“What here in the first room attracted his attention was the big book-cases. He found them richly supplied not only with Swedish, English, and French works, but also Greek and Roman authors of every sort. With greedy eyes he fixed himself especially by the side of a folio, on whose leathern back he read: Homerus. It was Castalio’s edition, printed in Basel in 1561. Here was an acquaintance to make. He made it immediately, and in a manner of which his own account is worthy of being told:—
“‘So without any grammatical foundation, I resolved to attempt the task immediately. At the outset it naturally proceeded slowly and tediously. The many dialectic forms of which I had no idea at all, laid me under great difficulties, which would probably have discouraged any less energetic will. The Greek grammar I had used was adapted to prose writers: of the poetic dialects nothing was said. I was therefore compelled just here to devise a system for myself, and further, to make notes from that time, which now show that among many mistakes I sometimes was right. To give way before any sort of difficulty was not at all my disposition; and the farther I went, the easier my understanding of the poet became. With the prose writers Xenophon and Lucian, I also made at this time a flying acquaintance; but they interested me little, and my principal work continued to be with Homer, and also Horace in Latin, whom I had not known before. French literature was richly represented in this library; Rousseau’s, Voltaire’s, and Racine’s works were complete, and were not neglected either. Of Shakspere there was only Hamlet, which strangely enough interested me very little. In German literature there was not a single poet. That language I was compelled to learn from the usual instruction books, and thus conceived a repugnance to it which lasted for a long time.’”
Thus in his first sojourn of seven months in Rämen, the future poet read the Iliad through three times, the Odyssey twice, and from the same book-shelves Horace, Virgil, and Ovid’s Metamórphoses. He was almost insane in his application to study; yet his constitutional vigor, strange to say, remained unimpaired. In 1799 he entered the university of Lund, whither his father and two brothers had preceded him. We will not linger for details of his industry there. It will not surprise us to learn that on the “promotion” (graduation) of his class in 1803, Esaias Tegnér was given the primus, or first place.
Immediately after the ceremony of graduation, Tegnér hastened to greet his friends and especially Jacob Branting and Christopher Myhrman, whose liberality had in part sustained him at the university. “At Rämen he was met with open arms by the older members of the family, and with secret trembling by a beating heart of sixteen years, where his image stood concealed behind the memories of childhood. His summer became an idyl,—the first happiness of love. . . . The traveler who approaches Rämen finds in the pine woods beside the way a narrow stone, bearing the letters E. T., and A. M. By this, one August evening, two hearts swore to each other eternal fidelity.”
The university of Lund hastened to appropriate to itself its brilliant alumnus, as private instructor in Æsthetics. Three years later occurred his marriage with Anna Myhrman. For several years his lyre was silent. He believed success for him lay in the line of scholarship, and only for solace or merriment he tuned its chords. In 1808 appears the first truly national and characteristic poem of this skald, “To the Defenders of Sweden.” “This warlike dithyramb sounded like an alarm-bell through every national breast. Tones at once so defiant and so beautiful had not been heard before. These double services as instructor and poet attracted the attention of the throne. It was manifested by a commission investing Tegnér with the name, rank and honor of professor.”
It was during this period that Tegnér’s literary reputation neared its radiant meridian. Poems of various sort came forth with strange rapidity,—as yet, however, none of much extent. There were at this time two schools of poetry in Sweden,—the mystical, or “phosphoristic,” and the Gothic. The former inclined toward foreign, especially German, models, the latter maintained the sufficiency of national models and subjects. Tegnér, though an ardent disciple of the Gothic school, disdained discussion, and maintained that the best argument was example. Such example he was himself destined soon to furnish. In 1820 appeared his “sacredly sweet Whitsun Idyl,” “The Children of the Lord’s Supper,” which has been so well rendered into English by Mr. Longfellow. Though clear and simple as the brooks and sunshine this poem lacks the stir and vigor which it was so easy for Tegnér to impart. In the next year this lack was supplied in the poem of “Axel,” and almost at the same time by the publication of his “Frithiof’s Saga,”—“the apples,” says Geijer [Yeiyer], “through which the gods yet show their power to make immortal.” This is an old Norse legend which Tegnér has rewritten and modernized, and at the same time charged full with the fervor of his mighty soul. “It would be superfluous to recount here the applause with which this master poem of Northern poetic genius was vociferously greeted by all the educated world; how Goethe from his throne of poetical eminence bowed his laurel-crowned gray locks in homage to it; how all the languages of Europe, even the Russian, Polish and modern Greek, hastened to appropriate to themselves greater or less portions of the same; how in the poet’s own country it soon became a living joy upon the lips of the people, a treasure in the day-laborer’s cot as in the prince’s halls. Its author’s name has gone abroad together with that of Linnæus, and wherever one goes one hears it mentioned with respect and admiration.”
Of this “Frithiof’s Saga” our space forbids us to speak at greater length. Mr. Longfellow has given an excellent analysis of the poem (North American Review for July, 1837), and it has been rendered into English, entirely or in part, no less than nineteen times. We have but to record that this example of the clear treatment of a Gothic or Northern subject was the necessary and final argument against the school of Phosphorists. From the day when the “Frithiof” appeared, we hear of no other model or standard of poetic excellence in Sweden.
With the publication of these longer poems Tegnér’s career as a poet virtually terminates. He never estimated his gifts at their real value, and gave to the practice of his art only leisure moments. To the end of his life the success of his “Frithiof” was a standing surprise to him. His chief fondness was for Greek,—the department in which twelve years before he had been made a university professor. But his life henceforth was to be little with his beloved Greek authors, little with his muse. Not long after graduation he had been ordained and placed for a time in charge of two parishes in the neighborhood of Lund. Now, in January, 1824, came the intelligence that he had been elected to the vacant bishopric of Wexiö. The spirit which breathed from his “Nattvardsbarnen” (Children of the Lord’s Supper) had won the hearts of the clergy, and this was their tribute of love and confidence. He accepted with reluctance, removing to the scene of his future labors in May of the same year. He threw himself into his new duties with all energy. The various interests of his diocese, particularly the schools, received his unremitting care. In the fourteen years that follow he became the acknowledged head of the Swedish Church. In the National Diet he was also an active member. But now we approach the end of this remarkable career. There was a trace of insanity in the family, and Tegnér had long feared he might become a victim. In his poetic facility he saw only a mental intensity emanating from that source; and he was doubtless right. Overwork had also aggravated the danger. Ere long he grew full of great and impossible schemes. He wrote to Mr. Longfellow that he was about to issue a new edition of his writings in a hundred volumes! Finally, in 1838, he was sent to the insane hospital at Schleswig. After a short stay he seemed to mend, and returned to his labors, as all thought, restored. But his vital energy was slowly waning. In 1845 he was obliged to seek release from public duty, and in the year following was stricken with paralysis. It was not the first attack of this kind that had come upon him, but it was the last. “His head now possessed its old-time soundness; his voice had recovered its usual clearness. Only the evening before his death he was attacked by a slight delirium, which was betrayed by his speaking often of Goethe as his countryman. Resigned and peaceful he neared his end. Water and light were still his refreshments. When the autumn sun one day shone brightly into his sick chamber, he broke forth with the words, ‘I lift up my hands to God’s house and mountain,’ which he often afterward repeated. They were his last Sun-song. To his absent children he sent his farewell greeting; to his oldest son a ring with Luther’s picture, which he had worn on his hand for thirty years. Shortly before midnight on the second of November, 1846,—the most beautiful aurora borealis lighted up the sky—the spirit of the skald gently broke its fetters. Scarcely a sigh betrayed the separation to his kneeling wife, who read upon his face, lit up at once by the moon and death, ‘blessed peace and heavenly rapture.’”
Tegnér’s successor in Swedish belles-lettres was Rúneberg, of whom we shall now give a brief sketch. Tegnér belongs to the romantic era of European literature, and, as we know, it would be hard to find a more purely romantic poet. Runeberg was destined to found in Sweden the modern or realistic school. He was the son of a “merchant-captain,” and born in 1804 in Finland. He was sent to college, became professor of Latin, and finally of Greek. He caught in some way the spirit of the coming change, unlearned the old methods in which he had begun to write, and in 1832 published his “Elk Hunters.” This was the beginning of nature-writing in Sweden. It was followed by the delicate idyl of “Hanna,” the brilliant “Christmas Eve,” and finally “Nadeschda” and “King Fjalar.” These bear favorable comparison with anything in modern literature. In his shorter pieces, and notably the “Ensign Stal’s Stories,” Runeberg has earned perhaps greater fame. His death occurred in 1877. The school he founded is continued by the living pens of Wirsén, Carl Snoilsky, and Viktor Rydberg.
We will translate, to close our sketch, a random morsel of Runeberg, not as an example of his genius and skill, but rather of his simplicity and love of nature. The meter is already familiar to us in “Hiawatha,” and was borrowed by both Runeberg and Longfellow from the national epic of Finland, the “Kalevála.”