It is a matter of wonder that a man in whom the race-type had reached such perfection was but two generations removed from the soil. Tegner's grandfathers on both sides were peasants; and his father, Esaias Lucasson, was a peasant lad who by industry and ambition had obtained an education and become a clergyman. He owed his aristocratic name to the custom, prevalent in those days, to Latinize all vulgar appellations. Esaias Lucasson, of Tegnaby (the little Smaland village where he was born), became, in the Latin school, Esaias Tegnerus. He married in the course of time a clergyman's daughter, Sara Maria Seidelius, who bore him a large family of sons and daughters. The fifth son, named Esaias after his father, first saw the light of day in the parsonage of Kyrkerud, in Wermland, November 13, 1782. When he was nine years old his father died, leaving behind him poverty and sorrow. Happily a friend of the family, the Assessor Branting, took a fancy to the handsome and clever boy and offered him a home in his house. Esaias wrote a very clear, good hand, and soon got a desk and a high three-legged stool in the assessor's office. So far from rebelling against this tedious discipline, he applied himself with zeal to his task, and became, in a short time, an excellent clerk. And a clerk he might have remained if his patron had not had the wit to discover that very unusual talents slumbered in the lad. Being fond of his society, Mr. Branting got into the habit of taking him along on his official journeys; and from the back seat of his chaise Esaias made the acquaintance of the beautiful rivers, heights, and valleys of Wermland. The unconscious impressions which a boy absorbs at this period of his life are apt to play a decisive part in fashioning his future. Nature, however picturesque, never yet made a poet of a dullard; but many a time has she aroused to poetic consciousness a soul which without this stimulating influence might never have discovered its calling, might never have felt that strange, tremulous exaltation which demands utterance in song.