As soon as the sixteenth to the nineteenth cantos of "Fridthjof" appeared in the year 1820, a universal cry of admiration rang through Sweden. Even the members of the romantic school, deeply moved, extended their hands for reconciliation. Before the entire work was completed (1825) Tegnér's fame had spread to the neighboring countries, especially to Germany, where Tegnér's first translator, Frau Amalia von Helwig, so well known as the friend of Goethe, made the aged poet acquainted with fragments of "Fridthjof," and won for it his favor. He called the attention of the German public to the poem, and although what he wrote about Tegnér in the vigorless style of his old age scarcely amounts to a dozen lines, it can readily be understood what an event a recognition on the part of Goethe grew to be in a small country like Sweden. Goethe's words read as follows: "We need not enter into any detailed statement to prove to those readers already friendly to the North, how admirable these cantos are. May the author as speedily as possible complete the entire work, and may the excellent translator continue to take pleasure in her labors that we may possess this sea-epic complete in the same purport and tone as what has already appeared! We would only add the brief remark that the vigorous, gigantic, barbaric style of antique poetry, approaches us, in a manner nearly incomprehensible to ourselves, with a new, musingly tender, yet undisfigured and highly agreeable form." To this day the Swedes never weary of referring to these words of praise. The admiration for Tegnér in his fatherland increased with the growing popularity of the poem; indeed, after his death it became so strong that it drowned almost all criticism, and finally reached its climax in such exaggerations as that of Mellin, who proclaimed Tegnér to be the "greatest poet of the Teutonic race." That homage to the man, however, which is and will always remain the best, is that which is at the same time homage to the truth. X. "On life's exalted summit, where the waters Of living streams are parted, once I stood, And watched the current seeking divers quarters; Around me all was bright and fair and good. * * * * * * * * * * "A melancholy demon then did waken, Who suddenly my heart's warm blood did taste; And lo! the scene grew gloomy and forsaken, The sun and moon extinguished were in haste, My glowing landscape autumn hues had taken, Each flow'r was withered, ev'ry grove a waste; All vigor from my frozen senses vanished, All courage, all rejoicing now was banished."