After an interesting decade the importance of which to the development of Holberg's genius cannot be over-rated we meet him in 1718 as Professor of Metaphysics in Copenhagen University. After having left Oxford in 1708 he had--to sum up the period as briefly as possible--spent his time in studies at home and in travels abroad. He never revisited England, but he lived and rooted in the English world of thought, and whether in Germany, in Paris, in Rome, or at Copenhagen, he studied and reasoned on the basis of his Oxford experiences. His principal work from this period, _Introduction to the Law of Nature and of Nations_, although little more than an abridgement of Pufendorf's great work on the same subject, is interesting as a proof of his independent views and his patriotic ambitions as an historian. It would be an exaggeration unworthy of the reserved way in which Holberg used to express himself, to say that he owed everything to England. He was certainly also highly indebted to France. Setting apart what he owes to Holland, Germany and Italy, I think we may square the debt by saying that while England moulded his character and gave the first impetus to his genius as an historian, France chiefly contributed to the unfolding of his genius as a humorous writer. He is the Molière of the North and, no doubt, one of the greatest dramatic authors ever born. In 1719 Holberg's genius, which, until then, had kept strictly within the rules prescribed by his professorship, apparently cool and indifferent to the outside world, suddenly burst into a fit of laughter which resounded through the North. This was his immortal heroic poem, _Peder Paars_, which appeared in the autumn of 1719, and which marks nothing less than a new era in Norwegian and Danish literature. _Peder Paars_, like Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_, the only parallel in our literature, is written in verse. Ibsen's rhymes are stamped by his mastership of form, and move in shifting stanzas according to the requirements of the situation and the emotion they are intended to create. Holberg walks throughout his poem on the high-heeled Alexandrines of the age. _Peer Gynt_ is the embodiment of the Norwegian soul--Norway, as seen from within. _Peder Paars_ is the central gallery of contemporary Denmark, with all its queer figures--Denmark, as seen from without. That is why Holberg could never have written _Peder Paars_ if he had been born and bred a Dane. He had to be an outsider to get the right perspective.