grave. His didactic poems, odes, and poetical epistles are less valuable, while his satires, which owed their origin to his literary controversies, were on account of their startling pungency hailed with great applause. Far more attractive are his fables, epigrams and poetical narratives. His æsthetical views he has set forth and defended in various prose works. He was for some time a contributor to Kellgren's journal, and in the last years of his life he edited a periodical of his own.[1]
Kellgren and Leopold are the chief and at the same time the only conspicuous representatives of the Gustavian tendency. In addition to these Oxenstjerna and Adlerbeth are the only ones worthy of mention, both of whom belong rather to the preceding period with its dry, serious manner than to the Gustavian, but who still may be said to have been more or less affected by the new stream of literature. Johan Gabriel Oxenstjerna (1750-1818) received the full measure of recognition from his contemporaries by his great poems "Dagens Stunder" and "Skjörderna" (the hours of the day, and the harvest, the latter a rather dry, prosy didactic poem on agriculture), though they contain but little of interest to modern readers. They contain, however, attractive and well drawn pictures of nature. He also produced translations of Milton's "Paradise Lost," and of a portion of Tasso's "Gerusalemme liberata," which had a certain value in their day. Gudmund Göeran Adleebeth (1751-1818) is even less important as an independent poet, and only a few of his dramatic works written in the French style, as for instance the tragedy, "Ingjald Illråda," deserve to be mentioned. On the other hand, he did much excellent work as a translator. His version of Eyvind Skáldaspiller's Hákonarmál was the first of the kind in Swedish, and contributed vastly to drawing the attention to Old Norse poetry. His translations of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid are particularly excellent, and his version of Æneas is a real master-piece.
- ↑ Leopold's samlade Skrifter, last edition by C. R. Nyblom I-II, 1873.
