day. Notwithstanding his estimate of his moments and hours, he is not prepared for such precipitate doings, and seems inclined to back out. The lady catechises him, and at last draws from him the confession, that the great impediment to his being married that day is—the want of his stockings, which he had left by mistake behind. But the unseemly figure which he must cut without them, though it elicits a burst of eloquent anguish from him, is not admitted by the determined bride, who sticks to her point—"Now or never."
A variety of grandiloquent scenes occur; but towards the last the tailor makes his appearance in a respectable pair of white stockings, and all promises to go on to Gretè's satisfaction, when Mads and his friend, Jesper, rush in, and charge Johan with theft—the theft, from Mads, of the very stockings which ho was sporting so proudly. His betrothed calls upon him to clear himself, but, conscience-stricken, the tailor turns pale, and Gretè shrieks:
Thou turnest white! Oh, strength and heart, and hope and life,
Together fail!
After a fainting fit, she exclaims:
Oh, shame! Oh, agony of grief! Thou, my sweetheart!
Barbarian—such thou wert—but such no longer art!
Johan, sobbing, replies:
Barbarian! yes, alas! That name befits me well;
Yet think not without grief from virtue that I fell.
Madam—I am a thief—the accusation’s true—
I have disgraced thee—but—thou art revenged—adieu!
As he utters this last flourish, he stabs himself. Gretè, shocked at his untimely fate, scolds the innocent Mads, and then stabs herself. Mads apostrophises the Furies, and follows Gretè’s examp;e. Mettè catches the infection, and plunges a knife into her heart; and finally Jesper also commits suicide, but first recites the following winding-up speech:
Wherefore should Mettè die? Of that I see no need;
But since they all are dead, I too must do the deed.
Oh, ye, in future years, who these sad scenes shall hear,
If ye our corpses view, yet never shed a tear,
As flints will be your hearts. But all hearts are not stone;
Our deaths may generations yet unborn bemoan.
To those who sympathise in our distress, I will
Bequeath a parting wish, before myself I kill:
Oh! may your wardrobes be extremely well supplied;
And never may your love be by your stockings tried!
There is a sort of epilogue to this burlesque, in which Mercury, the god of thieves, is very appropriately made to appear.
Poor Wessel’s many wants and cares drove him into habits of intemperance, which closed his career in what otherwise might have been the prime of his life.
In so limited a survey of Danish literature and Danish authors as this must necessarily be, it is impossible to give specimens of the style of each writer, or, indeed, to give much more, in many cases, than a catalogue of names—a sort of tombstone record,—and even in that, a selection must be made. Of authors who lived and wrote about the same
