John Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven was born in Bergen in 1807,
entered the university in 1825, became a _Lector_ in 1840, and
afterward Professor of Philosophy. "His refined esthetic nature," says
Fr. Winkel Horn, "had been early developed, and when the war once
broke out between him and Wergeland, he had reached a high point
of intellectual culture, and thus was in every way a match for
his opponent." The fight was inaugurated by a preliminary literary
skirmish, which was, at the outset, limited to the university
students; but it gradually assumed an increasingly bitter character,
both parties growing more and more exasperated. Welhaven published a
pamphlet, _Om Henrik Wergelands Digtekunst og Poesie_, in which he
mercilessly exposed the weak sides of his adversary's poetry. Thereby
the minds became still more excited. The "Intelligence" party withdrew
from the students' union, founded a paper of their own, and thus
the movement began-to assume wider dimensions. In 1834, appeared
Welhaven's celebrated poem, _Norges Daemring_, a series of sonnets,
distinguished for their beauty of style. In them the poet scourges,
without mercy, the one-sided, narrow-minded patriotism of his time,
and exposes, in striking and unmistakable words, the hollowness
and shortcomings of the Wergeland party. Welhaven points out, with
emphasis, that he is not only going to espouse the cause of good
taste, which his adversary has outraged, but that he is also about
to discuss problems of general interest. He urges that a Norwegian
culture and literature can not be created out of nothing and to
promote their development it is absolutely necessary to continue
the associations which have hitherto been common to both Norway and
Denmark, and thus to keep in _rapport_ with the general literature
of Europe. When a solid foundation has in this manner been laid, the
necessary materials for a literature would surely not be wanting,