Aspects and Impressions by Edmund Gosse

In the summer of 1872 I received special leave from the Principal Librarian of the British Museum to visit Denmark and Norway for the purpose of reporting on the state of current literature in those countries. Of my Danish experiences I have given an account in my book called _Two Visits to Denmark_ (Smith, Elder & Co., 1911); but hitherto I have not published any of my Norwegian adventures. I am led to do so now, in consequence of a letter which I have just received from Rektor Frederik Ording, of Holmestrand, who is engaged on a biographical study of "Henrik Ibsen's Ungdomsvenner," and who tells me that it has become almost impossible to obtain information about the particular group of men of letters whom I conversed with more than forty-five years ago. They are all long since dead, and no one survives who recollects them in their prime. No one -- so it appears -- but me! The fact is a solemnizing one. I feel like the Moses of the poet:

Je vivrai donc toujours puissant et solitaire? Laissez-moi m'endormir du sommeil de la terre;