To be classified
in literature and be bracketed with a lot of men with whom you are not
even on speaking terms, and whom, more than likely, you don't admire,
would have seemed to him an unpleasant prospect. That he drew much of
his inspiration from the German Romanticists, notably Heine and
Hoffmann, he would perhaps have admitted; but he would have thought it
unkind of you to comment upon his indebtedness. In his first book, "A
Pedestrian Tour from Holmen Canal to the Eastern Extremity of Amager"
(1829), he assumed by turns the _blase_ mask of the former and the
fantastically eccentric one of the latter; both of which ill became his
good-natured, plebeian, Danish countenance. For all that, the book was a
success in its day; and no less an authority than the aesthetic Grand
Mogul, J. L. Heiberg, hailed it as a work of no mean merit. It strikes
us to-day as an exhibition of that mocking smartness of youth which
often hides a childish heart. It was because he was so excessively
sentimental and feared to betray his real physiognomy that he cut these
excruciating capers.
Pages:
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223