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A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SCANDINAVIA.

By L.A. SHERMAN, Ph.D.

VII.—ESAIAS TEGNÉR: JOHANN LUDVIG RUNEBERG.

Now that we have finished our Carolinian romance, shall we hear something of the author? He is certainly a brilliant poet, for his story which we have been reading is no deep-planned and long worked-over effort, but was written in the few days after a severe sickness when the author could not yet leave his couch. He wrote it to occupy his mind, and beguile the time. How is he esteemed in Sweden? Will it be thought incredible when I say no old hero, not even Charles XII., is reverenced there more deeply, no name is cherished so fondly,—that no man so nearly seems worthy to be called the father of his country, as this same poet-bishop, Esaias Tegnér?

All this is hard to explain, so many-sided was the life he led. We need to realize that he was more active as a bishop and party-leader than a poet. Then to appreciate him in the last capacity we must go among the Swedes themselves. We shall find in him the bond of unity of a whole nation, in that he has sung best the ancient glory of the race, and discovered to the world the heroic integrity of the Northern character. We shall note that it is he whose words are most, next to the Bible, on the lips of every Swede. If we go into a peasant’s cottage, far from railways and culture, we shall be sure to find some one who has not only heard of the great poet, but can even repeat for us whole cantos from his “Frithiof’s Saga,”—perhaps all of “Axel” itself. And nobody even sets about learning these poems by heart: they cling to the memory in spite of the reader.

But we must begin our history. Who were Tegnér’s parents? What was their rank in life? C. W. Böttiger, Tegnér’s son-in-law, who wrote a short life of the poet, shall answer for us:—

“A few years ago north of the church in Tegnaby, there was seen a gray cottage fallen into ruins, with moss-grown walls and two little windows of which one, according to the ancient custom of the province, was in the roof. The people regarded it with a kind of reverence; and if one asked the reason, the hat was raised with the answer: ‘The Bishop’s grandfather once lived there.’ His name was Lucas Esai´asson, his wife’s Ingeborg Mänsdotter. According to testimony handed down traditionally in the parish, this Lucas Esaiasson was a poor but exceedingly industrious and pious man. A peasant during a greater part of the time when Charles XII. was king, he continued yet twenty years after the ‘shot,’ a Carolinian at the plow. This and his Bible were his dearest treasures, and all he had to leave to fourteen children, for whom he procured bread with the plow after he had given them names from the Scriptures. There was one called Paul, another John, a third Enoch, and so on. A whole temple-progeny was growing up under his lowly roof: the Old and New Testaments were embracing each other in his cottage. The youngest son, born on the day of King Charles’s death, was named Esaias. The older brothers inherited their father’s plow, and became peasants; Esaias inherited his father’s Bible and became a minister.”

We wish we could continue to quote Mr. Böttiger, but his story proceeds too slowly. This Esaias was the father of our poet. Showing unusual aptitude for books, he was taken from the farm where he had gone out to service, and placed in the school of Wexiö. Coming from the by or village of Tegn, and having but one name, he was entered in the school register, kept after the manner of the time in Latin, as Esaias Tegnérus. The latter, the Latin suffix us being omitted, became afterward the family name.

In due time this Esaias Tegnér passed to the university, and after graduation was ordained as we have seen, a minister. He is remembered as a talented preacher, and merry man of society. He married a pastor’s daughter whose mother was celebrated for wit, force of character, and poetic gifts. Like qualities reappear in a marked degree in our poet, who was the fifth son of this marriage. He was born in Kykerud [Chikerood], November 13, 1782, and took his father’s name.

Ten years later the minister’s family was broken up by the death of the father. Two daughters and four sons were thus left in a measure to the charity of the world. The young Esaias was soon taken into the counting-room of one Jacob Branting, a crown-bailiff of the province and friend of the deceased pastor. Here he learned to keep accounts and developed rapidly into a valuable clerk. All the leisure he could command was given steadily to books. He read everything he could find, particularly the old Norse sagas, and amused himself by turning some of the driest themes of history and biography into poetical form. The crisis in his life came early. He had been in Branting’s office four years, and so won the respect and love of his employer as to be thought of already as the future son-in-law and successor to the office of bailiff. But Branting had observed the lad’s genius for books, and was beginning to think him fitted for something higher. One night, as they were riding together, Esaias astonished him by rehearsing with some minuteness the principles of astronomy, which he had gathered from his reading. Branting’s decision was at once made. “You shall study,” said he. “As for the means, God will supply the sacrifice, and I will not forget you.”

Young Esaias commenced at once to study Latin, Greek, and French. So remarkable was his memory that he was able, after glancing a few times over a list of fifty or sixty words, to repeat them with their meanings. To his other tasks he added later, the study of English, which he learned by the aid of a translation of Ossian. A change soon follows. Lars Gustaf, his oldest brother, not yet graduated from the university, had been asked to serve as tutor in the family of a rich manufacturer and owner of mines in Rämen. Lars consented on condition that he might bring with him Esaias; for during his temporary absence from the university he had undertaken to guide his brother’s work. The rich proprietor into whose house they were to enter was Christopher Myhrman, a name prominent in the history of Swedish manufactures. He had himself built up the foundries and mills of Rämen, turning the wilderness into a large and flourishing town. Amid his multifold business cares he always found time to read his favorite Latin authors, and enjoy the society of his family, whose circle at that time comprised eight vigorous sons and two blooming daughters.

“To this place, and to this circle it was,” says Mr. Böttiger, “that Lars Gustaf and Esaias Tegnér betook themselves one beautiful summer afternoon in July, 1797. They had traveled in a carriage over the road on which the owner of the mills had been obliged, twenty years before, to bring his wife home upon a pack-saddle; but they left the coach behind them and now came on foot at their leisure through the forest. Suddenly there burst upon their gaze the loveliest prospect. On a point of land, extending out into the water thickly set with islands, and encircled with birch and fir, lay like a beautiful promise the pleasant garden sloping in terraces to the sea, girded with the setting sun and covered with shady trees. ‘Who knows what dwells under their branches,’ perhaps the poet-stripling was already asking, with quickened pulses. We know what dwelt beneath them. It was his good fortune he was coming here to meet; it was amidst this smiling and magnificent nature that his talents were destined to develop, his powers to be confirmed, his wit to grow; it was over the threshold of this patriarchic