1708, as the tutor of a young Danish boy, he visited Dresden,
Leipzig, and Halle. Soon after his return to Copenhagen, he obtained
a small stipend in a foundation for students, called Borch's
College, While there he wrote two historical treatises of enough
value to win him an appointment as "extraordinary" professor in the
university. Though this position gave him the right to the first
vacancy that might occur in the faculty, it did not entitle him to
any salary, and it was only through the good offices of a friend at
court that he obtained a stipend of about $150 a year for four
years, during which time he was to be a sort of travelling fellow of
the university. In the spring of 1714, Holberg, then thirty years of
age, left Copenhagen for his fourth journey abroad.

This excursion was far more extensive and picturesque than any he
had undertaken before. He travelled first to Paris, by way of
Amsterdam and Brussels, and later to Genoa and Rome, by way of
Marseilles. Except for the necessary sea voyages, most of the
journey was made on foot. After staying in Rome for six months,
harassed the entire time by malarial fever, he turned his face
towards home. In order to escape the discomforts and perils of
travel by sea, he decided to return to Paris overland, and walked
from Rome to Florence in fourteen days. Finding his health improved
by the regular exercise, he continued on foot over the Alps to
Lyons, and subsequently to Paris and Copenhagen, where he arrived in
the autumn of 1716. Holberg had gone abroad to satisfy his keen
intellectual curiosity; he remained to study in foreign lands, and
to observe life as a philosopher and artist. Without his seemingly
aimless years of wandering, he might conceivably have become an able
historian; he could hardly have developed his brilliant talent for
satire and comedy.