whether in prose or verse, was of a finished elegance. As a prose writer Dalin is chiefly memorable for his History of the Swedish Kingdom (4 vols., 1746–1762). His great epic, Swedish Freedom (1742) was Written in alexandrines of far greater smoothness and vigour than had previously been attempted. When in 1737 the new Royal Swedish Theatre was opened, Dalin led the way to a new school of dramatists with his Brynhilda, a regular tragedy in the style of Crébillon père. In his comedy of The Envious Man he introduced the manner of Molière, or more properly that of Holberg. His songs, his satires, his occasional pieces, without displaying any real originality, show Dalin's tact and skill as a workman with the pen. He stole from England and France, but with the plagiarism of a man of genius; and his multifarious labours raised Sweden to a level with the other literary countries of Europe. They formed a basis upon which more national and more scrupulous writers could build their various structures. A foreign critic, especially an English one, will never be able to give Dalin so much credit as the Swedes do; but he was certainly an unsurpassable master of pastiche. His works were collected in 6 vols., 1767.
The only poet of importance who contested the laurels of
Dalin was a woman. Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht (1718–1763)
was the centre of a society which took the
name of Tankebyggare Orden and ventured to rival
that which Queen Louise Ulrica created and Dalin
adorned. Both groups were classical in taste, both worshipped
Fru Nordenflycht.
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 and Gyllenborg, who published volumes of poetry in
Creutz.
Gyllenborg.
collaboration. Count Gustaf Philip Creutz (q.v.;
1731–1785) 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. His friend Count Gustaf Fredrik
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.
He wrote fables, allegories, satires, and a successful comedy of
manners, The Swedish Fop. 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 also exceedingly numerous.
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 Prose Writers. knowledge of human nature. Adalrik och Göthilda, which went on appearing from 1742 to 1745, is the best known; it was followed, between 1748 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.
Johan Ihre (1707–1780), a professor at Upsala, edited the Codex argenteus of Ulfilas, and produced the valuable Svenskt Dialect Lexicon (1766) based on an earlier learned work, the Dialectologia of Archbishop Erik Benzelius (d. 1743). He settled for some time at Oxford. Ihre's masterpiece is the Glossarium suengothicum (1769), a historical dictionary with many valuable examples from the ancient monuments of the language. In doing this he was assisted by the labours of two other grammarians, Sven Hof (d. 1786) and Abraham Sahlstedt (d. 1776). The chief historians were Sven Lagerbring (1707–1787), author of a still valuable history of Sweden down to 1457 (Svea Rikes historia, 4 vols., 1769–1783); Olof Celsius (1716–1794), bishop of Lund, who wrote histories of Gustavus I. (1746–1753) and of Eric XIV. (1774); and Karl Gustaf Tessin (1695–1770) who wrote on politics and on aesthetics. Tessin's Old Man's Letters to a young Prince were addressed to his pupil, afterwards Gustavus III. Count Anders Johan von Höpken (1712–1789), the friend of Louise Ulrica, 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 tragic writers of the age we may mention Dalin, Gyllenborg, and Erik Wrangel (1686–1765). In comedy Reinhold Gustaf Modée (d. 1752) wrote three good plays in rivalry of Holberg.
In science Linnaeus, 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.
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 The Gustavian period. 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. But his best work was his national drama of Gustaf Vasa (1783), written by the king in prose, and afterwards versified by Kellgren. 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 works of Gustavus III. in six volumes were printed at Stockholm in 1802–1806.
The principal writers of the reign of Gustavus III. bear the name of the academical school. But Karl Mikael Bellman (q.v.; 1740–1795), the most original and one of the most able of all Swedish writers, an improvisatore of the first order, had nothing academical in his composition. The riot of his dithyrambic hymns sounded a strange note of Bellman. 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.
