CHAPTER II.

BAGGESEN, CONTINUED—BURGER.

home," said a little "Mr. Privy Coun

"THE Privy Councillor is not at girl who opened the door for me. cillor is gone to Ilefeld." I begged her to tell me where Professor Bürger lived. She was so polite, spite of all my entreaties not to trouble herself, as to accompany me through three streets to his house, which lay buried in its garden, amongst some mean streets in the background of the city.

In this little garden I saw two persons, and I immediately guessed which of them must be Bürger. He invited me up into his room, where we sate upon a sofa. Though it was yet only twelve o'clock, he had already dined, so early is the dinner-hour in this orderly city. I told him who I was, and was mortified to find that he did not even know me by name. I told him how well I knew him, the cause of my journey, and so on. It was impossible for me to say to him that I also tinkled upon the harp; but when we had talked for some time, he again asked my name; and when I again gave it, he

asked if I were the author of " Holger Danske?"

more is the pity," said I.

"Hoc est mediocribus illis

Ex vitiis unum!"

"Yes,

He had read some reviews of it, he said. This caused us to talk of his old and much-valued friend, Professor Cramer; and we had more than material enough for conversation.

Bürger is a man of about forty, with a simple, but, by degrees, attractive exterior, neither tall nor short, tolerably broad built, with a glance more melting than fiery, and of an easy, natural, and I might say agreeable manner. In his whole bearing, look and demeanour, there was not the least which reminded me of the poet, but rather the friend of poets. He seemed more to love than to cultivate the Muses. His whole person had the same tone as his works. I told him that I had translated his "Lenardo and Blandine," which seemed greatly to please him. This turned the conversation especially to peasant poetry. "Homer," he said, "was the proper poet of the people, and might be translated in a totally different metre to what it has ever yet been done." Though he once hoped to have done this in iambics, he had with incredible patience remodelled the whole thankless labour, and was now nearly ready with a completely new German Homer, in hexameters. I lamented that he had not finished the former work; it would have been new and unique of this kind, and the language, at least, must have gained as much as Homer lost. "For a new

heroic peem," he said, "there must be discovered a wholly new and more popular metre.” According to his theory," I remarked, "each language had its own peculiar species of versification; so that it was quite sufficient

that Homer had used the hexameter to show that it was not suited for an epopee in any other and less living language." "Oberon," in his opinion, was composed in the kind of verse most adapted to a German heroic poem.

Songs, romances and, pre-eminently ballads, are the poetry of his life. Of these, which he called the genuine poetry, his favourite compositions, he talked with the greatest enthusiasm. He spoke of our Kämpe-Viser in ecstasies. The few which he had read in translations had made him insatiable for more, and he would fain learn Danish to enjoy them in their original language. Tullin and Evald he knew and prized. He had once heard Danish sung, and found it sweet, melting and singularly enchanting.

We talked of its literature, of its poets and of the prospects of poetry in Denmark; of the new edition of his works, which was already finished; of Göttingen, in whose background, he said, he lived as good as unknown; of the barbarism which prevails here in polite literature; of politics and jurisprudence, which swallow here all topics; everything that can be said or heard, written or read; and so on. Thus flew three hours, without our observing it; so completely so, that in the company of Lenore's poet, I had forgotten my dinner, and only recollected in the evening that I had had none.

LOVE ADVENTURE IN SWITZERLAND.

At length, Baggesen reached Switzerland, and wandered about amid its magnificent scenery with all a poet's delight. He climbed alps, crossed lakes, visited the haunts of Rousseau, made the acquaintance of Lavater at Zurich, and with his friends, Count Moltke and Herr

Spatzier, enjoyed that glorious region to the utmost. But now came the moment which was to open a new era in his life: he met with Sophie Haller the grand-daughter of Haller, the philosopher and poet; and we have in his Labyrinthen," the account of their first meeting-as poetical a circumstance as could possibly befall a young poet.

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"In a light summer dress, my coat and sundry books hanging on my alpenstock on my back, I sprang blithely down after dinner from Untersee to the quay at the end of the lake of Thun. It was beautiful weather, and the quick walk from Lauterbrun had put all my spirits in motion. The sun's rays danced with light clouds around the mountain tops about the quietly rolling lake. Now they lost themselves in the vineyards, now flew down into the meadows, now bathed themselves with the points of the rocks in the waters. Echo flung back from her romantic clefts the simple tones which nature drew from my full heart-free as the glaciers which, freed from their icy bonds, streamed through the dale,—and happy as the free, and strong as the free and the bold, I came to a lake by whose still margin lay the boat which awaited me. See! there sprang suddenly a damsel from behind a tree just near me. Light as Daphne, and fleet as Apollo, she sprang over the loose stones away into the meadow, whose dewy moisture obliged her to lift her dress as she ran, displaying the lovely feet which bore her lovely form. Love willed that in her haste she should drop a glove, and in turning to pick it up, she revealed a countenance which that of Selinè alone can compare with, when she blushes at her own image in the brook.

She now vanished in the hut; and during her stay there, I learned from a venerable gentleman who accom

panied her, that she was the grand-daughter of the great Haller. She came back again, after a moment's delay, and how my heart beat as she approached me, and said, with the most unconstrained ease in the world: "Je suis bien charmée de me pouvoir embarquer avec vous." I could scarcely reply to the compliment: I bowed, blushed, nodded and looked down at my feet; threw my straw hat from me, to get a freer prospect; and thanked God that I got rid of my twelve days' beard at Untersee."

The old gentleman accompanying Miss Haller was President Zuiner, who introduced Baggesen and his travelling companions to the Haller family. Baggesen was enchanted, and thought her the handsomest woman he had ever seen, the most sensible he had ever talked with, the best he had ever become acquainted with. The impression was mutual, and he has left us in his "Labyrinthen" a detailed narrative of the progress of their attachment. In a while he wrote to the Countess Schimmelmann, with all the triumph of a successful lover: "She is mine! The immortal Haller's grand-daughter, the soul of her excellent family, the most fragrant lily of the Alps, the most lovely rose of freedom's garden-Sophie Haller is mine! She whom all earth's princes have striven in vain to draw from the tranquil bosom of her noble family-she is mine, and mine by the most beautiful and honourable means by which a son of Adam ever won a daughter of Eve-is mine, with the perfect consent of her whole family."

In truth, no more charming creature than Sophie Haller ever was described by a poet's pen; and the attachment of Baggesen and she to each other was of the tenderest kind.