L. Heiberg's _Prose
Works_, among which was to be found--so he had heard it said--an
essay entitled _On the Vaudeville_. This essay was in due course
read, ruminated on, and possibly to a certain extent understood.
From Heiberg's writings the young man, moreover, learned of a
controversy which that author had carried on in his day with
Professor Oehlenschlager and with the Soro poet, Hauch. And he
was simultaneously made aware that J. L. Baggesen (the author of
_Letters from the Dead_) had at a still earlier period made a
similar attack on the great author who wrote both _Axel and Valborg_
and _Hakon Jarl_.
A quantity of other information useful to a critic was to be
extracted from these writings. From them one learned, for instance,
that taste obliged a good critic to be scandalised by a hiatus.
Did the young critical Jeronimuses of Christiania encounter such
a monstrosity in any new verse, they were as certain as their
prototype in Holberg to shout their "Hoity-toity! the world will
not last till Easter!"
The origin of another peculiar characteristic of the criticism then
prevalent in the Norwegian capital was long a puzzle to me. Every
time a new author published a book or had a little play acted, our
critics were in the habit of flying into an ungovernable passion
and behaving as if the publication of the book or the performance
of the play were a mortal insult to themselves and the newspapers
in which they wrote.
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