the literature of his country. He found the language rough and halting, and he moulded it into perfect smoothness and elasticity. His master, Buraeus, had written a few Swedish hexameters by way of experiment. Stjernhjelm took the form and made it national.
The claim of Stjernhjelm to be the first Swedish poet may be contested by a younger man, but a slightly earlier writer, Gustaf Rosenhane (1619-1684), who was a reformer Rosenhane. on quite other lines. If Stjernhjelm studied Opitz, Rosenhane took the French poets of the Renaissance for his models, and in 1650 wrote a cycle of one hundred sonnets, the earliest in the language; these were published under the title Venerid in 1680. Rosenhane printed in 1658 a “Complaint of the Swedish Language” in thirteen hundred rattling rhyming lines, and in 1682 collection of eighty songs. He was a metrist of the artistic order, skilful, learned and unimpassioned. His zeal for the improvement of the literature of his country was beyond question. Most of the young poets, however, followed Stjernhjelm rather than Rosenhane. As personal friends and pupils of the former, the brothers Columbus deserve special attention. They were sons of a musician and poet, Jonas Columbus (1586-1663). Each wrote copiously in verse, but Johan (1640-1684), who was professor of poetry at Upsala, almost entirely in Latin, while Samuel (1642-1679), especially in his Odae sveticae, showed himself an apt and fervid imitator of the Swedish hexameters of Stjernhjelm, to whom he was at one time secretary, and whose Hercules he dramatized. His works were included by P. Hanselli in vol. ii. of Samlade vitterhets arbeten, &c.
Of a rhyming family of Hjärne, it is enough to mention one member, Urban Hjärne (1641-1724), who introduced the new form of classical tragedy from France, in a species of transition from the masques of Stjernhjelm to the later regular rhymed dramas. His best play was a Rosimunda. Lars Johansson (1642-1674), who called himself “Lucidor the Unfortunate,” has been the subject of a whole tissue of romance, most of which is fabulous. It is true, however, that he was stabbed, like Marlowe, in a midnight brawl at a tavern. His poems were posthumously collected as Flowers of Helicon, Plucked and Distributed on various occasions by Lucidor the Unfortunate. Stripped of the myth which had attracted so much attention to his name, Lucidor proves to be an occasional rhymester of a very low order. Haquin Spegel (1645-1714), the famous archbishop of Upsala, wrote a long didactic epic in alexandrines, God's Labour and Rest, with an introductory ode to the Deity in rhymed hexameters. He was also a good writer of hymns. Another ecclesiastic, the bishop of Skara, Jesper Svedberg (1653-1735), wrote sacred verses, but is better remembered as the father of Swedenborg. Peter Lagerlöf (1648-1699) cultivated a pastoral vein in his ingenious lyrics Elisandra and Lycillis; he was professor of poetry, that is to say, of the art of writing Latin verses, at Upsala. Olof Wexionius (1656-1690?) published his Sinne-Afvel, a collection of graceful miscellaneous pieces, in 1684, in an edition of only 100 copies. Its existence was presently forgotten, and the name of Wexionius had dropped out of the history of literature, when Hanselli recovered a copy and reprinted its contents in 1863.
We have hitherto considered only the followers of Stjernhjelm; we have now to speak of an important writer who followed in the footsteps of Rosenhane. Gunno Eurelius, Dahlstjerna afterwards ennobled with the name of Dahlstjerna (q.v.; 1661-1709), early showed an interest in the poetry of Italy. In 1690 he translated Guarini's Pastor Fido, and in or just after 1697 published, in a folio volume without a date, his Kunga-Skald, the first original poem in ottava rima produced in Swedish. This is a bombastic and vainglorious epic in honour of Charles XI., whom Eurelius adored; it is not, however, without great merits, richness of language, flowing metre, and the breadth of a genuine poetic enthusiasm. He published a little collection of lamentable sonnets when his great master died. Johan Paulinus Liljenstedt (1655-1732), a Finn, was a graceful imitator of Ronsard and Guarini. Johan Runius (1679-1713), called the “Prince of Poets,” published a collection entitled Dudaim, in which there is nothing to praise, and with him the generation of the 17th century closes. Talent had been shown by certain individuals, but no healthy school of Swedish poetry had been founded, and the latest imitators of Stjernhjelm had lost every vestige of taste and independence.
In prose the 17th century produced but little of importance in Sweden. Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632) was the most polished writer of its earlier half, and his speeches take an important place in the development of the Rudbeck. language. The most original mind of the next age was Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702), the famous author of Atland eller Manhem. He spent nearly all his life in Upsala, building anatomical laboratories, conducting musical concerts, laying out botanical gardens, arranging medical lecture rooms—in a word, expending ceaseless energy on the practical improvement of the university. He was a genius in all the known branches of learning; at twenty-three his physiological discoveries had made him famous throughout Europe. His Atland (or Atlantika) appeared in four folio volumes, in Latin and Swedish, in 1675-1698; it was an attempt to summon all the authority of the past, all the sages of Greece and the bards of Iceland, to prove the inherent and indisputable greatness of the Swedish nation, in which the fabulous Atlantis had been at last discovered. It was the literary expression of the majesty of Charles XI., and of his autocratical dreams for the destiny of Sweden. From another point of view it is a monstrous hoard or cairn of rough-hewn antiquarian learning, now often praised, sometimes quoted from, and never read. Olof Verelius (1618-1682) had led the way for Rudbeck, by his translations of Icelandic sagas, a work which was carried on with greater intelligence by Johan Peringskjöld (1654-1720), the editor of the Heimskringla (1697), and J. Hadorph (1630-1693). The French philosopher Descartes, who died at Christina's court at Stockholm in 1650, found his chief, though posthumous, disciple in Andreas Rydelius (1671-1738), bishop of Lund, who was the master of Dalin, and thus connects us with the next epoch. His chief work, Nödiga förnuftsöfningar . . . (5 vols.) appeared in 1718. Charles XII., under whose special patronage Rydelius wrote, was himself a meta physician and physiologist of merit.
A much more brilliant period followed the death of Charles XII. The influence of France and England took the place of that of Germany and Italy. The taste of Louis XIV., tempered by the study of Addison and Pope, gave its tone to the academical court of Queen Louise Ulrica, who founded in 1758 the academy of literature, which developed later into the academy of literature, history and antiquities.
Sweden became completely a slave to the periwigs of literature, to the unities and graces of classical France. Nevertheless this was a period of great intellectual stimulus and activity, and Swedish literature took a solid shape for the first time. This Augustan period in Sweden closed somewhat abruptly about 1765. Two writers in verse connect it with the school of the preceding century. Jacob Frese (1692?-1728?), a Finn, whose poems were published in 1726, was an elegiacal writer of much grace, who foreshadowed the idyllic manner of Creutz. Atterbom pronounces Frese the best Swedish poet between Stjernhjelm and Dalin. Samuel von Triewald (1688-1743) played a very imperfect Dryden to Dalin's Pope. He was the first Swedish satirist, and introduced Boileau to his countrymen. His Satire upon our Stupid Poets may still be read with entertainment.[1] Both in verse and prose Olof von Dalin Dalin. (q.v.; 1708-1763) takes a higher place than any writer since Stjernhjelm. He was inspired by the study of his great English contemporaries. His Swedish Argus (1733-1734) was modelled on Addison's Spectator, his Thoughts about Critics (1736) on Pope's Essay on Criticism, his Tale of a Horse on Swift's Tale of a Tub. Dalin's style,
- ↑ The works of the chief writers between Sternhjelm and Dalin were edited by P. Hanselli (Upsala, 1856, &c.) as Samlade vitterhets-arbeten-af svenska författare.
