It appears to me unquestionable that this is the most masculine poetic work that has been written in the Danish language. Many other poets of modern times have been children, or blind enthusiasts, or wanton youths, or vain egotists; the author of "Adam Homo" was a man. Who would have thought that Paludan-Müller, when he once resolved to descend from the ivory tower where he had hitherto held sway, would have set foot on the pavement with so bold a tread! Other poetic works of Danish literature are characterized by grace, beauty, romantic enthusiasm, or thorough apprehension of nature; this book is true, and is thus more instructive and more profound than all the rest combined. Read it more than once, and you will be convinced of its truth. The six last cantos of the poem appeared at an inopportune moment, in December, 1848, just as an awakening national life had engendered a host of bright hopes and beautiful illusions, in the midst of whose brilliancy this book in its remoteness from the moment seemed to signify no more than the light of a single star signifies to a ball held in the open air with an illumination of a thousand torchlights. Some nights later, however, long after the torches are burned out, the star becomes visible. Or is it possible that the present generation of cultured youth in Denmark does not yet see it? Often one cannot help asking to what use the youth of a nation puts its most excellent books. Are they really only extant that they may be handsomely bound and placed on the book-shelves for display? Were it otherwise, how could it be that so few traces of their influence are found? Or has the influence of "Adam Homo" perhaps been that it has served other sons of Adam as a sort of guide-book for the journey through life, with directions concerning the goal that is to be reached, the means which must be used, and the rocks that must be avoided, if they would attain as many of the splendors of this earthly life as the hero of the poem? "Adam Homo," more than all else that Paludan-Müller has written, is a national poem. There is not the slightest doubt that it, like Puschkin's "Eugen Onägin," was called forth and suggested by Byron's "Don Juan"; the form of the work, the metre, the changeful mood, the quaint swaying to and fro between irony and pathos, finally certain points in Adam's amorous susceptibility when a schoolboy, and certain details of his wedding, are reminders of the celebrated English epopee; but although "Adam Homo" could never have gained its present shape had it not been for the previous existence of the Byronic poem, the Danish poetic work has such an aroma and earthly flavor of the soil which engendered it that it can claim a place among the few original epic poems of first rank which Europe has produced during the century. It is a poem that stands alone in the field of literature. VII.