great prize to me. I rushed with the open letter in my hand into the room of my parents. Their astonishment was great, and at the beginning silent. My good mother clasped me to her heart; my brothers and sisters embraced me. All the friends of the family rejoiced. Of my old friend and benefactor, it was told me that when he, early in the morning, received the intelligence, he immediately went to his brother's (an old unmarried officer, as he was himself,) drew a chair to the table, seated himself on the chair, and with a loud voice proclaimed my honour. My father, as I remember, never caressed me. Our behaviour to him, although affectionate, was yet too much penetrated by the deepest respect ever to become confidential. On this day, when we accidentally met, he stretched out his hand and pressed it against his breast. Of all tokens of affection, as well as of all rewards, none ever touched me so much, nor even to this day can I recall it without tears. TEGNER. Tegnér stands at present, all qualities considered, as Sweden's greatest poet. He makes the nearest approach to a successful epic writer. His "Frithiofs Saga" is a great poem, constructed with art and executed with a true poet's creative faculty. In this respect, he is the first to remove from Sweden the defect confessed by her own authors, of not possessing a constructive and organizing genius in poetry. "Frithiof," if it cannot be called a perfect epic, may, perhaps, be called something better; a truly noble narrative poem, planned and written by its author in the spirit of his own genius, and telling a continuous story in a thoroughly methodic and progressive manner, animated by the fullest poetic life, and adorned with all the graces of feeling and imagination. Frithiof, the hero of the work, is a hero of a truly noble and heroic stamp. He is like a demi-god in youth, beauty and bravery. In these qualities he excels, as he should, all men of his age. But to make a perfect hero, there requires also intellectual and moral qualities as transcendent, and these Frithiof possesses. He shows the capacity for the profoundest affection, which is fixed on a woman worthy of a hero, for her beauty and virtue. He is faithful in his allegiance till he is insulted and persecuted by his envious Prince, beyond the endurance consistent with the honour and dignity of a man. He is faithful to the dictates of honour and conscience, in the most trying situation, and flings away his sword when tempted to avenge past injustice, and snatch the object of his life's desires, when it must be done at the expense of the worthy and hospitable old King Ring. It is true that Frithiof is but a bundle of lyrical poems woven into one epic cycle, rather than epic poem. But it is, nevertheless, a complete and great poem; and not being built on the old-established epic pattern, it possesses all the more novelty, which is certainly a recommendation. There is no reason why poets, any more than architects, should slavishly adhere to Greek models, if they can find anything better, nay, if it be not better, if it be only newer-a thing with a life, a fashion and a character of its own. Let Homer have the glory of having erected the grand old epic fabric-let modern authors adopt modern forms and plans, so that they do but give us truly inspired poems, which combine in their own way a great subject, with great characters, great sentiments and principles, and a high and worthy aim. It seems to us that Tegnér has achieved all these advantages in Frithiof. It is a poem which has won an enthusiastic reception wherever it has been read in the original, and that enthusiasm has endeavoured to diffuse itself amongst the readers of other nations through translations. In our own country this attempt has hitherto failed. We believe that no less than five translations exist in English, most of which we have seen, without being able to recognize any living resemblance to the original. Before we read that original, we came to the conclusion, from the perusal of such translations, that "Frithiofs Saga" was a meagre and threadbare composition; it awoke in us no pleasure, and no enthusiasm. We read the original, and were astonished and enchanted. Whether Frithiof be capable of being translated without losing its beauty and its life, we will not pretend to say; but another poem of Tegnér's has been translated by Longfellow "The Children at the Lord's Supper"-"Nattvardsbarnen"-with singular success. more. Tegnér has been represented by Scandinavian critics as possessing less feeling than Oehlenschläger; we, on the contrary, are of opinion, that in general he evinces much We mean of tender, sensitive and delicate feeling, as a characteristic of the general tone and temperament of the mind. If they mean, however, passion, deep, powerful, overwhelming passion-that storm and conflict of the feelings under the influence of circumstances that call forth the most violent emotions of profound natures, and which find their fullest utterance in a dramatic form, then, unquestionably, Tegnér stands far behind Oehlenschläger in this respect. Oehlenschläger is altogether a more robust spirit. He is masculine, dramatic and many-sided. There is often a want of true delicacy and refinement of feeling about him, but never of strength and passion. On the contrary, there is in Tegnér, a delicacy and tenderness of feeling that is almost feminine. Though the portrait of Frithiof is that of a strong, great man, the tone of the poet is soft, feeling and rarely impressing us as masculine. The want of the strong, stormy, and impassioned power, in which Oehlenschläger is never deficient, is to us the great defect of the character of Ingeborg. She is restrained by a sense of duty and womanly propriety from going away with Frithiof to avoid a marriage opposed to her own wishes, and destructive of the happiness of both herself and her lover; but she does not, under the circumstances, exhibit that intense grief, that agony and fiery conflict of soul, which Oehlenschläger would have thrown into the scene. This defect was felt by the readers, and pointed out by the critics;-Tegnér replied that it was done in accordance with the ancient womanly feeling in the North, of reverencing the parental authority. Perhaps a lamer reason, or one in more utter variance with the poetic and historic fact, as evidenced by the ancient ballads that we have translated into these volumes, could not have been hit upon. We need only to refer to the striking ballad of "Hagbarth and Signé," so popular for ages all over the North, where Signé, rather than renounce her lover, burns the palace over her head, and perishes with him. We may find a truer explanation in the poet's own nature he is essentially lyric, and not dramatic; and the true mode of estimation is not to compare him with Oehlenschläger, or with any one else, but to judge him by his own standard and on his own principles. These are stated lucidly enough in his poem called "Song." Here, speaking of the true poet, he says: He listens not to gloomy tidings, Of sorrow without hope and strength; His wishes are but streams, which stray His sighs, the sport of winds which play His temple stands in light sublime; The well is not the tears of earth,- So bravo! here my drink is found, Such was, in truth, Tegnér's theory; and such, judging from the whole mass of his poetry, his practice. He delighted to see the bright side of nature; to turn his gaze towards the cheerful and sunny side of the sky; to indulge in ideas and feelings that were cheerful, loving, hopeful and aspiring. Where, as in the story "Frithiof," the ancient Saga, which was his model, from which he did not, and could not, far depart, compelled him to deal with sorrowful incidents, he treated them as not terrible enough for despair, and found an outlet for hope and ultimate triumph. Thus "Frithiof," with all its adventures and trials of fortitude, is still a genial, solemn, but hopefully-toned poem, full of noble deeds and images, and rich with the most affluent outpouring of poetic beauty. Of the very highest class of poems, it |