come which had not so far received a shock. And I was in no doubt as to
the domain in which when grown up I should distinguish myself. All my
instincts drew me towards Literature. The Danish compositions which were
set at school absorbed all my thoughts from week to week; I took the
greatest pains with them, weighed the questions from as many sides as I
could and endeavoured to give good form and style to my compositions.
Unconsciously I tried to find expressions containing striking contrasts;
I sought after descriptive words and euphonious constructions. Although
not acquainted with the word style in any other sense than that it bears
in the expression "style-book," the Danish equivalent for what in
English is termed an "exercise-book," I tried to acquire a certain
style, and was very near falling into mannerism, from sheer
inexperience, when a sarcastic master, to my distress, reminded me one
day of Heiberg's words: "The unguent of expression, smeared thickly over
the thinness of thoughts."


XXIII.

Together with a practical training in the use of the language, the
Danish lessons afforded a presentment of the history of our national
literature, given intelligently and in a very instructive manner by a
master named Driebein, who, though undoubtedly one of the many
Heibergians of the time, did not in any way deviate from what might be
termed the orthodoxy of literary history. Protestantism carried it
against Roman Catholicism, the young Oehlenschlaeger against Baggesen,
Romanticism against Rationalism; Oehlenschlaeger as the Northern poet of
human nature against a certain Bjoernson, who, it was said, claimed to be
more truly Norse than he. In Mr. Driebein's presentment, no recognised
great name was ever attacked. And in his course, as in Thortsen's