But the actual output of these years was not large. Attempts to publish a volume of poems and a volume of short stories had failed. Nevertheless, Hebbel was no longer an unknown quantity in the world of letters when, in the early spring of 1839, he decided to return to Hamburg. Hope of aid from Campe, Heine's publisher, and from Gutzkow, the editor of a paper published by Campe, encouraged this decision. But Hebbel was really going home, going back to Elise, after having accomplished the purpose of his pilgrimage, even though for lack of money he could not take with him a doctor's degree. He came as a man who could do things for which the world gives a man a living. The return journey, lasting from the eleventh to the thirty-first of March, 1839, amid alternate freezing and thawing, was a tramp, than which only the retreat from Moscow could have been more frightful; but Hebbel accomplished it, more concerned for the little dog that accompanied him than for his own sufferings. And it appeared that he had wisely chosen to return; for he found opportunity for critical work in Gutzkow's _Telegraph_, and Campe published the works which in rapid succession he now completed: _Judith_ (1840), _Genoveva_ (1841), _The Diamond_ (1841; printed in 1847), and _Poems_ (1842). These publications won fame for Hebbel and yielded some immediate pecuniary gain. But although he had reached the goal of his ambition in having become a poet, and a dramatist whose first play had appeared on the stage, he still lacked a settled occupation and a sure income. Having been born a Danish subject, he conceived the idea of a direct appeal to Christian VIII. of Denmark for such an appointment as the king might be persuaded to give him. In spite of the unacademic course of his studies and his lack of strictly professional training, he thought of a professorship of esthetics at Kiel. Even in those days, when professorships could be had on easier terms than now, this was a wild dream. But Hebbel did not appeal to his sovereign in vain. He spent the winter of 1842-43 in Copenhagen, where the Danish-German dramatist Oehlenschläger smoothed his path to royal favor; and after two audiences with Christian VIII. he was granted a pension of six hundred thalers a year for two years, in order that by traveling he might learn more of the world and cultivate his poetic talents. His first expression of gratitude for this privilege was the tragedy _Maria Magdalena_, begun at Hamburg in May, finished at Paris in December, 1843, and dedicated to the king.