Those who
were good to him he exalted and lauded to the skies, no matter how they
conducted themselves toward the rest of humanity. Some of the most
mediocre princes, who had paid him compliments, he embalmed in prose and
verse. Frederick VII. of Denmark, whose immorality was notorious, was,
according to Andersen, "a good, amiable king," "sent by God to Danish
land and folk," than whom "no truer man the Danish language spoke." And
this case was by no means exceptional. The same uncritical partiality
toward the great and mighty is perceptible in every chapter of "The
Fairy-Tale of My Life." It was not, however, toward the great and mighty
alone that he assumed this attitude; he was uncritical by nature, and
had too soft a heart to find fault with anybody--except those who did
not like his books. Heine's jocose description of heaven as a place
where he could eat cakes and sweets, and drink punch _ad libitum_, and
where the angels sat around raving about his poetry, was probably not so
very remote from Andersen's actual conception.
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