This is exactly the Byronic note, which would be still more audible, if I had preserved the rhymed couplets. Even Medora's male attire is borrowed by Maria, and much more of this Byronic melodramatic heroism is there, only a little more conventionally draped and with larger concessions to the Philistine sense of propriety. But even if Tegnér in "Axel" had coquetted with the Romantic muse, it would be rash to conclude that he contemplated any durable relation. The note which he had struck in his renowned oration at the festival commemorating the Reformation (1817), came from the depth of his heart, and continued to resound through his speech and song for many years to come. I do not moan to imply, of course, that the Byronic Romanticism was very closely akin to that of Tieck, the Schlegels, and Novalis; or that Tegnér in the least compromised his frank and manly liberalism by composing a variation, as it were, on a Byronic theme. How deeply he hated the mediæval obscurantism which then, under the auspices of Metternich and his unholy "Holy Alliance" was spreading over Europe, he showed in numerous private and public utterances concerning the political condition of Europe after the fall of Napoleon. His greeting to the "New Year, 1816" (which his son-in-law has foolishly excluded from his edition of the collected works), is overbrimming with bitterness at the triumph of the enemies of the light.
"Hurrah! Religion is a Jesuit,
The rights of man are Jacobins;
The world is free; the raven is white;
Long live the Pope—and that other;
I am going to Germany, and there I'll learn
Sonnets to sing and incense to burn.
"Welcome, thou New Year, with murder and gloom,
Stupidity, lies, and fraud!
I hope thou'lt make an end of our earth,
A bullet at least she's worth;
She's restless, poor thing, like many another,
A shot through the head—she'll cause no more bother!"
It was the fashion in those days to revile the Revolution, because it had produced the man on horseback who had turned the old order of things topsy-turvy in a very unceremonious fashion. Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth in England, and Klopstock, Schiller, and a horde of lesser lights in Germany, had hailed the French uprising as the bloody dawn of a new and more glorious day; but the excesses of the Reign of Terror frightened them back into the old fastnesses of Conservatism. Tegnér (and to his honor be it said) was one of the few who did not despair of liberty because a people born and bred in despotism failed to exercise the wisdom and self-restraint which only liberty can foster. For the only road to the attainment of liberty is its practice and its abuse, and the slow education which can be acquired by no theoretical teaching, but only in the hard and expensive school of experience. For the terrible birth-pangs of liberty no despotically governed people can escape, unless it chooses to remain in thraldom.
This is the spirit that breathes through Tegnér's speeches and poems, during his most vigorous manhood; and even, when the rift in his lute made its music harsh and uncertain, the strain was yet essentially the same, though transposed into an alien key. It is very tempting to quote the many noble sayings of this master of the commanding phrase, but one or two must suffice. It is a delight to read his published correspondence, because of this power of strong and luminous utterance, which he wields with such Titanic ease. Then, again, there is no affectation or cant, but an engaging candor and straightforwardness which bespeak a true man, considering the time when they were written. What clarity of political vision there is in such passages as these:
(1813.) "He who fancies that Europe will be delivered by Russia and her confederates, or that the progress of the Cossacks is for the advantage of Sweden, may perhaps be in the right; but his views are very different from mine. In the hatred of the Barbarians I am born and bred, and I hope to die in it, unbewildered by modern sophisms."
(1814.) "Who can believe in the re-establishment of the European balance of power or rejoice in the victory of wretched mediocrity over power and genius. The upheavals of the age will soon affect us all—at least us Swedes."
(1817) "That we are living on an earth yet quaking from the French Revolution is undeniable; and extremely foolish seems to me the speech of those who insist that the Revolution is finished, or even approaching its end."
"Napoleon fell, not on account of his wretched opponents, but because despotism is the livery of all strong souls, because his spirit was opposed to the spirit of the age, with which he wrestled, and which was stronger than he."[33]
[33] Quoted from G. Brandes: Esaias Tegnér: En Litteraturpsychologisk Studie. Kjöbenhavn, 1878, pp. 87 and 88.