptro is Goethe's.) 



and in the presence of the crowd that filled tho cathedral, among 

 whom were Oehleuschliigera wife and children, placed a laurel crown 

 on his head, amidst a burst of music and the roar of cannon. The 

 event, from all its circumstances, assumed almost a national signifi- 

 cance. Tuguer and some other eminent Swedes returned the visit by 

 coming to Copenhagen. A few days after tlie King of Sweden sent 

 the order of the North Star to Oehlenschliiger. 



Honours continued to shower on him after this ; one of them, tho 

 gift of free lodging by the king, seems however to have been obtained 

 only by a sort of stratagem. " King Christian VIII.," he tolls us, 

 " granted me permission to live for one summer in the house of the 

 castle steward at Frederikaberg " (the house which had beeu the 

 official residence of his father). " I wished very much to get the per- 

 mission extended to more summers than one. When I thanked the 

 king for hia kindness, he asked me if there was not a garden belonging 

 to the house, and if I was not fond of gardening. This gave me au 

 excellent opportunity of bringing in my petition. I answered that I 

 should like very much to garden if 1 could hope to gather some of 

 the fruit afterwards. The king said th.it if it waa practicable I should 

 have permission to live there ; and I theu told him, in the lively tone 

 in which he liked to hear rue speak, ' For your Majesty a good deal ia 

 practicable.' He theu gave me permission to keep the house." Soon 

 after, the poet tells us, he changed it for a better. 



In 1844, on another visit to Paris, Oehlenschliiger was repeatedly 

 invited to court by Louis-Philippe, and presented on one occasion to a 

 gentleman, whom he afterwards found to be King Leopold, who told 

 him ho had read all his works in German, aud invited him to Brussels. 

 A visit which he paid to Norway, aud another iu 1847 to Sweden, 

 were like the triumphal progresses of a sovereign iu literature. On 

 his sixty-seventh birthday his play of Amluth,' on the same story as 

 Shakspere's ' Hamlet,' was produced at Copenhagen. It was com- 

 pletely successful, and the King of Denmark wrote him a letter to 

 congratulate him on his triumph. On his seventieth birthday, the 

 14th of November 1849, a grand festival was given in hia honour in 



