In reading consecutively the whole series of Tegner's collected works I am much struck with the force of this criticism. The brave man who defies the world single-handed, and plunges up to his ears into dangers, without counting the odds against him, is the typical juvenile hero; and it is strange, though by no means incomprehensible, that a man like Tegner, who could betray such political insight as is shown in his letters to Franzen and Leopold had not really gotten beyond this primitive type of excellence. In a certain sense, perhaps, it was not desirable that he should. For the tremendous popularity which greeted "Frithjof's Saga" was due in no small measure to this half-juvenile robustness of its author's genius. As I cannot help regretting in myself the loss of my boyish appetite for swashbuckling marauders, and mysterious treasure-diggers, I am, indeed, far from deploring Tegner's delight in the insane prowess of Charles XII., or the gay and chivalrous gallantry of Gustavus III. There is a sort of fine salubriousness in it which makes one, on the whole, like him the more. It might well be said of Tegner, as he said of Luther, that his word was half a battle. At all events he accomplished by his speeches a complete overthrow of his opponents the Phosphorists, without engaging in the barren polemics to which they invited him. He waited until some appropriate public occasion occurred, and then spoke out of the fulness of his conviction. And his words spread like undulating waves of light from one end of the land to the other, finding lodgement in thousands of hearts. Thus his beautiful epilogue at the "magister promotion"[36] in Lund (1820) was a direct manifesto (and a most incisive one) against that mystic obscurity which, according to the Phosphorists, was inseparable from the highest and deepest poetic utterance: