how he has lived, but even how he will meet death. Jeppe possesses
enough of the common stuff of human nature always to awaken
comprehension and delight; yet he is more than an extraordinarily
complete and convincing individual, and his story is more than an
amusing farce. Widely prevalent social conditions of a past time are
here expressed in human terms of lasting truth and vitality. In
Jeppe the peasant of the eighteenth-century Sjaelland lives for all
time.

The Political Tinker, while it contains no such deep study of
personality as Jeppe of the Hill, is no less clearly a comedy of
character and no less obviously a good human satire. In it the
foibles of the central figure are displayed more definitely in their
relation to the rest of his family. [Footnote: The play is probably
founded upon the story of the political upholsterer which appears in
an essay of The Tatler. For a general discussion of Holberg's
relations to foreign literature, the reader is referred to The
Comedies of Holberg, by O. J. Campbell, Jr. (Harvard Studies in
Comparative Literature, vol. iii, Harvard University Press, 1914).
This is the only full treatment of Holberg in English. Ed.] "The
satire," says Holberg, in his introduction to the first published
edition of the play, "is directed against those boasters among
common people in free cities who sit in taverns and criticise the
mayor and Council; they know everything and yet nothing.... I doubt
if any one can show me a comedy more honorable and more moral....
The comedy, besides, is not less merry than moral, for it has kept
spectators laughing from beginning to end, and for that reason, of
all my comedies, it is played with the greatest profit for those
concerned." The word "moral" as applied to this work illustrates the
somewhat unusual meaning which Holberg attaches to it. Though he is