BOOKS.

THE LITERATURE OF NORTHERN EUROPE.* Jr Southey's statement be true that a reviewer should have at least as much knowledge of the given subject as the author upon whom he undertakes to sit in judgment, the writer of the present paper is bound to confess that he is unable to do full justice to Mr. Gosse's "Studies." Southey was sustained in this opinion by his friend Coleridge, but we venture to think, despite these great authorities, that a reviewer may, and in a large number of cases must, occupy a lower platform than the author he reviews, and yet be able to judge of his author honestly-, impartially, and to some extent satisfactorily. Is it necessary, for instance, that a man should be a poet, in order to write a competent criticism on a poem ? Must he be a his- torian, in order to estimate a work of history? Must he be able to write novels like George Eliot or George Meredith, before he ventures to criticise those novelists ? The fact is, that the criti- cal instinct is often quite distinct from creative power, and an art critic may be able to make just comments on a landscape by Inchbold or Cecil Lawson, who is himself utterly unable to use the brush. It is not, therefore, imperative, we hope, to be a master of Dano-Norwegian or of Dutch, in order to follow with great interest and pleasure Mr. Gosse's critical narrative, to read his spirited translations from Ibsen and Runeberg, from Werge- land and Vondel, and to pass a generally favourable opinion of these interesting " Studies."

It is evident at the outset that Mr. Gosse has put his heart into his work. He writes with animation, with enthusiasm,

-with a keen appreciation of a literature known to the larger

number of English readers only by report or by-translation. Much of this literature has the wonderful charm of freshness. It is a genuine product of the soil ; it belongs to Scandinavia, as dis- tinctly as Burns belongs to Scotland or Beranger to France. And yet the great poets and imaginative writers whose lives and works are so well illustrated in this volume, are not separ- ated by their virtues or defects from the family of European poets. After observing that the study of foreign poetry throws side-lights upon our own poetic history, Mr. Gosse adds :—

"I have striven always to remember this, and to view these foreign poets by a European, and not a local light. We see Arrebo imitating Da Eartas, and Rosenhane paraphrasing Ronsard, like veritable Elizabethans. We see Huyghens frankly borrowing from John Donne, and Milton in return deigning to become indebted to Vondel. We see Oehlenschlfiger and Steffens in 1800 taking long walks with Schelling' in their pockets, and the revival of Danish poetry in their minds, precisely as Coleridge sad Wordsworth were doing at the very same time at Grasmere. We gain by learning that the dew is not on the fleece for us alone, but that we form a part of a wide field of Euro- pean culture, over the whole expanse of which the rains descend in their season."

This is a truth which we Englishmen are scarcely likely to for- get, seeing how much our poetry owes to the poets of Greece and Rome, of Italy and Germany. Every poet, indeed, may trace his existence to some poetical father ; every artist owes the germs of his life as a painter to the master from whom he gained his first inspiration of beauty, his earliest impression of colour or of form.

The poetry of Norway occupies Mr. Gosse's first attention, and he points out that the earlier writers of Norway looked to Denmark for their audience, and are to this day enrolled among

• Studies in The Literature of Northern Beim.. By Edmund W. Goose. London : O. Kagan Paul and Co. 1879.

the Danish poets. For two centuries the country has produced able writers, but their works were published in Copenhagen, and Danes were their patrons ; and it has, therefore, been the habit of Scandinavian critics, "to commence their histories of Nor- wegian bibliography with the demonstration at Eidsvold, when Norway asserted her independence, and finally separated from Denmark." Three poets of this century, Schwach, Bjerregaard, and M. C. Hansen, have been called, Mr. Gosse states, "the Tre- foil," so impossible is it to regard them separately. Hansen was a popular novelist as well as poet, and his works have been col- lected in eight large volumes. Schwach, "once the idol of the Clubs, and the popular poet of the day, is now seldom read, and never reprinted;" but as a poet, Mr. Gosse places Bjerregaard far higher than his friends. These men cultivated poetry on a false system, being slaves to a passing fashion. Wergeland, who was born at Christianssand in 1808, belongs to a higher order. As a boy, he gained a taste for politics, which he never lost, for his father was a member of the Storthing or Parliament, held at Eidsvold, and there Wergeland's earliest days were passed. Full of enthusiasm and eccentricity, he went up to the University of Christiania, and there he fell in love with a young lady whom he had seen once only in the street. "He named her 'Stella,' and being unable to find her address, wrote daily a letter to her, tore it up, and threw it out of the window. His landlady remarked that the apple-blossom was falling early that year." This ideal love for " Stella" woke the seeds of poetry in him. The first work he published was a farce, and of farces he afterwards wrote a great number. Then followed a tragedy and some lyric pieces, full of patriotic enthusiasm, which made him the poet of the people. His songs were sung in the streets and sold in the theatres, and on every May 17th, the day when Nor- wegian independence was secured, the people collected round his house and shouted, "Hurrah for Wergeland and Liberty !" "His mild face, beaming behind great spectacles, his loose, green hunting-coat, and shuffling gait, were hailed everywhere with applause." While still a very young man, he unfortunately published a drama of vast length, entitled The Creation, Man, and the Messiah, which called forth an anonymous poem, in which the dramatist was mercilessly satirised. This poem, written by Welhaven, is said to have divided the nation into two camps, and revolutionised the literature of Norway.

Welhaven, himself a poet, did not leave Wergeland alone, but published a book on his poetry, which is said to be more bitter and far more unjust than Macaulay's attack on Robert Montgomery ; Wergeland had many absurdities, and here they were held up to ridicule ; but he was a true poet notwith- standing, and acted like a wise man, who was neither to be crushed by criticism nor too proud to learn something from it. Trouble after trouble fell upon the unfortunate Wergeland, he lost money, health, and the pleasures, once so dear to him, which money and health can alone supply. But the spirit of the man was not broken, and poverty and pain, instead of silencing the voice of song, had an elevating effect upon the singer, whose finest work was produced when he was in a dying state, his greatest poem, "The English Pilot," being written on his death-bed. He lived long enough to witness the return of the popularity which he had lost for a season, and to hear again the vivats of the people on May 17th :—

" At last, on July 12th, 1845, as his wife stood watching him, his eyes opened, and he said to her, 'I was dreaming so sweetly ; I dreamed I was lying in my mother's arms ;' and so he sighed away his breath. His funeral was like that of a prince or a great General ; all shops were shut, the streets were draped with black flags, and a great multitude followed the bier to the grave. When the coffin was lowered, a shower of laurel crowns was thrown in from all sides. So passed away the most popular of Northern poets, in the thirty-eighth year of his age."

Welhaven, his opponent and poetical rival, is said to have lacked the highest forms of imaginative originality, while in prose he has not been approached by any of his countrymen. In the latter years of the last century, Bishop Percy exercised the most potent influence on English poetry by the publication of the Religues. AsbjErnsen, a Norwegian who has made his mark as a zoologist, and not as a poet, having wandered over the country collecting popular legends, published in 1841 a book entitled Norwegian Popular Tales, which in Mr. Gosse's judgment, besides winning for its author a.European fame, has had a profound influence on the younger poets of our day. He was assisted by Dr. Moe, the present Bishop of Christia,nssand,

whose works are said to be "as small, as unassuming, as ex- quisite as violets." Of another poetical bishop, by the way, Bishop Grundtvig, a Dane by birth, a highly graphic account is given. In 1872, Mr. Gosse heard this venerable man preach. He was then ninety years of age, and "might have been centuries old :"—

" From the vast orb of his bald head, very long silky hair, perfectly white, fell over his shoulders, and mingled with a long and loose white beard. His eyes flamed under very beetling brows, and they were

the only part of his face that seemed alive, even when he spoke I never saw so strange a head. When he rose in the pulpit, and began to preach, and in his dead voice warned us all to beware of false spirits, and to try every spirit, he looked very noble, but the nobility was scarcely Christian. In the body of the church, he had reminded me of a troll ; in the pulpit, he looked more like some forgotten Druid, that had survived from Mona and could not die. It is rare indeed to hear any man preach a sermon at ninety, and perhaps unique for that man to be also a great poet. Had I missed seeing him then, I should never have seen him, for he took to his bed next day, and in a month the grand old man was dead."

Reminiscences like this are always interesting, and we read with curiosity the account given of this remarkable man's career. He was not altogether in accordance with the Danish Church, although he never formally separated himself from it ; and his doctrines, we are told, "have so far spread as to have formed a sect who glory in the name of Grundtvigians, and who com- prise within their numbers a large proportion of the inhabitants of Denmark and Norway, and not a few in Sweden." It is added, however, that the Bishop was not a " Grun.divigian " himself, and never sanctioned half the follies perpetrated in his name. So true is it that followers often go beyond founders. Wesley would probably abjure Wesleyanism, if he lived in our day, and we may be sure that Edward Irving would renounce fellowship with the Catholic Apostolic Church.

Bodtcher, another Danish poet, who lived to a great age, and died as recently as 1874, may be better known to English- men, for he lived for many years at Rome in rooms, opposite Thorwaldsen's studio, and was the dearest friend of that great sculptor. It was owing to his unwearied efforts that Thor- waldsen was induced to leave his works to his native land, and when the sculptor died, Bodtcher himself undertook to carry the precious freight to Copenhagen, where he stayed for the remainder of his life :—

" As, however, he made a little Denmark around him in Rome, so in Copenhagen he contrived to enjoy something still of Italy. With his guitar, his roses, his quaint friends, he lived his own life, without constraint,—profoundly careless, because unconscious of the fall of sceptres and of crowns.' His philosophy was that of Anacreon, or rather of Omar Khayyam ; he never vexed himself about his soul ; he lived for enjoyment only, but then he enjoyed not merely the sunshine, and flowers, and choice wines, but still more the conversation of his friends, and the diapason of the noble poetry of all time."

Mr. Gosse had the good-fortune to visit, a few months before he died, this somewhat pagan poet, who reminds us in many respects of Leigh Hunt. He was living in a little street in Copenhagen, where he occupied rooms "close under the sky"

"It was the first year, he explained to me, that he had not been able to get out into the beechwoods on Pinsedag ' or Whit-Sunday, a day on which Copenhagen is always deserted, and the forests are filled. It was on Whit-Sunday that we visited him, and the old gentleman was a little inclined to be mournful about it. Bat he cheered up as the sun came out, and lighted into intense pale green the young leaves of a beech-tree in a pot which filled the window,

flanked by two rose-bashes. Ah I' he said, 'the sun through the leaves is as good as a flower to me, and when you are gone, I shall sit for the rest of the day and dream of the woods.' "

No man, said Dickens, ever went down to immortality with so small a volume under his arm as Thomas Gray. The entire collection of Bodtcher's poems fills, we read, a volume similar in size. Like Gray, too, he was a great artist in form, and in metrical construction his lyrics have an extraordinary delicacy and shapeliness. Poets, happily, although the gods love them, do not always die young. Bodtcher, like Anacreon, enjoyed a long life, and Vondel, to whose poem "Lucifer," "the most brilliant poetical work in the Dutch language," Milton was, no doubt, indebted, lived so long that his span of life embraced the death of Spenser and the birth of Addison. To Vondel and his poetry, we may add, Mr. Gosse devotes a chapter.

As we turn over these pages, we find passage after passage which we should like to quote, and many a subject upon which, did space permit, we would willingly dwell. The book is full of suggestion, full of knowledge, and lighted up with poetic thought. When we add that several of Mr. Grosse's translations are such as none but a poet could have written, enough has been said to send the reader to the volume. It is one he cannot fail to peruse with instruction and delight.