THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW 
733 
Hans Christian Andersen, as a Youth, from a Painting by N. P. A. Bentzen. 
In Frederiksborg Museum 
certain as his taste. His prospects were small and doubtful, he was 
pitied and scorned. Like a feeble reed, he bent to every breeze, but 
still nothing could uproot him. 
A journey to Italy during the winter of 1833-34 gave his chilly 
warmth of the south. He sunned himself 
like a lizard in the Neapolitan sun. On his return home he poured 
forth a panegyric on the glories of Italy in a novel, The Improvisator. 
At this period too, fairy-tales began to take shape in a form charac¬ 
teristically and originally his own, fairy-tales told for children. Here 
it is well to emphasize his relation to his surroundings. In ladies’ 
