The gist of the poem is quickly told. Peder Paars, a plain Danish citizen of a provincial town, wants to visit his sweetheart at some other provincial town a few miles off. He has to go by sea, of course, for Denmark, as you know, is pre-eminently a country composed of isles, and, like Odysseus and Aeneas, he has some mighty enemies among the immortal gods who will not allow him to complete his very reasonable journey. He is shipwrecked and washed ashore with his followers on Anholt, the very smallest of all Danish isles. His experiences in this place form the chief part of the poem, for in this little, out-of-the-way island Holberg gives us, as it were, contemporary Denmark in a nutshell. Finally, the goddess of love pities him; he succeeds in making his escape from Anholt, and arrives subsequently at Jutland, where he has another series of remarkable experiences. Like Peer Gynt, he is put into a mad-house, but some time afterwards he is released and is escorted in triumph out of town. The last glimpse we get of him is where he is made a soldier and has to strip himself of all he is possessed of in order to be set free and become a civilian again. Here the poem ends abruptly, unfinished, as if the author has got tired; but the torso stands out as the work of a genius, and for two centuries it has stood the test of time and towers still as one of the most imposing works of fiction in Northern literature. Holberg had a double purpose with _Peder Paars_. By the form he chose he intended to aim a decisive blow at the learned apparatus of classic poetry as we meet it, especially in Homer and Virgil. There was at that time a lively discussion going on in England and France as to whether classic or modern poetry ought to be preferred, and both views had their eager advocates and opponents. Holberg, as you may easily imagine, sided with the defenders of modern literature, partly because, being a true son of the age to which he belonged, he was as indifferent to the fresh originality of Homer as he was untouched by the high-sounding imitation of Virgil, and in his poem he mixes them up in a most disrespectful way.