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no translator could hope to preserve the dewy freshness of that idyllic Norseland flavor which pervades the book from beginning to end; and, at the same time, no English-born writer could have expressed himself in clearer English than the author of "Gunnar." This, in fact, would have been really inadequate praise, for few, indeed, are the romancers composing in our own tongue who have so happily combined grace with vigor and simplicity of style. Thus the little work indicated a rare union of gifts in its author; because only a poetic mind, deeply penetrated with the spirit of Norse life and scenery, could have portrayed them so delightfully, while only a cultivated Norseman writing in English with the ease of a native, could have made the story so fresh and attractive to American readers. Since the appearance of "Gunnar," all the succeeding works from the same hand have shown their author's native fondness for Norway and its people; but most of his stories have also shown his interest in the land of his adoption. So that many persons who know Mr. Boyesen only through his writings will scarcely need to be told that he has now identified himself with our nationality as thoroughly as he has acquired our language.

Mr. Boyesen's character as an author has been greatly influenced by several circumstances in his life, and most of the facts presented in this sketch are interesting from a literary point of view through their direct relation to his writings. He was born September 23d, 1848, at Fredricksvern, a small sea-port town on the southern coast of Norway. His father, an officer in the army, was stationed there at the time, but moved away from the place three years afterward. In 1854 he went abroad for two years, leaving his family with the maternal grandfather, Judge Hjorth, who lived at Systrand on Sognefjord-celebrated in Tegnér's" Frithjof Saga," as the scene of Frithjof and Ingeborg's courtship. Here, amid the beauty and grandeur of one of the most picturesque regions in all Norway, the boy dreamed away his childhood, listening at night to old legends and superstitions which he heard recounted by the peasants as he sat with them around the fire, gazing into the embers on the hearth, while dusk and shadow filled the room, and the spluttering pine-knot burned in a crevice of the wall. The tales told at such times had so strong a fascination for his mind that he never tired of them; though forbidden by his grandmother to associate with the ser

VOL. XIV.-50.

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vants, he would often steal down-stairs on the long winter evenings to hear their wonderful stories of necken, hulders, trolds and elf-maidens. Several of these stories are introduced in the earlier part of "Gunnar.” In the closing chapters of the "Norseman's Pilgrimage" we have an accurate picture of his grandfather's home with the majestic mountains around it and the noble fjord upon the shores of which it is situated. Both the scenery and the legends of this magnificent region have left their deep and lasting impress upon his mind.

After his mother's death, which occurred when he was about eleven years old, the grandfather assumed the entire charge of Hjalmar, and placed him at a gymnasium, where he remained until he entered the University of Christiania. In the summer vacations, both at the gymnasium and the university, he journeyed most of the way homeward on foot, walking nearly two hundred miles with a knapsack on his back, usually accompanied by one or more fellowstudents. These trips were made at the season of the year which is peculiarly glorious in that high latitude; his route led him through some of the wildest and most picturesque scenery of the north, besides bringing him in close contact with the country people at whose houses the travelers put up for the night, in the mountain districts where inns were scarce. On such journeys he became familiar with the character of the Norwegian peasantry, as well as the varied features of the Norwegian landscape. His experience at this time also furnished the material for the graphic picture of "saeter" life in "Gunnar."

In 1868 he was graduated from the University. Having been distinguished for his readiness in learning languages, he was advised to make philology his "bread study," as the Norwegians say, and had accordingly prepared to remain at Christiania as a special student in that science, when he received a letter from his father which caused him to alter his plans, and eventually changed his career.

His father had spent some time in the United States, and had returned full of enthusiasm for that country and its institutions. He now wrote strongly advising his son to go to America, and devote at least a year to traveling there-urging him, above all, not to settle down "and strike roots" in that "small arctic corner" before he had viewed the larger world without, and felt the mighty intellectual life of the century

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pulsating through him. It had been his (though portions of the book were subseown misfortune, the father said, "to wake up quently rewritten before its publication), to experience the happiness of this broader "Gunnar" was produced. This was the and freer life only when it was too late to first fulfillment of a long-cherished literary obey the impulse which it prompted." He ambition. To become an author had been implored his son to break loose now while his highest aspiration ever since he was a he was still young and capable of adapting boy of twelve. At that age he made his himself to changed relations. On the other earliest effort in poetic composition, writing hand, the grandfather, when the plan was clandestinely at first, but afterward taking laid before him, strenuously opposed it; in his grandmother into his confidence, reading his opinion there was no happier or better his productions to her, and deriving great country on the earth than Norway. At last, encouragement from her tears when his however, it was decided that young Boyesen theme was tragic, as was usually the case. should go, for a year only, to see America Of course, he thought of becoming a Norand try how he liked it, his grandfather pre-wegian poet only, for at this time the idea dicting that he would return before the year was at an end.

He landed at New York in April, 1869. After traveling through New England and the western states for several months, he found himself at the beginning of the next year in Chicago. Here he accepted a position as associate editor of a Norwegian paper called the "Fremad." In his first editorials he advocated the cause of the American common schools, and defended them against the denunciations of the Norwegian clergy, who have always used every means in their power to confine their people within the narrow limits of their own sectarian schools. This article attracted considerable attention when it appeared, and the question it raised is still discussed from time to time. Since then, he has endeavored not only in his journalistic writings, but also through his stories, to make his countrymen good American citizens. He hopes to see the Norwegians in the West become an organic part of the nation, and feels that the sooner this takes place, the better; for he is convinced that, living as they now do, apart from the rest of the community, their social and political influence is, in a great measure, wasted; while they are only prevented from assimilating with the surrounding population by this clannishness which the clergy encourage for purposes of their own, but which must inevitably disappear with the second or third generation.

In September of this year he was invited to become instructor in Latin and Greek at a small Ohio college,—a position which he finally accepted, chiefly because it placed him entirely among English-speaking people, and gave him the opportunity which he greatly desired of mastering the language. In the following winter he began to compose a story in English; and within two years from the time of his leaving Norway

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of writing in English had never entered his mind. Once, however, when he was about sixteen years old, he ventured to disclose some of his literary projects to his father, who took pains to discourage them by saying that Norway was too small a country with too limited a public to make authorship either profitable or elevating. poet," he said, "must be inspired by the consciousness of addressing a large number of his fellow-men, if he would rise above the petty concerns of the hour and really speak what would have a high human worth, a resonance that should come down through the succeeding ages." And then, never missing an opportunity to direct his son toward a future in America, the father added: "If you are strong enough to conquer a new language, and make it so perfectly your own that you can mold and bend it rhythmically to your will, then I shall believe in your literary aspirations, but not until then."

"These words," said Mr. Boyesen, "had a very powerful effect upon me, and have remained with me ever since. I determined on the spot to conquer a tongue which would reach millions of men, never considering in my boyish fervor, that my voice might be too feeble, my thoughts too weak to set human hearts in motion. For some years this thought was pushed into the background of my mind, but after my arrival in this country it was once more aroused with redoubled energy. From the day I set foot on American soil I have never spoken the Norwegian language except when I have been forced to do so. I soon began to think in English, and even to dream in English, which finally satisfied me that I had conquered it. * Of course I have lost my own tongue in the same degree that I have gained another. But the English has so much wider range

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of expression, is so much richer and stronger, that I do not regret the loss."

It need hardly be said that Mr. Boyesen's mastery of English for purposes of authorship is something very different from what is ordinarily understood by learning a language; more difficult, indeed, than the acquisition of several languages in the usual way. It must be this absolute mastery of a language which Mr. Hamerton has in mind, when he declares, in his "Intellectual Life," that no one can speak even two languages perfectly, "except under special family conditions." Mr. Boyesen is scarcely an exception to this rule, for he has partly unlearned his native tongue in learning ours; he has not gained two languages perfectly; he has not added a second language to the Norwegian, but simply exchanged the old speech for the new one; so that he has literally made the English "his own." But even this was remarkable enough considering the time in which it was accomplished, and there can be no question of his linguistic talent-a talent which, as he somewhere observes, is quite common among his countrymen, and which is probably often inherited in many parts of northern Europe, since it naturally would be cultivated there in an unusual degree by the educated classes, especially by the natives of a country so peculiarly situated as Norway, so wild and thinly peopled, so necessarily unfruitful (comparatively) in men of genius, that her inhabitants must look abroad for great literary works in the language of nations with a larger life, a more active intellect, a richer, stronger, and ampler literature than their own land can ever produce. Thus knowing how Mr. Boyesen has deliberately chosen the English from all other languages as his means of literary expression, thus considering the sacrifice he has made without regret in acquiring it, we can realize the value of our precious mother-tongue, and more than ever before appreciate our own good fortune in possessing it by the free gift of nature as the medium of our thoughts.

Considered simply as a linguistic achievement, the production of "Gunnar " was certainly extraordinary. But "Gunnar" is not a mere literary curiosity to excite our wonder; it is a most charming prose idyl, full of natural grace and freshness, tinged throughout with the glamor of Norse folklore that more intensely colors all the earlier chapters. The prose, too, is pervaded by a spirit of poetry which occasionally rises

into the form of verse, and attains its finest expression in the stev sung by Gunnar and Ragnhild on the night of the skee-race. Though it is not often that one can place his finger right on the best passage of a really good book, yet all readers must agree that this sweet burst of unpremeditated melody is the most pleasing thing in "Gunnar." Some of the author's subsequent and more elaborate poems may have higher merits of another kind, but none have equaled the unstudied grace, or the unique and artless beauty of this piece of primitive echo song, such as might have been sung in Northland ages ago. The entire story, plain and familiar as its outlines are, has an unwonted novelty of scene, and affords many picturesque incidents and situations, all set off by the glorious background of wild Norwegian landscape; while the diction of the book shows its author to be already as much at home in the language he writes as in the scenes he describes; for his pure, fresh, and simple style in the newly acquired English is all his own.

Before the publication of " Gunnar," early in 1873, Mr. Boyesen sailed for Europe, where he remained till the close of the year, spending the greater part of the time at the University of Leipsic, in the study of Germanic and comparative philology, and afterward revisiting Norway as well as France and England when on his way back to America. While in Paris he gained the friendship of Tourguèneff, with whom he has ever since maintained a frequent correspondence. In a magazine article entitled "A Visit to Tourguèneff," he has given a very interesting account of his conversations with the great Russian novelist.

Before going abroad he had received the appointment to an assistant professorship in Cornell University, and upon his return, he assumed the position in that institution, where he now is, having been recently made professor of German literature. With a good knowledge, both of the old and the modern German language, and an extensive acquaintance with its literature, Mr. Boyesen combines an unusual familiarity with the lives and personal characters of the German authors, that gives an element of biographic interest to his lectures; while he shows an insight into their artistic characters, a sympathetic appreciation of their poetic qualities, an enthusiasm in the study of their works, which no amount of mere learning or critical scholarship could impart. Even when the usual routine drill in trans

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