If we take a retrospective view of the development of this nature in whose rich soil the germs of genius and insanity lay as close together as in a double nut, we shall see the vigorous and cheerful temperament burst forth like a spark of fire from the flint-like ground of the Swedish peasantry. He draws nourishment from the natural beauties of Sweden and from the old sagas of Scandinavia. He raves about deeds of valor and combat, and expresses his enthusiasm in language of flame-gilded imagery. He makes the acquaintance of the spirit of antiquity, and the innate defiance of his character becomes softened into a Greco-religious harmony. His religious freethinking leads him to political freethinking, and his religious conciliatory spirit brings with it an attempt at the political conciliation of the opposing tendencies of the century. His spiritual standpoint determines his literary standpoint, the promulgation of the Gospel of lucidity, of light, and of song, as the expression of spiritual healthfulness. From this lofty height he completes the most important work of his life, the ideal picture of northern antiquity, as it was dreamed by its own contemporaries. In order to be just to his work, we must bear firmly in mind the period in which it arose. If we compare it with a northern master-work of our own day (with Björnson's "Bergliot," for instance), we shall find it neither Norwegian nor characteristically northern. It is only relatively northern, but its most beautiful cantos are unconditionally beautiful. This work, which was destined to afford, in the great struggle of the day, the decisive testimony of the significance of poetic healthfulness, was scarcely completed before it became apparent that the germs of disease in the poet's soul had attained such vigorous growth that some great spiritual crisis alone was needed to wither all the life-courage about which the ill-favored parasite had entwined its tendrils. The summer of life was over. The late autumn yielded yet a few beautiful fruits, and the tree was dead. The impression I most desire to convey is that the man who gave world-wide fame to the name Esaias Tegnér, was beyond all else entirely human, in faults as well as in virtues, a thoroughly conscientious, upright soul, highly excitable, but with a radiant love of beauty and truth. His human earthly presence is so full of worth that in spite of all its weaknesses it is of profound interest even to foreigners, while the purely ideal image of Tegnér as a poet, will always stand forth in glorified outlines before the people in whose language he wrote, and upon whom he has acted like a radiant beam of the sun of the nineteenth century. [1] A strong kind of beer, first brewed by Chr. Mumme, of Brunswick, Germany, in 1492. Pope says: "The clamorous crowd is hushed with mugs of mum."--TR. [2] R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 143. [3] Translated by J. S. [4] Longfellow's translation. [5] R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 159.