I propose to speak to you about my countryman, Ludvig Holberg, the most famous Norwegian student whose name was ever entered on the records of this University. If this had not been the case, I should hardly have ventured to ascend this platform, for I feel that here, if anywhere, it must be an indispensable condition that the subject should match the place. For just as Oxford is not primarily an institution of education, but through its traditions, its companionships, its achievements, the very embodiment of British genius, British chivalry and British aspirations, so Ludvig Holberg is, indeed, no author in the ordinary sense of the word. He is the founder of modern Norwegian and Danish literature, the greatest playwright, the first critical historian, the most human and most broad-minded moralist and philosopher of two nations; a man whose constant work was one of educating; who revolutionised the conception of life in two kingdoms and paved the way for the intellectual and political liberty of the future. For all this, as I am going to show you, he is, next to his genius, highly indebted to England and, above all, to Oxford. To this place he made his way when he quitted Norway 213 years ago, imbued with a deep and early sympathy for England; from this place he went to Copenhagen, the joint capital at that time of Denmark and Norway, enriched by assets of the highest importance to his life-work. I, therefore, want to thank you for the opportunity you have given me to pay a joint tribute to Oxford and Holberg. Ludvig Holberg--_Ludovicus Holbergius_, _Norvegus_, as he signed his name in the Admission Index of the _Bodleian Library_--was born at Bergen, the present capital of Western Norway, on December 3rd, 1684. His father, who was a well-known officer in the Norwegian army, died when Lewis was an infant; his mother, when he was 10 years old. Lewis who was the youngest of twelve brothers and sisters, six of whom attained their majority, therefore very early became acquainted with the sterner aspects of life and grew up a lonely boy, deprived of the tender care of a parental home. It was at that time the custom in Norway to give pay to sons of officers and to initiate them at an early age in military tactics, the salaries they got being used to defray the expenses of their education. These petty officers were called corporals, and Lewis was now promptly appointed corporal in the "Upland Regiment," far away from his native town, in one of the midland districts. This was a rather curious beginning for a man so decidedly anti-militarist as Holberg was throughout his life. In his autobiography, published in Latin in 1727,[1] he makes fun of the episode, describing his transformation from a petty officer into a professor of philosophy as "a sort of Ovidian metamorphosis which might expose me to the risk of being sent back from my professorial chair to the camp, if the authorities were disposed to question my qualifications."