第64章

And now I had in my possession a Danish book,which,from its appearance,might be supposed to have belonged to the very old Danes indeed;but how was I to turn it to any account?I had the book,it is true,but I did not understand the language,and how was I to overcome that difficulty?hardly by poring over the book;yet I did pore over the book,daily and nightly,till my eyes were dim,and it appeared to me that every now and then I encountered words which I understood-English words,though strangely disguised;and I said to myself,Courage!English and Danish are cognate dialects,a time will come when I shall understand this Danish;and then I pored over the book again,but with all my poring I could not understand it;and then I became angry,and I bit my lips till the blood came;and I occasionally tore a handful from my hair,and flung it upon the floor,but that did not mend the matter,for still I did not understand the book,which,however,I began to see was written in rhyme-a circumstance rather difficult to discover at first,the arrangement of the lines not differing from that which is employed in prose;and its being written in rhyme made me only the more eager to understand it.

But I toiled in vain,for I had neither grammar nor dictionary of the language;and when I sought for them could procure neither;and I was much dispirited,till suddenly a bright thought came into my head,and I said,although I cannot obtain a dictionary or grammar,I can perhaps obtain a Bible in this language,and if I can procure a Bible,I can learn the language,for the Bible in every tongue contains the same thing,and I have only to compare the words of the Danish Bible with those of the English,and,if I persevere,Ishall in time acquire the language of the Danes;and I was pleased with the thought,which I considered to be a bright one,and I no longer bit my lips,or tore my hair,but I took my hat,and,going forth,I flung my hat into the air.

And when my hat came down,I put it on my head and commenced running,directing my course to the house of the Antinomian preacher,who sold books,and whom I knew to have Bibles in various tongues amongst the number,and I arrived out of breath,and Ifound the Antinomian in his little library,dusting his books;and the Antinomian clergyman was a tall man of about seventy,who wore a hat with a broad brim and a shallow crown,and whose manner of speaking was exceedingly nasal;and when I saw him,I cried,out of breath,'Have you a Danish Bible?'and he replied,'What do you want it for,friend?'and I answered,'To learn Danish by';'And maybe to learn thy duty,'replied the Antinomian preacher.'Truly,I have it not,but,as you are a customer of mine,I will endeavour to procure you one,and I will write to that laudable society which men call the Bible Society,an unworthy member of which I am,and I hope by next week to procure what you desire.'

And when I heard these words of the old man,I was very glad,and my heart yearned towards him,and I would fain enter into conversation with him;and I said,'Why are you an Antinomian?For my part I would rather be a dog than belong to such a religion.'

'Nay,friend,'said the Antinomian,'thou forejudgest us;know that those who call us Antinomians call us so despitefully,we do not acknowledge the designation.''Then you do not set all law at nought?'said I.'Far be it from us,'said the old man,'we only hope that,being sanctified by the Spirit from above,we have no need of the law to keep us in order.Did you ever hear tell of Lodowick Muggleton?''Not I.''That is strange;know then that he was the founder of our poor society,and after him we are frequently,though opprobriously,termed Muggletonians,for we are Christians.Here is his book,which,perhaps,you can do no better than purchase,you are fond of rare books,and this is both curious and rare;I will sell it cheap.Thank you,and now be gone,I will do all I can to procure the Bible.'

And in this manner I procured the Danish Bible,and I commenced my task;first of all,however,I locked up in a closet the volume which had excited my curiosity,saying,'Out of this closet thou comest not till I deem myself competent to read thee,'and then I sat down in right earnest,comparing every line in the one version with the corresponding one in the other;and I passed entire nights in this manner,till I was almost blind,and the task was tedious enough at first,but I quailed not,and soon began to make progress:and at first I had a misgiving that the old book might not prove a Danish book,but was soon reassured by reading many words in the Bible which I remembered to have seen in the book;and then I went on right merrily,and I found that the language which I was studying was by no means a difficult one,and in less than a month I deemed myself able to read the book.

Anon,I took the book from the closet,and proceeded to make myself master of its contents;I had some difficulty,for the language of the book,though in the main the same as the language of the Bible,differed from it in some points,being apparently a more ancient dialect;by degrees,however,I overcame this difficulty,and Iunderstood the contents of the book,and well did they correspond with all those ideas in which I had indulged connected with the Danes.For the book was a book of ballads,about the deeds of knights and champions,and men of huge stature;ballads which from time immemorial had been sung in the North,and which some two centuries before the time of which I am speaking had been collected by one Anders Vedel,who lived with a certain Tycho Brahe,and assisted him in making observations upon the heavenly bodies,at a place called Uranias Castle,on the little island of Hveen,in the Cattegat.