In Jacobsen's third book, "Niels Lyhne," we have again the story of a
Danish Rudin--a nature with a multitude of scattered aspirations,
squandering itself in brilliant talk and fantastic yearnings. It is the
same coquetting with the "advanced" ideas of the age, the same lack of
mental stamina, the same wretched surrender and failure. It is the
complexion of a period which the author is here attempting to give, and
he takes pains to emphasize its typical character. One is almost tempted
to believe that Shakespeare, by a gift of happy divination, made his
Prince of Denmark conform to this national type, though in his day it
could not have been half as pronounced as it is now. Whether the Dane of
the sixteenth century was yet the eloquent mollusk which we are
perpetually encountering in modern Danish fiction is a question which,
at this distance, it is hard to decide. The type, of course, is
universal, and is to be found in all countries. Only in the English
race, on both sides of the Atlantic, it is comparatively rare.
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