Swedes do; but he was certainly an unsurpassable master of pastiche.
Fru Nordenflycht. The only poet of importance who contested the laurels of Dalin was a woman. Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht flycbt. (1718-1763) was the centre of a society which ventured to rival that which Queen Ulrica Eleonore created and Dalin adorned. Both groups were classical in taste, both worshipped the new lights in England and France. Fru Nordenflycht wrote with facility and grace; her collection of lyrics, The Sorrowing Turtledove (1743), in spite of its affectation, enjoyed and merited a great success; it was the expression of a deep and genuine sorrow—the death of her husband after a very brief and happy married life. It was in 1744 that she settled in Stockholm and opened her famous literary salon. She was called “The Swedish Sappho,” and scandal has been needlessly busy in giving point to the allusion. It was to Fru Nordenflycht's credit that she discovered and encouraged the talent of two very distinguished poets younger than herself, Creutz Creutz. and Gyllenborg. Gustaf Filip Creutz (1729-1785) was a Finlander who achieved an extraordinary success with his idyllic poems, and in particular with the beautiful pastoral of Atis och Camilla, long the most popular of all Swedish poems. In 1763, the year of the death of Dalin and of Fru Nordenflycht, Creutz ceased to write, having been appointed minister to Spain; he gave up poetry for politics. Gyllenborg. Gustaf Frederik Gyllenborg (1731-1808) was a less accomplished poet, less delicate and touching, more rhetorical and artificial. His epic Tåget öfver Bält (“The Expedition across the Belt”) (1785) is an imitation, in twelve books, of Voltaire's Henriade, and deals with the prowess of Charles X. It is impossible to read it. He wrote fables, allegories, and satires. He outlived his chief contemporaries so long that the new generation addressed him as “Father Gyllenborg.” Anders Odel (1718-1773) wrote in 1739 the famous “Song of Malcolm Sinclair,” the Sinclairsvisa. The writers of verse in this period were exceedingly numerous, but it cannot be needful, in a sketch of this kind, to preserve the minor names.
In prose, as was to be expected, the first half of the 18th century was rich in Sweden as elsewhere. The first Swedish novelist was Jakob Henrik Mörk (1714-1763). His romances have some likeness to those of Richardson; they are moral, long-winded, and slow in evolution, but written in an exquisite style, and with much knowledge of human nature. Adalrik och Göthilda, which went on appearing from 1742 to 1745, is the best known; it was followed, between 1749 and 1758, by Thecla. Jakob Wallenberg (1746-1778) described a voyage he took to the East Indies and China under the very odd title of Min Son på Galejan (“My Son at the Galleys”), a work full of humour and originality. We have already indicated that Dalin's activity in prose was scarcely less abundant or less meritorious than that in verse. He wrote an important history of Sweden down to Charles IX. His contemporary Johan Ihre (1707-1780), a professor at Upsala, edited the Codex Argenteus of Ulfilas, and produced the first complete Swedish dictionary. In doing this he was assisted by the labours of two other grammarians, Sven Hof (d. 1786) and Abraham Sahlstedt (d. 1776). Karl Gustaf Tessin (1695-1770) wrote on politics and on æsthetics. Anders Johan von Höpken (1712-1789), the friend of Ulrica Eleonore, was a master of rhetorical compliment in addresses and funeral orations. In spite of all the encouragement of the court, drama did not flourish in Sweden. Among the tragedians of the age we may mention Dalin, Gyllenborg, and Erik Wrangel (d. 1765). In comedy Reinhold Gustaf Modée (d. 1752) wrote three good plays in rivalry of Holberg. In science Linnæus, or Karl von Linné (1707-1778), was the name of greatest genius in the whole century; but he wrote almost entirely in Latin. The two great Swedish chemists, Torbern Olof Bergman (1735-1784) and Karl Vilhelm Scheele (1742-1786), flourished at this time. In pathology a great name was left by Nils Rosén von Rosenstein (1706-1773), in navigation by Admiral Fredrik Henrik af Chapman (d. 1808), in philology by Karl Aurivillius (d. 1786). But these and other distinguished savants whose names might be enumerated scarcely belong to the history of Swedish literature. The same may be said about that marvellous and many-sided genius, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), who, though the son of a Swedish poet, preferred to prophesy to the world in Latin (see Swedenborg).
What is called the Gustavian period is supposed to commence with the reign of Gustavus III. in 1771 and to close with the abdication of Gustavus IV. in 1809. This period of less than forty years was particularly rich in literary talent, and the taste of the people in literary matters widened to a remarkable extent. Journalism began to develop; the Swedish Academy was founded; the drama first learned to flourish in Stockholm; and literature began to take a characteristically national shape. This fruitful period naturally divides itself into two divisions, equivalent to the reigns of the two kings. The royal personages of Sweden have commonly been protectors of literature; they have strangely often been able men of letters themselves. Gustavus III. (1746-1792), the founder of the Swedish Academy and of the Swedish theatre, was himself a playwright of no mean ability. One of his prose dramas, Siri Brahe och Johan Gyllenstjerna, held the stage for many years. In 1773 the king opened the national theatre in Stockholm, and on that occasion an opera of Thetis och Pelée was performed, written by himself. In 1786 Gustavus created the Swedish Academy, on the lines of the French Academy, but with eighteen members instead of forty. The first list of immortals, which included the survivors of a previous age and such young celebrities as Kellgren and Leopold, embraced all that was most brilliant in the best society of Stockholm; the king himself presided, and won the first prize for an oration. The principal writers of the reign of Gustavus III. bear the name of the Academical school. But we must first consider a writer of genius who had nothing academical in his composition.
Bellman. Karl Mikael Bellman (1740-1795), the most original and one of the most able of all Swedish writers, was an improvisatore of the first order (see Bellman). The riot of his dithyrambic hymns sounded a strange note of nature amid the conventional music of the Gustavians. Of the academical poets Johan Gabriel Oxenstjerna (1750-1818), the nephew of Gyllenborg, was a descriptive idyllist of grace. He translated Paradise Lost. A writer of far more power and versatility was Johan Henrik Kellgren. Kellgren (1751-1795), the leader of taste in his time (see Kellgren). He was the first writer of the end of the century in Sweden, and the second undoubtedly was Karl Leopold. Gustaf af Leopold (1756-1829), “the blind seer Tiresias-Leopold,” who lived on to represent the old school in the midst of romantic times. Leopold 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. He is little read now. Gudmund Göran Adlerbeth (1751-1818) was a translator, and the author of a successful tragic opera, Cora och Alonzo (1782). Anna Maria Lenngren (1754-1817) was a very popular sentimental writer of graceful verse, chiefly between 1792 and 1798. She was less French and more national than most of her contemporaries; she is a Swedish Mrs Hemans.
