wrote her "Sorrowing Turtle-dove," a series of elegies dedicated to the eternal memory of her lost husband. Notwithstanding the lack-a-daisical title of these poems, they contain the first pure traces of the genuine lyric vein since the time of the Folks-Visor; and, notwithstanding much in them that offends our present tastes, they are full of warmth and heartfelt sentiment, and are pervaded by a wild, poetic melancholy, that is by no means unattractive. The same may be said of her love songs, her odes, and her idyl," Camilla."

Through her " Turtle-dove" effusions, she became extremely popular; and her fame surprising her in her remote retirement, she soon abandoned her sackcloth and ashes, her sable-draped cottage, and hastened to Stockholm, where she became the centre of a wide and brilliant circle, and the active soul of various coteries. She again, however, returned to the country, to a solitary house which she called "Lugnet"-The Repose-on the shore of the Mälar Lake. Here she soon became desperately in love with a young man of the name of Fischerström, whom she had patronized, but who unfortunately was already engaged; and in despair and mortification, like another Sappho, she actually attempted to throw herself into the sea. She was prevented, but died soon afterwards.

Madame Nordenflycht was a woman of extensive reading, considered very learned for her time, and this learning is somewhat lavishly and injuriously displayed in her poetry. She wrote "Swedish Poets," a series of portraitures extremely flattering; and she published a Defence of Woman," in reply to Rousseau, with learned notes. Besides these, she was the author of "Spiritual Songs, epigrams; an "Attempt at a Caroliad," and other productions.

The influence which Mrs. Nordenflycht exerted on the

literary life of her time in the capital, and the éclat which surrounded her, is evidenced by the coteries which sprung up about her, embracing all the poets of the day, none of whom would be left out, lest they should be marked as tasteless and unimportant. These coteries decided the literary fashion of the time; and the leading one modestly published the productions of its members, as "Our Experiment in the Formation of Opinion," and "Literary Labours," in two volumes, in 1759 and 1762. On the death of Fru Nordenflycht, this society fell to pieces, but was renewed again by Schröderheim, under the name of "Utile Dulci," and had two kindred societies, one at Upsala called " Apollini Sacra," and another at Åbo, the Aurora." Societies became the rage; Bergklint founded a "Society of Belles-Lettres," which ceased in 1766. But already in 1753, the infection had extended to royalty, and Louisa Ulrika had established "The Academy of Literature," which continued till her death in 1782, and in 1786, was restored under the title of the " Academy of Literature, History, and Antiquity."

We may give a few lines of Fru Nordenflycht's, such as she probably wrote in her mourning-hung hermitage in Södermanland:

"My life's desire is shorn away,

I long for death alone;

For thee, dark mansion of decay,
Thou grave! I inly groan.
On earth I find no more,

Aught that my soul can bless;

Here life is but distress;

My time in tears runs o'er.
Youth's bliss was once my lot,

But now to misery sold,
Bound in grim sorrow's fold.

A long, slow death before me stands, and yet I reach him not.

Thou sad and wounded heart,
Cannot the bitter smart

Which thus consumes thy breath,

Bring thee this longed-for death!
That life's frail tissue rending,

The soul's pure flame ascending,

Its prison-house may quit, and soar to love unending."

In the school, and amid the social circle of Madame Nordenflycht, formed themselves two poets who are allied to her in the more living sentiment that distinguished her above her predecessors, and the one resembling her in the portraiture of idyllic love, the other in the melancholy lament over the evanescence of earthly happiness: these were the Counts Gyllenborg and Creutz. The difference between them is, that Creutz possessed more imagination, through which his descriptions display a greater splendour, a more tropical luxuriance, and a greater feeling of life's enjoyment; while Gyllenborg was more melancholy, more sentimental, reflective, and the faculty of conception being more predominant in him.

They unhappily resembled each other in this respect, that neither of them were poets of the first order; that they employed themselves in the descriptions of nature and of the outer world, while they were deficient in that lyric depth, without which description becomes a mere inventory. They formed themselves on the model of the English poets of the period, especially of the descriptive ones. Dalin, besides copying in the "Argus," the English "Spectator," began a translation of Addison's

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Cato;" and Gyllenborg and Creutz took Thomson as their model; Silverstolpe translated some of the poems of Shenstone; Kellgren and Leopold, writers that we are approaching, preferred Pope. These authors accorded well enough with the French taste of the period, and

were, in fact, themselves, in a great degree, formed upon it.

Creutz, who was born in 1729, in Finland, was employed as Ambassador at the Courts of France and Spain. He died in 1785. His best work is "Atis and Camilla,” the story of which would excite no interest at the present day, but of which the style is distinguished for its beauty, and the whole poem for its real feeling for the beauty of He wrote besides, a "Song of Summer," Daphne," and elegies. His satiric poem, "The Defence of Lying," has much merit.

nature.

Gyllenborg's chief works are: "Songs of the Four Seasons," "The Joys and Sorrows of Men," "Farewell to Youth," "Ode on the Power of the Soul," Fables, Tåget öfver Bält,” in twelve books. Essay on the Art of Poetry," Satires and Plays. His "Tåget öfver Bält "-Expedition across the Baltic-is an attempt at a national epic, but is too rhetorical, diffuse and overdone with allegoric machinery and reminiscences of Voltaire's "Henriade." Charles V.'s crossing the ice to make a descent on Denmark, in Cromwell's time, and the interference of Meadows, the English minister, with similar agency, are poor materials for an epic poem. His "Joys and Sorrows of Men" is full of a deep melancholy. Every species of earthly ill is congregated in it, and limned with no ordinary power. An inexpressible pain transfixes our heart as we read it; we are reminded, perhaps, of moments when the burden of life lay with mountainous might upon our souls, and then the miseries of Job were poured out upon us. But if we long for the home of eternal repose, where every anguish is stilled, and are bowed beneath the hand of Providence, who chastises but to improve us, no such poetic or religious balm breathes from these pages. There is a spirit of epicurean

and stoical scepticism expressed in them, of which Gyllenborg was the first whisperer, but which grew and was perpetuated in the literature of the Academy. His poems on the Seasons are more pleasing. In their first lyrical shape, they are worthy of comparison with Oxenstjerna's "Hours of the Day," and we need only to compare Gyllenborg with Dalin and Madame Nordenflycht, to perceive what a decided advance he had made beyond them, both in style and in the spirit of poetry itself. His deeper though more sorrowful glances into the human heart, his yearning after profounder thought, and his vivid feeling of the beauty of nature, comprehending it with an idea great and national, are his peculiar characteristics, and mark him as the chief poet of this particular school.

The other writers, who may be briefly mentioned in this first section of the eighteenth century, are Wrangel, Hesselius, Celsius, Lalin, Wellander, dramatists; Liljestråle, Skjöldebrand, Hallman Göstafsson, Bergeström, narrative poets and translators; Olof Rudbeck, author of the "Boråsiade," Livin, Cederhjelm, Nyrén, comic and satiric writers. Mörk was the great romance writer of the times. He may be considered Sweden's first regular author of romance. His models are Fenelon, Barclay, and Lohenstein. His productions are more numerous than readable, for they are heavy, bombastic, monotonous and diffuse. He had his imitators in Wexel and Gyllenstolpe. Palmfelt and Nicander were translators chiefly from Virgil and others.