ch, and published in his own magazine,
_For Hjemmet_,[6] in April, 1864. Munch rarely rises above mediocrity
and his tribute to the bard of Avon is the very essence of it.
He begins:

I disse Dage gaar et vaeldigt Navn
Fra Mund til Mund, fra Kyst til Kyst rundt Jorden--
Det straaler festligt over fjernest Havn,
Og klinger selv igjennem Krigens Torden,
Det slutter alle Folk i Aandens Favn,
Og er et Eenheds Tegn i Striden vorden--
I Stjerneskrift det staaer paa Tidens Bue,
Og leder Slaegterne med Hjertelue.

[6. Vol. V, p. 572.]

and, after four more stanzas, he concludes:

Hos os har ingen ydre Fest betegnet
Vort Folks Tribut til denne store Mand.
Er vi af Hav og Fjelde saa omhegnet,
At ei hans Straaler traenge til os kan?
Nei,--Nordisk var hans Aand og netop egnet
Til at opfattes af vort Norden-Land,
Og mer maaske end selv vi tro og taenke,
Har Shakespeare brudt for os en fremmed Laenke.

One has a feeling that Munch awoke one morning, discovered from his
calendar that Shakespeare's birthday was approaching, and ground out
this poem to fill space in _Hjemmet_. But his intentions are good. No
one can quarrel with the content. And when all is said, he probably
expressed, with a fair degree of accuracy, the feeling of his time.
It remains but to note a detail or two. First, that the poet, even in
dealing with Shakespeare, found it necessary to draw upon the prevailing
"Skandinavisme" and label Shakespeare "Nordisk"; second, the accidental
truth of the closing couplet. If we could interpret this as referring
to Wergeland, who _did_ break the chains of foreign bondage, and gave
Norway a place in the literature of the world, we should have the first
reference to an interesting fact in Norwegian literary history. But
doubtless we have no right to credit Munch with any such acumen. The
couplet was put into the poem merely because it sounded well.

More important than this effusion of bad verse from the poet of fashion
was a little article which Paul Botten Hansen wrote in _Illustreret
Nyhedsblad_[7] in 1865. Botten Hansen had a fine literary appreciation
and a profound knowledge of books. The effort, therefore, to give
Denmark and Norway a complete translation of Shakespeare was sure to
meet with his sympathy. In 1861 Lembcke began his revision of Foersom's
work, and, although it must have come up to Norway from Copenhagen
almost immediately, no allusion to it is found in periodic