It will be seen that not much is definitely known, then, regarding his life in the years 1794-1799. It was plainly a time of poverty and struggle, and it is not strange that even the members of his own family and his nearest friends learned little or nothing of its secrets from his lips. By the time he left Stockholm for Copenhagen, in the summer of 1799, he was able to speak French, German, and English,—the first of the three with especial ease—and this fact alone may explain the legend of extensive wanderings on the Continent and in England. He possessed, however, a quick mind and undoubted talent for language, and was a diligent and enthusiastic student of any subject that aroused his interest. Moreover, it was not necessary to leave Sweden in order to find natives of those countries with whom he might converse, and it now seems probable that he resided at first near Stockholm as private tutor and later in that city itself as clerk during most or all of the period in question. Although there is nothing impossible in the frequently repeated story of travel and military service in foreign parts, but very little direct evidence has been urged in its support.[114] In July of 1799 Ling arrived at Copenhagen, and remained in the Danish capital for more than five years, until September or October of 1804. According to his own statement he entered the university there March 27, 1801. Although he was voluntarily enrolled on the side of the Danes when Nelson and his English fleet, by the battle fought in Copenhagen harbor April 2, 1801, broke up the Northern Alliance, the company to which he belonged was not brought into action on that occasion. Linguistic studies continued to engross his mind at first. He worked diligently in the Royal Library, took every opportunity to extend his knowledge by conversation with foreigners, and acquired complete mastery of the Danish language, both written and spoken. Afterwards his attention became transferred from language to literature. Schelling, the distinguished Jena professor and the favorite philosopher of the Romantic school of writers in Germany, was then at the height of his fame. Among his enthusiastic auditors had been a young Norwegian, Henrik Steffens, who appeared in Copenhagen in 1802, full of the new doctrines, and began to lecture there on philosophy and on Goethe. Through him Oehlenschläger, soon to be hailed as Denmark’s foremost poet, caught the spirit of the Romantic movement and began to breathe new life into the old Norse mythology, rousing in the breasts of his countrymen a feeling of Scandinavian nationality. These men introduced Ling to the treasure-house of the Eddas and the Northern sagas, whose gods and heroes were thenceforth never absent from his thought. After composing short poems in French, German, and Danish, and translating into Swedish the “Balders Död” (Balder’s Death) of Johannes Evald, the chief lyric poet of Denmark, he wrote himself, in Danish,