frankly based on “the best dialects,” and by this he meant, of course, the dialects that best preserved the forms of the Old Norse.  These were the dialects of the west coast and the mountains.  To Aasen the speech of the towns, of the south-east coast and of the great eastern valleys and uplands was corrupt and vitiated.  It seemed foreign, saturated and spoiled by Danish.  There were those, however, who saw farther.  If Landsmaal was to strike root, it must take into account not merely “the purest dialects” but the speech of the whole country.  It could not, for example, retain forms like “dat,” “dan,” etc., which were peculiar to Sondmor, because they happened to be lineal descendants of Old Norse, nor should it insist on preterites in ade and participles in ad merely because these forms were found in the sagas.  We cannot enter upon this subject; we can but point out that this movement was born almost with Landsmaal itself, and that, after Aasen’s fragments, the first Norwegian translation of any part of Shakespeare is a rendering of Sonnet CXXX in popularized Eastern, as distinguished from Aasen’s literary, aristocratic Western Landsmaal.  It is the first translation of a Shakespearean sonnet on Norwegian soil.  The new language was hewing out new paths.

Som Soli Augunn’ inkje skjin, og som Koraller inkje Lipunn’ glansar, og snjokvit hev ho inkje Halsen sin, og Gullhaar inkje Hove hennar kransar,

Eg baae kvit’ og raue Roser ser—­, paa Kinni hennar deira Lit’kje blandast; og meire fin vel Blomsterangen er, en den som ut fraa Lipunn’ hennar andast.

Eg hoyrt hev hennar Royst og veit endaa, at inkje som ein Song dei laeter Ori; og aldrig hev eg set ein Engel gaa—­ og gjenta mi ser stott eg gaa paa Jori.

Men ho er storre Lov og AEre vaer enn pyntedokkane me laana Glansen.  Den reine Hugen seg i alting ter, og ljost ho smilar under Brurekransen.[18]

    [18.  “Ein Sonett etter William Shakespeare.” Fram—­1872.]

Obviously this is not a sonnet at all.  Not only does the translator ignore Shakespeare’s rime scheme, but he sets aside the elementary definition of a sonnet—­a poem of fourteen lines.  We have here sixteen lines and the last two add nothing to the original.  The poet, through lack of skill, has simply run on.  He could have ended with line 14 and then, whatever other criticism might have been passed upon his work, we should have had at least the sonnet form.  The additional lines are in themselves fairly good poetry but they have no place in what purports to be translation.  The translator signs himself simply “r.”  Whoever he was, he had poetic feeling and power of expression.  No mere poetaster could have given lines so exquisite in their imagery, so full of music, and so happy in their phrasing.  This fact in itself makes it a poor translation, for it is rather a paraphrase with a quality and excellence all its own.  Not a line exactly renders the English.  The paraphrase is never so good as the original but, considered by itself, it is good poetry.  The disillusionment comes only with comparison.  On the whole, this second attempt to put Shakespeare into Landsmaal was distinctly less successful than the first.  As poetry it does not measure up to Aasen; as translation it is periphrastic, arbitrary, not at all faithful.