HOLBERG, LUDVIG HOLBERG, BARON (1684-1754), the great Scandinavian writer, was born at Bergen, in Norway, on the 3rd of December 1684. Both Holberg's parents died in his childhood, his father first, leaving a considerable property; and in his eleventh year he lost his mother also. Before the latter event, however, the family had been seriously impoverished by a great fire, which destroyed several valuable buildings, but notwithstanding this, the mother left to each of her six children some little fortune. In 1695 the boy Holberg was taken into the house of his uncle, Peder Lem, who sent him to the Latin school, and prepared him for the profession of a soldier; but soon after this he was adopted by his cousin Otto Munthe, and went to him up in the mountains. His great desire for instruction, however, at last induced his family to send him back to Bergen, to his uncle, and there he remained, eagerly studying, until the destruction of that city by fire in 1702, when he was sent to the university of Copenhagen. But he soon exhausted his resources, and, having nothing to live upon, was glad to hurry back to Norway, where he accepted the position of tutor in the house of a rural dean at Voss. He soon returned to Copenhagen, where in 1704 he took his degree, and worked hard at French, English and Italian. But he had to gain his living, and accordingly he accepted the post of tutor once more, this time in the house of Dr Smith, vice-bishop of Bergen. The good doctor had travelled much, and the reading of his itineraries and note-books awakened such a longing for travel in the young Holberg that at last, at the close of 1704, having scraped together 60 dollars, he went on board a ship bound for Holland. He proceeded as far as Aix-la-Chapelle, where he fell sick of a fever, and suffered so much from weakness and poverty, that he made his way on foot to Amsterdam, and came back to Norway. Ashamed to be seen so soon in Bergen, he stopped at Christianssand, where he lived through the winter, supporting himself by giving lessons in French. In the spring of 1706 he travelled, in company with a student named Brix, through London to Oxford, where he studied for two years, gaining his livelihood by giving lessons on the violin and the flute. He mentions, with gratitude, the valuable libraries of Oxford, and it is pleasant to record that it was while he was there that it first occurred to him, as he says, "how splendid and glorious a thing it would be to take a place among the authors." Through London and Elsinore he reached Copenhagen a third time, and began to lecture at the university; his lectures were attended, but he got no money. He was asked in 1709 to conduct a rich young gentleman to Dresden, and on his return journey he lectured at Leipzig, Halle and Hamburg. Once more in Copenhagen, he undertook to teach the children of Admiral Gedde. Weary with this work, he took a post at Borch College in