However, literary history must be built on the evidence before
it, and the actual text of _The Feast at Solhoug_, and of _Olaf
Liljekrans_ must be taken in spite of anything their author chose to say
nearly thirty years afterwards. Great poets, without the least wish to
mystify, often, in the cant phrase, "cover their tracks." Tennyson, in
advanced years, denied that he had ever been influenced by Shelley or
Keats. So Ibsen disclaimed any effect upon his style of the lyrical
dramas of Hertz. But we must appeal from the arrogance of old age to the
actual works of youth.
Henrik Hertz (1798-1870) was the most exquisite, the most delicate, of
the Danish writers of his age. He was deeply impressed with the
importance of form in drama, and at the height of his powers he began to
compose rhymed plays which were like old ballads put into dialogue. His
comedy of _Cupid's Strokes of Genius_ (1830) began a series of tragi-
comedies which gradually deepened in passion and melody, till they
culminated in two of the acknowledged masterpieces of the Danish stage,
_Svend Dyring's House_ (1837) and _King Rene's Daughter_ (1845).
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