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There is in the character of Oehlenschl ger, when he is not seen in the circles of the great, where he is quiet and reserved, something so open and child-like, that no one can help becoming attached to him. As a poet, he holds in the North a position of as great importance as Goethe did in Germany.

I heard his praise resound from every mouth around me; I looked up to him with the most pious faith: I was happy when one evening, in a large brilliantly-lighted drawing room where I deeply felt that my apparel was the shabbiest there, and for that reason I concealed myself behind the long curtains Oehlenschl ger came to me and offered me his hand. I could have fallen before him on my knees.

Rahbek never spoke to me; but his lively and kind-hearted wife often amused herself with me. I had at that time again begun to write a tragedy, which I read aloud to her. Immediately on hearing the first scenes, she exclaimed, "But you have actually taken whole passages out of Oehlenschl ger and Ingemann." "Yes, but they are so beautiful!" replied I in my simplicity, and read on.

All our most eminent dramatic writers have been whistled down, as Oehlenschl ger, Heiberg, Oversko, and others; to say nothing of foreign classics, as Moli re. In the mean time the theatre is the most profitable sphere of labor for the Danish writer, whose public does not extend far beyond the frontiers.

I sent home this poem from Lodi; and never, with my earlier or my later works, were my hopes so high as they were now. But it was received coldly. People said I had done it in imitation of Oehlenschl ger, who at one time sent home masterpieces. Within the last few years, I fancy, this poem has been somewhat more read, and has met with its friends.

Before Oehlenschl ger wrote his Dina, which treats of an episode in Ulfeld's life, I was at work on this subject, and wished to bring it on the stage, but it was then feared this would not be allowed, and I gave it up since then I have only written four lines on Ulfeld:

"We will throw it in the boat," said I, and took it down from the staff; the others now followed me, and came up just as Thorwaldsen reached land. We met with Oehlenschl ger and Heiberg in another boat, and they came over to us as the enthusiasm began on shore.

I wished to see him, and therefore cried out to the others, "Let us put off!" "Without Oehlenschl ger and Heiberg?" asked some one. "But they are not arrived, and it will be all over." One of the poets declared that if these two men were not with us, I should not sail under that flag, and pointed up to Pegasus.

With the greater number of our poets an early acquaintance with passion, early inward experience, or outward circumstances, stand instead of the original vein of nature, and this cannot in any case be more incontestably proved in our own literature than by instancing Oehlenschl ger and Andersen.

The deceased Baggesen sent polemical letters from Paradise, which resembled in the highest degree the style of that author. They contained a sort of apotheosis of Heiberg, and in part attacks upon Oehlenschl ger and Hauch. The old story about my orthographical errors was again revived; my name and my school-days in Slagelse were brought into connection with St. Anders.