excess in that direction does not trouble us. [22] For verification of this statement I may refer to his indignant letter _a propos_ of the statue that was to be raised to him in Copenhagen, in which he was represented surrounded by listening children: "None of the sculptors," he wrote, "have known me; none of their sketches indicate that they have seen what is characteristic in me. Never could I read aloud when anybody was sitting behind me or close up to me; far less if I had children on my lap or on my back, or young Copenhageners lying all over me. It is a _facon de parler_ to call me 'the children's poet.' My aim has been to be the poet of all ages; children could not represent me." In 1842 Andersen gave to the world "A Poets' Bazaar," a chronicle of his travels through nearly all the countries of Europe. In 1844 the drama "The King is Dreaming," and in 1845 the fairy comedy "The Flower of Fortune." But his highest dramatic triumph he celebrated in the anonymous comedy "The New Lying-in Room," which in a measure proved his contention that it was personal hostility and not critical scruples which made so large a portion of the Copenhagen literati persecute him. For the very men who would have been the first to hold his play up to scorn were the heartiest in their applause, as long as they did not know that Andersen was its author. Less pronounced was the success of the lyrical drama "Little Kirsten" (1846); and the somewhat ambitious epic "Ahasverus" comes very near being a failure. The next ventures of the versatile and indefatigable poet were the novel "The Two Baronesses" (1849), and the fairy comedies "More than Pearls and Gold" (1849), adapted from a German original, "The Sandman"[23] (1850), and "The Elder Tree Mother" (1851). The comedies "He was not Born" (1864), "On Langebro" and "When the Spaniards were Here" (1869), complete the cycle of his dramatic labors. But the most amusing thing he did, showing how incapable he was of taking the measure of his faculties, was to write a novel, "To Be or Not to Be" (1857), in which he proposed once and forever to down the giant Unbelief, prove the immortality of the soul, and produce "peace and reconciliation between Nature and the Bible." It was nothing less than the evidences of Christianity in novelistic form with which he designed to favor an expectant world. "If[24] I can solve this problem," he naively wrote to a friend, "then the monster materialism, devouring everything divine, will die." But rarely was a bigger Gulliver tackled by a tinier Liliputian. The book not only fell flat, but it was only the world-wide renown and the good intention of its author which saved it from derision. [23] Danish, Ole Lukoeie. [24] Hansen: Illustreret Dansk Litteratur Historie, ii. p. 560.