Oh, anything that touches thee,
Nay, sandals for those airy feet--
Thus to be pressed by thee were sweet!

Moore's Translation.




HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

(1805-1875)

BY BENJAMIN W. WELLS


The place of Hans Christian Andersen in literature is that of the
"Children's Poet," though his best poetry is prose. He was born in the
ancient Danish city of Odense, on April 2d, 1805, of poor and shiftless
parents. He had little regular instruction, and few childish associates.
His youthful imagination was first stimulated by La Fontaine's 'Fables'
and the 'Arabian Nights,' and he showed very early a dramatic instinct,
trying to act and even to imitate Shakespeare, though, as he says,
"hardly able to spell a single word correctly." It was therefore natural
that the visit of a dramatic company to Odense, in 1818, should fire his
fancy to seek his theatrical fortune in Copenhagen; whither he went in
September, 1819, with fifteen dollars in his pocket and a letter of
introduction to a danseuse at the Royal Theatre, who not unnaturally
took her strange visitor for a lunatic, and showed him the door. For
four years he labored diligently, suffered acutely, and produced nothing