ADAM GOTTLOB OEHLENSCHLAGER (1779-1850), the greatest of modern Danish poets, was born in Vesterbro, a suburb of Copenhagen, on the 14th of November 1779. His father, a Schleswiger by birth, was at that time organist to, and later on became keeper of, the royal palace of Fred-eriksberg; he was a very brisk and cheerful man. The poet's mother, on the other hand, who was partly German by extraction, suffered from depressed spirits, which after-wards deepened into melancholy madness. Adam and his sister Sofia were allowed their own way throughout their childhood, and were taught nothing, except to read and write, until their twelfth year. At the age of nine Adam began to make fluent verses. Three years later, while walking in Frederiksberg Gardens, he attracted the notice, of the poet Edvard Storm, and the result of the conversa-tion was that he received a nomination to the college called " Fosterity's High School," an important institution of which Storm was the principal. Storm himself taught the class of Scandinavian mythology, and thus Oehlenschlager received his earliest bias towards the poetical religion of his ancestors. Most other branches of study the boy con-tinued to neglect, and thought most about the romances and dramas which he proposed to write. He was confirmed in 1795, and was to have been apprenticed to a tradesman in Copenhagen. To his great delight there was a hitch in the preliminaries, and he returned to his father's house. He now, in his eighteenth year, suddenly took up study with great zeal, but soon again abandoned his books for the stage, where a small position was offered him. In 1797 he actually made his appearance on the boards in several successive parts, but soon discovered that he pos-sessed no real histrionic talent, even though he was trained by the great actor Michael Rosing. The brothers Oersted, the eminent savants, with whom he had formed an in-timacy fruitful of profit to him, persuaded him to quit the stage, and in 1800 he entered the university of Copenhagen as a student. He was doomed, however, to disturbance in his studies, first from the death of his mother, next from his inveterate tendency towards poetry, and finally from the attack of the English upon Copenhagen in April 1801, which, however, inspired a dramatic sketch which is the first thing of the kind by Oehlenschlager that we possess. His promise was already widely felt, and, even in 1800, Baggesen, in departing for Germany, had publicly invested the youth with the laurel that he himself was resigning. It was in the summer of 1802, when Oehlenschlager had an old Scandinavian romance, as well as a volume of lyrics, in the press, that the young Norse philosopher, Henrik Steffens, came back to Copenhagen after a long visit to Schelling in Germany full of new romantic ideas. -His lectures at the university, in which Goethe and Schiller were for the first time revealed to the Danish public, created a great sensation. Steffens and Oehlenschlager met one day at Dreier's Club, and after a conversation of sixteen hours, which has become famous in the history of anecdote, the latter went home, suppressed his two coming volumes, and wrote at a sitting his splendid poem Guldhornene, in a manner totally new to Danish literature. The result of his new enthusiasm speedily showed itself in a somewhat hasty volume of poems, published in 1803, now chiefly remembered as containing the lovely piece called Sanct-Hamaften-Spil. The next two years saw the production of several exquisite works, in particular Thors Reise til Jotunheim, the charming poem in hexameters called Langelandsreisen, and the be-witching piece of fantasy Aladdin's Lampe. At the age of twenty-six Oehlenschlager was now universally recognized, even by the opponents of the romantic revival, as the lead-ing poet of Denmark. He found no a grant for foreign travel from the Government, and lie left Ms native country for the first time, joining Steffens at Halle in August 1805. Here he wrote the first of his great historical tragedies, Hakon Jarl, which he sent off to Copenhagen, and then proceeded for the winter months to Berlin, where he associated with Humboldt, Fichte, and the leading men of the day. In the spring of 1806 he went on to Weimar, where he spent several months in daily intercourse with Goethe. The autumn of the same year he spent with Tieck in Dresden, and proceeded in Decem-ber to Baris. Here he resided eighteen months and wrote his three famous masterpieces, Baldur hin Gode, Palnatoke (1807), and Axel og Valborg (1808). In July 1808 he left Paris and spent the autumn and winter in Switzerland as the guest of Madame de Stael-Holstein at Coppet, in the midst of her famous circle of wits. In the spring of 1809 Oehlenschlager went to Borne to visit Thorwaldsen, and in his house wrote his tragedy of Correggio, in German; he translated this into Danish the following year. After an absence of nearly five years he hurriedly returned to Den-mark in the spring of 1810, partly to take the chair of aesthetics at the university of Copenhagen, partly to marry the sister-in-law of Bahbek, to whom he had been long betrothed. His first course of lectures dealt with his Danish predecessor Evald, the second with Schiller. From this time forward his literary activity became very great; in 1811 he published the Oriental tale of Ali og Gulhyndi, and in 1812 the last of his great tragedies, Stxrkodder. From 1814 to 1819 he, or rather his admirers, were engaged in a long and angry controversy w7ith Baggesen, who repre-sented the old didactic school. This contest seems to have disturbed the peace of Oehlenschlager's mind, and to have undermined his genius. His talent may be said to have culminated in the glorious cycle of verse-romances called Helge, published in 1814. The tragedy of Hagbarth og Signe, 1815, showed a distinct falling-off in style. In 1817 he went back to Baris, and published Hroars Saga and the tragedy of Fostbrodrene. In 1818 he was again in Copen-hagen, and wrote the idyll of Ben lille Ilyrdedreng and the Eddaic cycle called Nordens Glider. His next productions were the tragedies of Erik og Abel (1820) and Vxringerne 0i Miklagaard (1826), and the epic of llrolf Krake (1829). It was in the last-mentioned year that, being in Sweden, Oehlenschlager was publicly crowned with laurel in front of the high altar, in Lund cathedral by Bishop Esaias Tegner, as the " Scandinavian King of Song." His last volumes were Tordenskjold (1833), Dronninq Margrethe (1833), Sokrates (1835), Olaf denHellige (1836), Knudden Store (1838), Dina (1842), Erik Clipping (1843), and Kiartan og Gudrun (1847), none of which, with the ex-ception, perhaps, of Dina, can in any way be said to be worthy of his early reputation. On his seventieth birthday, 14th November 1849, a public festival was arranged in his honour, and he was decorated by the king of Denmark under circumstances of great pomp. Just two months later, on the 20th of January 1850, he sank, conscious to the last, and was buried in the cemetery of Frederiksberg.
With the exception of Holberg, there has been no Danish writer who has exercised so wide an influence as Oehlenschlager. His great work was to awaken in the breasts of his countrymen an enthusiasm for the poetry and religion of their ancestors, and this he performed to so complete an extent that his name remains to this day synonymous with Scandinavian romance. He supplied his countrymen with romantic tragedies at the very moment when all eyes were turned to the stage, and when the old-fashioned pieces were felt to be inadequate. His plays, partly, no doubt, in consequence of his own early familiarity with acting, fulfilled the stage - requirements of the day, and were popular beyond all expectation. Several of them still keep the stage in spite of their rhetoric. The earliest are the best,—Oehlenschlager's dramatic masterpiece being, without doubt, his first tragedy, Hakon Jarl. In his poems and plays alike his style is limpid, elevated, profuse ; his flight is sustained at a high pitch without visible excitement.
His fluent tenderness and romantic zest have been the secrets of his
extreme popularity. Although his inspiration came from Germany,
he is not much like a German poet, except when he is consciously
following Goethe ; his analogy is much rather to be found among
the English poets, his contemporaries. His mission towards antiquity
reminds us of Scott, but he is, as a poet, a better artist than Scott;
he has sometimes touches of exquisite diction and of overwrought
sensibility which recall Coleridge to us. In his wide ambition and
profuseness he possessed some characteristics of Southey, although
his style has far more vitality. With all his faults he was a very
great writer, one of the principal pioneers of the romantic move-
ment in Europe, and he will probably not cease to retain the posi-
tion which he won so easily at the summit of the Scandinavian
Parnassus. (E. W. G.)