An author who is born into an age of transition, when old faiths are passing away and new ones are struggling for recognition, is placed in a serious dilemma. Where he makes his choice by mere temperamental bias, he is apt to miss that element of growth which is involved in every spiritual struggle. But if, as is so frequently the case, he finds his choice in a measure made for him, his education, kinships, and worldly advantage identifying him with the established order, it takes a tremendous amount of courage and character to break away from old moorings and steer, without other compass than a sensitive conscience, toward the rosy dawn of the unknown. There was a desperate need of such men in Denmark in the seventies, when the little kingdom was sinking deeply and more deeply into a bog of patriotic delusion and spiritual stagnation. An infusion of new blood was needed--a re-establishment of that circulation of thought which keeps the whole civilized world in vital connection and makes it akin. No country can cut itself off from this universal world-life without withering like a diseased limb. The man who undertook to bring Denmark again into _rapport_ with Europe was Dr. Georg Brandes, whom I have characterized at length in another essay. It was his admirable book, "The Men of the Modern Transition" (translated into German under the title _Moderne Geister_) which impelled me, some years ago, to make the acquaintance of the three authors who represent whatever there is of promise in contemporary Danish literature, viz., Sophus Schandorph, Holger Drachmann, and J. P. Jacobsen. The last named, who died (1884) in the flower of his young manhood, is, perhaps, not in the strictest sense contemporary. But he is indispensable to the characterization of the group.