Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/229

that even Holberg himself was annoyed by them. Still this prize system was even further developed by the foundation, in 1759, of the "society for the advancement of the sciences of the beautiful and the useful." This society, to the founding of which the above mentioned author of popular and philosophical works, Tyge Rothe, had given the impulse, had for its object the establishment of rewards which were to encourage young poets and guide the public taste. The society consisted almost exclusively of persons who were well-nigh destitute of any real appreciation of poetry, but who were engaged in various kinds of pursuits. They accepted the standard of the age, and were thoroughly satisfied when, instead of genuine poetry, they received pretty thoughts, expressed in intelligible, smooth and metrical verses. The only truly competent member of the society was Klopstock, who, in 1751, had been called to Denmark by Frederik V, and remained in the country until 1770, when he went to Hamburg, where he stayed until his death in 1803, but supported during all this time by the Danish Government. He enjoyed a high reputation in the leading literary circles of Germany, and exercised a powerful influence on the development of the poetical taste in Denmark. He unquestionably did some good, and it may be said that the greatest poet of the epoch, Johannes Ewald, through him received his main stimulus, though the gifted youth soon surpassed his master and successfully emancipated himself from Klopstock's weak points. But few of Klopstock's numerous followers succeeded in doing this. In their dull poems they faithfully reproduced the affected manner of the German poet, with its high-sounding phrases and hollow pathos. Klopstock's influence on Danish poetry was, therefore, on the whole not a favorable one; nor could it be so, for his essentially German spirit was unable to make due allowance for the national Danish element. Among the small number of poems in Klopstock's style that are something more than mere soulless imitations, we must call attention to a few odes by the Norwegian, Peder Stenersen (1723-