He translated Paradise Lost. A writer of far more power and versatility was Johan Henrik Kellgren (q.v.; 1751–1795), the leader of taste in his time. He was the first writer Kellgren. of the end of the century in Sweden, and the second undoubtedly was Karl Gustaf af Leopold[1] (1756–1829), “the blind seer Tiresias-Leopold,” who lived on to represent the old school in the midst of romantic Leopold. times. Leopold attracted the notice of Gustavus III. by a volume of Erotic Odes (1785). The king gave him a pension and rooms in the palace, admitting him on intimate terms. He was not equal to Kellgren in general poetical ability, but he is great in didactic and satiric writing. He wrote a satire, the Enebomiad, against a certain luckless Per Enebom, and a classic tragedy of Virginia. Gudmund Göran Adlerbeth (1751–1818) made translations from the classics and from the Norse, and was the author of a successful tragic opera, Cora och Alonzo (1782). Anna Maria Lenngren (1754–1817) was a very popular sentimental writer of graceful domestic verse, chiefly between 1792 and 1798. She was less French and more national than most of her contemporaries; she is a Swedish Mrs Hemans. Much of her work appeared anonymously, and was generally attributed to her contemporaries Kellgren and Leopold.
Two writers of the academic period, besides Bellman, and a generation later than he, kept apart, and served to lead up to the romantic revival. Bengt Lidner (1759–1793), a melancholy and professedly elegiacal writer, had analogies with Novalis. He interrupted his studies at the Lidner. university by a voyage to the East Indies, and only returned to Stockholm after many adventures. In spite of the patronage of Gustavus III. he continued to lead a disordered, wandering life, and died in poverty. A short narrative poem, The Death of the Countess Spastara (1783), has retained its popularity. Lidner was a genuine poet, and his lack of durable success must be set down to faults of character, not to lack of inspiration. His poems appeared in 1788. Thomas Thorild (1759–1808) was a much stronger nature, and led the revolt against prevailing taste with far more vigour. But he is an irregular Thorild. and inartistic versifier, and it is mainly as a prose writer, and especially as a very original and courageous critic, that he is now mainly remembered. He settled in Germany and died as a professor in Greifswald. Karl August Ehrensvärd (1745–1800) may be mentioned here as a critic whose aims somewhat resembled those of Thorild. The creation of the Academy led to a great production of aesthetic and philosophical writing. Among critics of taste may be mentioned Nils Rosén von Rosenstein (1752–1824); the rhetorical bishop of Linköping, Magnus Lehnberg (1758–1808); and Count Georg Adlersparre (1760–1809). Rosén von Rosenstein embraced the principles of the encyclopaedists while he was attached to the Swedish embassy in Paris. On his return to Sweden he became tutor to the crown prince, and held in succession a number of important offices. As the first secretary of the Swedish Academy he exercised great influence over Swedish literature and thought. His prose writings, which include prefaces to the works of Kellgren and Lidner, and an eloquent argument against Rousseau's theory of the injurious influence of art and letters, rank with the best of the period. Kellgren and Leopold were both of them important prose writers.
The excellent lyrical poet Frans Mikael Franzén (q.v.; 1772–1847) and a belated academician Johan David Valerius (1776–1852), fill up the space between the Gustavian period and the domination of romantic ideas from Germany. It Hammarsköld. was Lorenzo Hammarsköld (1785–1827) who in 1803 introduced the views of Tieck and Schelling by founding the society in Upsala called “Vitterhetens Vänner,” and by numerous critical essays. His chief work was Svenska vitterheten (1818, &c.) a history of Swedish literature. Hammarsköld's society was succeeded in 1807 by the famous “Aurora Atterbom förbundet,” founded by two youths of genius, Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom (1790–1855) and Vilhelm Fredrik Palmblad (1788–1852). These young men had at first to endure bitter opposition and ridicule from the academic writers then in power, but they supported this with cheerfulness, and answered back in their magazines Polyfem and Fosforos (1810–1813). They were named “Fosforisterna” (“Phosphorists”) from the latter. Another principal member of the school was Karl Frederik Dahlgren (q.v.; 1791–1844), a humorist who owed much to the example of Bellman. Fru Julia Nyberg (1785–1854), under the title of Euphrosyne, was their tenth Muse, and wrote agreeable lyrics. Among the Phosphorists Atterbom was the man of most genius. On the side of the Academy they were vigorously attacked by Per Adam Wallmark (1777–1858), to whom they replied in a satire which was the joint work of several of the romanticists, Markall's Sleepless Nights. One of the innovators, Atterbom, eventually forced the doors of the Academy itself.
In 1811 certain young men in Stockholm founded a society for the elevation of society by means of the study of Scandinavian antiquity. This was the Gothic Society, which Gothic Society. began to issue the magazine called Iduna as its organ. Of its patriotic editors the most prominent was Erik Gustaf Geijer (q.v.; 1783–1847), but he was presently Geijer. joined by a young man slightly older than himself, Esaias Tegnér (q.v.; 1782–1846), afterwards bishop of Vexiö, the greatest of Swedish writers. Even more enthusiastic Tegnér. than either in pushing to its last extreme the worship of ancient myths and manners was Per Henrik Ling (1776–1839), now better remembered as the father of gymnastic science than as a poet. The Gothic Society eventually included certain younger men than these—Arvid August Afzelius (1785–1871), the first editor of the Swedish folk-songs; Gustaf Vilhelm Gumaelius (1789–1877), who has been somewhat pretentiously styled “The Swedish Walter Scott,” author of the historical novel of Tord Bonde; Baron Bernhard von Beskow (q.v.; 1796–1868), lyrist and dramatist; and Karl August Nicander (1799–1839), a lyric poet who approached the Phosphorists in manner. The two great lights of the Gothic school are Geijer, mainly in prose, and Tegnér, in his splendid and copious verse. Johan Olof Wallin (1779–1859) may be mentioned in the same category, Wallin. although he is really distinct from all the schools. He was archbishop of Upsala, and in 1819 he published the national hymn-book of Sweden; of the hymns in this collection, 126 are written by Wallin himself.
From 1810 to 1840 was the blossoming-time in Swedish poetry, and there were several writers of distinguished merit who could not be included in either of the groups enumerated above. Second only to Tegnér in genius, the brief Stagnelius. life and mysterious death of Erik Johan Stagnelius (1793–1823) have given a romantic interest to all that is connected with his name. His first publication was the epic of Vladimir the Great (1817); to this succeeded the romantic poem Blanda. His singular dramas, The Bacchantes (1822), Sigurd Ring, which was posthumous, and The Martyrs (1821), are esteemed by many critics to be his most original productions. His mystical lyrics, entitled Liljor i Saron (“Lilies in Sharon”; 1820), and his sonnets, which are the best in Swedish, may be recommended as among the most delicate products of the Scandinavian mind. Stagnelius has been compared, and not improperly, to Shelley.[2] Erik Sjöberg, who called himself Sjöberg. “Vitalis” (1794–1828), was another gifted poet, whose career was short and wretched. A volume of his poems appeared in 1820; they are few in number and all brief. His work divides itself into two classes—the one profoundly melancholy, the other witty or boisterous. Two humorous poets of the same period who deserve mention are Johan Anders Wadman (1777–1837), an improvisatory of the same class as Bellman, and Christian Erik Fahlcrantz (q.v.; 1790–1866).
Among the poets who have been mentioned above, the
